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Thursday, September 16, 2004

Problem Economy
One of the biggest problems with our economy and capitalism in general is something that I don't think that too many people think about. In the current system, goods are imported and exported in a manner that brings the most inexpensive products to stores. The cost of say, banana's reflects the cost needed to grow them, harvest them and ship them to the stores.

There are problems with this assesment. A country like Jamaica which is a natural source of Bananas imports a large # of them from the USA. They do this because they are cheaper to buy from us than to eat their own. They are cheaper because we subsidize (tax money goes to farmers) farmers which makes our food products really cheap to outcompete foreign products even on their own soil. As weird and unfair as this is, there is another big problem with this system.

Current economic models that our government uses don't take into account any sort of environmental impact. Instead of using/buying food or other good produced in out country we buy imported goods and things shipped across the country. Shipping in huge boats and trucks impacts our environment through increased emissions and also things like the occasional oil spill. None of this counts against GDP. In fact if you comitted suicide it would increase GDP.

The answer is to consider these issues in your daily life. Hopefully our ecomonic model will eventually change to include environmental cost and affect the way big international corporations do business. It would have happened already if big business didn't have such a stranglehold on our government. Buy local products, or if you can't then buy regional products or at least things made in the USA. Do something to make a small impact.
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