Noblesse Oblige

Ok folks, here comes an angry political/economic post.
(for the purpose of legalities: All statements produced here are opinion and not a statement of fact. I believe that these statements are likely to be true, but that's just my opinion.)

By now most of you must have seen one of the dozens of memes or videos making their way around the internet that show how big the gap between the haves and the have-nots has become.

Shit is getting real.
If you look at the Forbes top 400 list, the top 10 are all names you would expect: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, the Koch brothers, and the Waltons.

For those of you living under a rock, the Waltons are the owners of Walmart. They are listed individually on the Forbes top 400 list, but if you counted them as a family, they would easily be #1, by a very large margin.

How did they become so wealthy? Walmart first opened in the 60's, so 50 years of business to become the richest people in the world?

Easy, Deal with the Devil.

I don't mean that literally (of course it's always possible), but the Waltons got rich by performing and encouraging the least American behavior possible: Outsourcing.

They buy almost all of their products overseas from sweat shops. Then they bring the products here and keep their prices low enough that all competitors have to do the same thing just to keep up.

This isn't just happening in the US, 15 countries have Walmarts. All selling goods that were effectively produced by slave labor.

They may not keep their slaves on U.S. soil, but lets not kid ourselves, the Waltons are modern American slave owners.

For the last fifty years they have made their vast fortunes by taking the jobs away from honest, hard-working Americans and giving them to slaves working in foreign countries.

We, as Americans, hell, as humanists, cannot allow this to continue. The world outlawed slavery decades ago, indentured servitude or forcing people to work below a living wage is no different. If a person has no choice but to work, then they are slaves. Call an egg an egg.

This is the problem of all the new billionaires. They don't understand the responsibility of being rich.
To be rich and to STAY rich, one must learn the lessons of the past. If you fuck over everyone to get rich, eventually everyone is going to line up your whole family for the guillotine.

To stay wealthy, you needed to keep the peasants happy, most people are ok with other people being richer than they are, they are not ok with people being insanely wealthy and pissing on them from an Ivory tower.

Numerous times in the history of the world the people have rebelled against the wealthy for trying to pull too much shit on us. The French revolution, the American revolution, we just don't like the rich pissing on our heads and telling us it's rain.

What is most surprising about our current situation is that historically Americans have revolted for significantly less. Remember, this whole "America" deal started because the British were taxing us more than we thought was fair and without letting us equally represent ourselves in Parliament.

Now onto congress, this is officially the least effective congress we have ever had.
We just had to implement "Automatic budget cuts" because they couldn't agree on a budget.

Seriously?

Congress, this is really your only job. Yes, you are also in charge of creating newer, stupider laws for us to break, but working out the budget is THE ONLY THING YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO!!!!!
Seriously? If you worked at McDonalds and someone walked up to you, gave you five dollars, ordered a hamburger, fries, and a coke, and you sat on your hands and cried about how you hate coke and McDonalds should really switch to Pepsi YOU WOULD BE FIRED!!!

Seriously, they failed at their job, Fire ALL of THEM.

Every time they take office, they must repeat the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 And for the specifics of what they are required to do for their job title:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_duties_of_the_US_Congress

See that list of things they are supposed to provide for? Yes, that means that the federal budget is their job. If they collect the taxes, they must spend the money they collected on federal budgets like the military, social services, etc.
If they can't budget correctly then Firstly, they shouldn't be getting paid for their work. If they can't balance the budget, their salaries should be the Very First things cut.


Now back to Walmart.
There are alot of complicated legal battles we could go through to fight them, but none of it will be anywhere near as effective as this:

Stop buying from Walmart.

I have never bought anything from Walmart, and I never will. It is worth it to me to pay 10% more on goods to know that I am not endorsing slavery and to know that I am supporting American jobs.

Fight Walmart, buy American.

Even considering how broke we all are, we can afford to buy American goods. Or atleast Mexican goods.
And buying American goods takes away money from evil corporations and puts it back into the American working class.

Outsourcing is the most un-American thing a company can do. Do not endorse companies that support it.
We can't get them all at once, because of outsourcing pioneers like the Waltons everyone else had to start outsourcing to keep up.
But as we push away from sweatshop labor, it will bring money back into this country. We need those jobs back, and we as the consumers decide where we shop. Stop Walmart, and then we'll take on the next evil empire.

Assuming the US government doesn't collapse in on its own stupidity by then.