Yea, especially with the latest revelation about Cadmium (not the english chocolate eggs kind).  It is unfortunate, but a fact of life.  Given a choice - with all else being equal - people will buy the cheaper product.  The problem lately is that all else has not been equal and that has cost those companies a lot of money due to poor quality controls.  Enough to sour them on china?  Probably not.  But at least for those who love poetic justice, it is a start.

Good job, Ruthie.  I wouldn't trust anything Chinese,either.  Too many coincidences, killing our dogs, our kids, and who knows what else?

I always try to buy stuff that was NOT made in China or Bangladesh or elsewhere in southasia because among other things the workers there are exploited and/or have to work under very hazardeous conditions. Then there are environmental issues - I doubt that they rank very high. China is polluting the environment in an alarming rate - almost every river is polluted and I've heard that they have a severe problem with drinking water. They have so many people that a few million here or there don't seem to matter at all.

I'll be honest and say I have never put a second thought to any of this. I buy what I want and what I need and never bother to look at where it was made. As long as it work and can be fixed or exchanged under warranty I can't bother myself enough with who built it. Otherwise I will be using or buying nothing since most things are made outside the US and I just don't have time to search for US made alternatives.

Besides, if we really did care about how other people live and are treated I believe we would be trying harder to do something about it. From my point of view we don't seem to be trying hard enough or at all since most people go to sleep and wake up without a single thought on those who are suffering else where. But this is just my opinions. As per making sure my kids are not hurt by certain dangerous products, I tend to trust certain product names and hope all is well since even an expensive item can have faults.

I agree with your point about polution, but then that is related to the first point - wages.  In the end it comes down to the end result.  A baby cannot go from crawling to a marathon.  It has to pass through other stages as well.  So the low wages are not an end to the cycle, but an interim part of it.  As we see in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, they started out low when they started making cheap products.  But the fact they were selling them caused their economies to pick up and get to the point where that is no longer the case.  So if you boycott them on that basis (and if enough follow your lead) they will never get to the point of decent wages (Actually China has come far in that regard - they have a middle class now).  It is a vicious cycle.  If you dont give them a hand up now, they will require a hand out later.

Now on the polution front.  This again is a symptom of "cheap".  They do not have the controls as they cost money and right now the governments are just trying to get cheap, not good.  However, if your main consern is AGW, then yes, you should boycott them as polution is polution no matter who makes it.  And if you are for a green earth, then again boycotting them, while hurting the workers short term, would cause the governments to get serious about polution and eventually get their factories up to snuff.

I am not an activist by any means, but there are many issues that can be found to be connected if you bothered to look into "globalization". Most people act like you do, Chuck. I do so myself with certain things like cheap vegetables in the supermarket - nobody can produce food that cheap and still sell it for a profit, there have to be some serious problems for the farmers and workers at one point. I once heard a radio feature on migration in west africa. Many people from african nations try to reach europe and take on tremendous risks and dangerous journeys wtih smugglers. Those who make it could end up working as illegals in the southspanish vegetable farms. They call the region "La Ola" because every field is under plastic sheets. The mostly illegal immigrants work under horrible conditions there. It is unbearably hot under the plastic, and they use many toxic pesticides which they breathe in daily. Their health is ruined by the age of 40 - all this so I can buy cheap vegetables all year long. The reason for migration is usually that their domestic market collapsed. The example they brought in the radioshow were fishermen. Along the coastline fish is the main resource, but the huge swimming fishfactories of the industrialized nations (EU, Japan, USA etc) operate just outside the national waters and deplete the fish. The men catch less and less and have to go further out in their little boats which is dangerous and expensive. Sooner or later they make more money chartering their boats out than catching fish. But without the fish the villages along the coastline cant survive - it is the main food source and the people have to migrate, they have no choice. and there are environmental issues with overfishing the oceans, drifting gill nets etc. Everything is connected, and I am not one to buy easily into conspiracy theories. They are fun to cook up and mock though.

I can not afford to constantly buy local products. And you don't see the possible suffering caused by the production of canned tuna or salad or tomatoes from spain or chile or wherever else cheap vegetables come from, so it is easy to overlook it.

There are good projects for  fair trade and fair made goods like coffee, cotton, chocolate and alot of others. Of course, I don't know how much of that is a scam to get people to buy it for a higher price with all the rest being the same.

I don't know if it is that easy - me not buying cheap  imports being the root cause for backwardness and poverty. I see what you mean with the causality though, but it is awful to just accept it as a fact of life that exploitation has to happen before progress, and that this development hinges on the global market which makes the rest of the world responsible in a way. I like to believe that if I don't buy cheap imports but would be willing (and here's the rub) to pay more for a fairmade product, things could change as well.

I haven't really decided on AGW. For me, it seems logical that all the smoking chimneys since the 18th century might have an impact, but not every environmental issue has to be related to global warming by force. There are enough problems to go around that have nothing to do with global warming at all. There is enough money to go around for the defense budget in china, for an huge government apparatchik and not enough to make sure that the people have access to clean water and nonpolluted food? India could develop a nuclear programm, but it can't stop child slaver labour in stone quarries.. I don't buy that. Their mentality is just different, or so it seems. A single life just doesn't seem to have any value.

The problem with most "activists" is the limited frame of reference.  Making shoes for a buck a day so Kathy Lee can have a new Cayenne may seem nasty on the surface, but in those backward countries, a buck a day is a living wage and better than the nothing they would have without the shoe job.  It may seem exploitive, but ask the kid who is feeding himself on that buck a day what life is like with out food.  

The issue should be quality and safety and in that department, third world product definitely fall short.  I toss knives for grins.  Bought a nice looking Winchester knife at WalMart.  Second or third toss the tip broke off.  I ground it down to a bayonet style tip and tossed it some more.  Got a bad throw, it hit the log sideways and broke in half .  Twenty dollars for the Winchester that is not under any type of warranty vs a Buck for thirty that you couldn't break with a sledge hammer and would be replaced no questions asked if you did.  But for twenty and no tossing, you can have a neat looking  knife.  I learned that the world "stainless" on a Winchester or Remington knife at WallyWorld (theyare made in China) doesn't mean "stainless steel"...I don't know what it does mean.

Consumers are not willing to pay the price a good product should be worth, and because the market is regulated by demand, somewhere down the line people are exploited. Kathy Lee should pay the price a good pair of shoes is worth, she would get the good quality then as well and the worker would possibly get more than a buck a day. Anyway, textiles from overseas are unrivaled cheap but the quality is awful. Sweatshirts and Tshirts lose form or fall appart at the seams after washing a few times. Shoes break after a few months.

I am sorry a low quality import that wasn't even cheap (even though I don't know what a good knive would cost - I don't even have a pocket knive) ruined your fun. Maybe they should print "spineless steel" instead?

I feel strongly about the China situation, so many reasons why we shouldn't buy products made there, but American companies have no second thoughts about exploiting their labor force.  I believe it to be a major flaw in our free enterprise system and I believe it has hurt America in many ways.  There's not much we can do other than protesting with our wallets.  Maybe it can make a difference.

I am wary of plasticizers in toys, especially when babies or toddlers play with them. That is another reason those used old Fisher Price toys are great - they've had decades to air out.