I love handbags

[BainsBane]

135. By buying cheap imported products made in sweatshops

Last edited Sun Aug 11, 2013, 06:30 AM - Edit history (1)

one subsidizes the system of production and wages that creates homelessness. If I were wealthy, I would refuse to subsidize poverty by buying the kinds of products people here find acceptable. That doesn't require buying a $38k purse, but it does mean not buying the $50 purses people consider themselves virtuous for purchasing.

In your analysis, buying cheap stuff is a virtue. If that's the case, we should all shop at Walmart. I myself choose not to.

The problem is not what Oprah or another rich person buys. The problem is an economic system that generates rampant inequality. Outsourcing of jobs to sweatshops overseas is probably the greatest factor contributing to that inequality. Most of us subsidize that deindustrialization and outsourcing every time we buy something.

The other point is that Oprah's sin was not in buying a bag but in having the nerve to ask to LOOK at it. Evidently people here, like that shop clerk, believe that is simply not acceptable.