Going Camping

It's sort of a last minute thing, but my finals will be over this afternoon, so we're going camping. I'll be back the middle of next week.

I also want to respond to Earl... I like those thoughts and pretty much agree (so I stand corrected, thanks). But I want to point out that Wal-mart's business practices as one of the biggest buyers in the world is to offer lower and lower prices for the goods that they buy from China. So I would agree that having a job is better for the people of China, then not having a job, but it partially due to Wal-Mart's business practice that those people get so little money. I know, you're going to argue that that's business and if Wal-Mart's not doing it, someone else will be. While that is true, as an enormous and extremely powerful buyer, Wal-Mart can get lower prices than most because manufacturers are unwilling to pass up such a large order even if the profit margin is low because it is better than that large order going to another manufacturer.

So by getting really low prices from China (to the detriment of the workers) Wal-Mart is able to pay their employees livable wages so they don't have to live off of Welfare. Just kidding, having lower tier employees live off of Welfare is part of the Wal-mart business plan. The savings is to a certain extent passed on to the consumer (thus the low prices), but I think upper management takes a piece of the 'extra' money floating around too. So I don't shop at Wal-Mart because they perpetuate the separation of the rich from the poor. Costco, on the other hand, pays reasonable wages to its employees and still has fairly low prices. I would shop there before Wal-Mart (even though it's a 20 mile ride to Costco and a 5 mile ride to Wal-Mart).

You're right on the China thing, if people didn't buy stuff made in China, then they would be unemployed and worse off then they are now, but I have a hard time believing that we can't come up with a better way to equalize wealth (not that we should all have the same, but the rich shouldn't be able to oppress the poor).

Anyway, I should study for that test I have in a few minutes... oops.