One reason is that the food is very bad--low quality, not fresh.....
I just spent twenty minutes "cleaning" a bag of rice--well, actually, not the whole bag--more like a quarter of the bag, and I'm not yet through..... In any bag of brown rice, there are many green grains, occasionally the hard husk, and even (more rarely) stones. Also, there are sometimes black flects of I don't know what. It's a trivial thing, except that I like rice. In fact brown rice is nutritious. And to have a meal with rice I must spend between thirty and forty minutes cleaning the rice.
In Vienna/Wien when I lived there, I could purchase a bag of brown rice with no green grains,
no hard husks, and no stones. I spent no time cleaning the rice before I cooked it.
Or, there is the case of lettuce. In the local stores it is soaking wet---hence not fresh.
Stored in an extremely cold area, and then wet, it is not fresh. And it is not just the outer
layer that's wet. Somehow the moisture extends two or three layers deep. Wetting lettuce hastens its decline.
And then there's the case of broccoli. It's not fresh either.
When I think of these facts I just want to throw up or cry. I should be very angry. You should be angry too. Or, is it just that El Paso, Texas is a poor community? Do people really not know how bad the food is here?
GMOOH!!!
The U.S.A. is an insane society. People live badly here. And their bad way of living requires the misery of people elsewhere---e.g., the miserable conditions in Chinese factories which manufacture IPods and the stuff we buy in Wal Mart. ---Insane and immoral!
Note: Further Reading
You can learn more about the situation of the Chinese workers who produce IPads at a recent Monthly Review:
The important details occur in the section titled "Global Labor Arbitrage". The footnotes are also useful.
As with the abandoned shopping mall in my parents' neighborhood---whose buildings are now being demolished---it is not a question of some profit versus zero profit; it is a question of how much extra profit Apple (e.g.) makes by having their machines assembled in China. Apple would make a hefty profit even if its products were assembled in the USA. Local businesses would make a profit even if they were located within walking distance of my parents' home, but they can make a higher profit if they are located elsewhere. Considerations such as community simply don't count in the world of neo-Liberal values.
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