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SJWarCleric wrote

Wow what self-righteous wankfest. Someone in the comments from outside the US was confused as to how/why Americans would buy Chinese goods. There was also some confusion about Americans not having access to good food. I'mma copypasta my response here though I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.

While I don't agree with Umair's ecofascist-lite, sinophobic spin on the state of things (with thinly veiled nationalism hidden under the guise of generalized misanthropy), I will comment on my experience of living in the US to answer your question as to why Americans constantly buy items from China, whether we like it or not, no matter how we try to avoid it.

Now, much like you I don't believe I've purchased anything from China. But that is also rather difficult to claim with any certainty in the US. While I'm not directly purchasing and importing things, many products available are produced in China (even if they are labelled in a roundabout manner to give a different impression to consumers.) Unless you are hand-making items (and sometimes even if you are, depending on materials), the state of production in the US is pretty dire outside of a few select items.

Many of the items "produced in the US" are merely assembled in the US after materials are imported. There is a great deal of obfuscation involved to keep consumers morale up and feed nationalism. There are a great deal of materials and products that are no longer produced in the US, or are so cost-prohibitive that it's effectively impossible to produce them in the US except maybe in a small scale.

Take enamel pins, a popular item for hobbyists and artists. There are no enamel pin producers in the US, as they either moved overseas or went under years ago. Some companies claim they are US Manufacturers, but in reality they are middlemen for Chinese factories (and should be avoided.) So artists are forced to approach manufacturers (or honest middlemen for factories) in China which has a stranglehold on the production. No other country can even challenge that stranglehold, especially not the US.

Look at the cotton that was under protest due to being produced by forced Uighur labor. It's all well and good for large corporations and small clothing lines to condemn the crimes against humanity and claim that they won't use the cotton, but by the time the cotton is woven into fabrics that are turned into clothing, it's effectively impossible to prove if an item was made with that cotton or not. It's just virtue signalling to keep consumers placated.

As a side note about food, a great deal of folks in the US live in "food deserts." Some people are lucky enough to grow their own food or be able to get locally grown foods, but the laws of some states ensure that farmers are stuck growing specific crops that either aren't meant for human consumption (animal feed) or are exported to other countries. Additionally, due to the wage slavery most people don't have time to prepare their own food or can't afford to. So we get stuck eating crappy processed stuff that we can't absorb.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

I hate any attacks on American obesity like his. American obesity - and I suspect most of the world's obesity - is largely a capitalist problem.

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SJWarCleric wrote

Yuuup. When I got too sick to work and fell into deep poverty I gained weight uncontrollably for the first time in my life.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

Yeah, I'm losing weight because I have more time to cook and more time to eat than I've had in almost twenty years. It's more expensive than cheap bulk foods but less expensive than takeout, but most of the time I got takeout in my adult life the issue was time and energy and not a preference for their food over what I could make.

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