Welcome To Wal-e-world

We have yet another recall of cheap mass-produced goods from China as if that should come as any surprise by now.

Mattel Inc. issued a second toy recall in as many weeks Tuesday, this time calling back millions of Chinese-made toys - including nearly a million sold in Canada - containing magnets that can be swallowed by children or which could have lead paint.

The global recall includes 436,000 die cast Pixar ‘Sarge' character cars that contain lead paint, 32,800 of which were sold in Canada between May and August. The car was made by Early Light Industrial Co., a contract manufacturer in China, which subcontracted the painting of parts of the toy to another Chinese vendor, Hong Li Da Plastic Cement Products Facility, Mattel said.

The company also expanded its Nov. 2006 magnet toy recall, calling back additional types of toys that contain magnets. The total for the magnet toy recall now stands at 18.2 million toys world-wide - 890,000 in Canada - and includes Polly Pocket dolls, Batman action figures, doggie day care playsets and Barbie tanning playsets.

Has everyone forgotten the old axiom: You get what you pay for?

This is what we get for allowing a shareholder driven corporate mentality that can't see past 4:00pm when the stock market closes. For all its promise of low prices, Wal-Mart has created an economy and corporate mentality where manufacturers are forced to cut costs just to be able to sell to the world's largest retailer. Wal-Mart is the first retailer in history to mandate what its suppliers will charge them.

The company is so large and offers such huge potential sales to manufacturers that many of them have closed their plants here in North America and moved production offshore, mostly to China. In the short term that might seem like good business practice, but when you create a situation where you become a consumer-only economy, how sustainable is that?

We have a situation where we have lost so many decent jobs for the sake of low prices that people are forced to shop at Wal-Mart because they can't afford to shop anywhere else, it's the snake that eats its own tail. We have created a situation where, in order to achieve those low prices, our cats and dogs are dying and our children are eating lead.

We also have a situation where people are being executed and committing suicide because the profits that are to be made off the wealthiest nation on earth (you’re only worth what you owe) are so great that they are willing to supply goods at a more than competitive price, even if it means you have to cut a few corners.

Let me repeat: You get what you pay for.

Wal-Mart isn't completely to blame but as one of the largest corporations in world they deserve to take some serious heat for the corporate economic policies that were developed in the Eighties and Nineties. We are living with the hangover from those short sighted policies now, the US owes more money than it is worth, a remarkable achievement on its own, and we are being sold goods that are worth what we pay for them, and we don't pay very much if you exclude our safety and our well-being.

Just for the record; for all the left wing faggot I am, I am by no means anti-capitalist, I run my own business as a matter of fact so I'm never against somebody trying to profit from their labours, but I do have problems with short sighted business managers who are either too stupid or unwilling to think about the consequences of that quick buck they think they can make before the stock market closes. Welcome to Wal-e-world.