Perplexed

I've taken a few days off from posting on this blog but I still wandered around the web reading others.... and I came across a disturbing trend. The issue talked about a lot was this Buy American idea. I saw endless posts saying that the states SHOULD 'buy american' and that to help their economy they should stop buying from abroad as much as possible, and support their own country's businesses.

Do Americans not realize that they have so many people, they CAN'T rely on their own goods??? I just heard on the Mike Church show this morning that the US gets 2/3 of it's oil and gas products from Canada. I've reported similar stats before... even in Alberta alone, we sent 60-75% of our oil to the US. Is it all because of import/export, or is it largely because of the staggering number of people in the States?

What perplexed me most was that while traveling around those same blogs, I saw posts pushing for people to support Fair Trade for things such as coffee. Okay,,, so if you are going to push supporting Fair Trade Coffee and then turn around and say the US should Buy American, is that not an oxymoron? If the US stopped buying from other countries to a large degree, the world would lose it's largest coffee importer - so what would happen to people in poorer countries such as Ecuador where exporting coffee is their livelihood?

I just found it interesting to look at opinion blogs and see the polarizing ideas that do not make sense when put together with their other opinions. It was truly baffling. Not to mention the fact that citizens would be paying a hell of a lot more for their goods if they only did 'Buy American'. But that's another point for another day. For now, just watch and listen to the opposing views coming out of the same mouths. Support Fair Trade! Buy American!