I was standing in a supermarket cash-out
line, recently and realised what I was
looking at was the now
ubiquitous
supermarket money tube system
at each check out point.
I guess I realised what it symbolised for us, the
humble consumers, who are labelled by
what we do, in this economy to add to GDP,
namely consume.
I saw that in the same way that the tube takes money
from the till and sends it to the office, thereby
limiting the FINANCIAL damage of a robbery,
it also takes local people's money and sends it to
the bank account of the supermarket conglomerate
in the far-away capital city, never to return.
In fact, that money may in part go to tax havens
because that is how international conglomerates
operate, outside the law, without paying taxes.
[Sale: Radiactive Fukushima Sushi in Aisle 3]
So, we empty our pockets for them, because
our ignorance has killed off the local grocery
store. They take whatever money we managed
to create with the offer of our labour to our
bosses, and the big boys take it away
and leave us to also fund everything
else in the country, like education and health.
Meanwhile the conglomerates pressure farmers
into penury, line the pockets of their executives,
ruin the environment of the Third World countries
that they sometimes use for supply sources,
and then they walk away , paying no taxes.
They use the country, produce wealth for themselves
and leave. Oh, and they pay minimum wage to most
of their employees because of labour supply and
demand, and because a monkey could do the job.
And so we've got a class of businessman who behave
like Far West desperadoes:
They are not part of the community. If they can afford
the tube system, they're probably not local people,
but instead a conglom.
