The real costs ...

Today I drove past the "new" W-l-Mart on the Northside of Brandon and was horrified and dismayed by the number of cars sitting in the parking lot ... Pathetic, was the only word that could rise to my mind.

On the Prairies today, our farm families are struggling to survive ... in Ontario over the last two weeks close to 3500 industrial jobs have just vanished ... across the praries more local elevators have closed and fallen ... and over and over and over, I hear stories of people from our area here in west-man who are working in the Alberta oil patch just to make ends meet ...

Are we so blind that we can't see that the "cheap" stuff (shit is more like it ... sorry to those who this may offend - but it IS true) has a cost that must be borne somewhere.

That cheap loaf of bread you buy today at the supermarket means that the farmer gets next to nothing for his/her input ... actually, in today's market, the farmer doesn't get next to nothing, he ends up owing more then he get paid for the wheat, so he ends up owing MORE then nothing.

Can we not see?? Can we not hear?? Can we not act??

There is NO SUCH THING AS A CHEAP LUNCH????????

There is a cost to be paid somewhere. We may get a "bargain" - but we must ask ourselves - "at WHOSE expense???" It won't be the shareholders of the multinationals - they need to get their fair share. But the cost could be paid by the workers for the company ... or perhaps it will be the workers in the factory that once stood down the street, but today is operating in mainland china ... or it could be the people who live down stream from THAT new factory, and are overwhelmed with pollution ... or it might be the producers who get pennies for their hard hours of labour ... or it might be the permenant underclass who are forever being ground under the heels of a global market that doesn't give a damn ...

SO tomorrow, and next week and next month when you stand in the aisle with your latest "BARGAIN" in hand, think about what the real cost of the item is and ask yourself the simple question - "am I paying the real cost of this, or is someone else going to have to pay, perhaps with their health, their security, or even their lives????"

If we dared to ask those question a little more often, maybe things would start to change ...

One can always hope ...
dayenu ... dayenu ...