I know, I know, but just go with me on this. You know that old t-shirt that you bought at Spencer Gifts in the mall? You were 19 and covered in pimples. Well, now you are 29, covered in pimples but you have much better taste. Now you wear clothes from Kmart. You've become quite the fashionista.
So, you open up an old box of the rags you once wore, and decide that you'll do a good deed for your lifetime. Instead of throwing them out, you will donate them to one of those drop-off boxes that promises to send the clothes to the very poor. Well, a lot of those clothes end up overseas. You see, lucky for us, our tax dollars already go to make sure that the poor in this country get checks in order to buy 200 dollar LeBron James shoes and classy denim dresses. Also, smart phones, flat screen tv's, laptops ... uh yeah, our poor isn't the same as their poor.
The real poor doesn't complain about only having the iPhone 3.
Anyhoo, what ends up happening is that our old dirty clothes get shipped overseas to extremely super-seriously poor countries. Well that sounds good. Those people are probably just walking around naked eating dirt all day. They'd love to wear our garbage.
Except:
Until we in the U.S. decided that we were going to do are half-assed good deed, many of these very poor nations had begun creating textile industries. There was a real need, so people in those countries began to create a supply. Amazing. They are actual human beings with minds of their own who are capable of creating an industry, and therefore, a working economy. I had no idea. On the TV they just walk around with flies on their heads.
The textile industries in these countries provided not only clothing, but jobs. Jobs which paid money, money which was used to create more businesses. These businesses made things for people who suddenly had money to buy things. But then we decided to take a big fat dump on all that noise and give them our free garbage. Goodbye self-sustaining economy.
It's much easier to FEEL like you are helping people than to THINK about whether or not you actually are. Just like how it's easier to FEEL up strangers on the bus than it is to THINK about having a normal healthy relationship with a willing partner. I've said too much.
I'm just sick and tired of seeing countless pictures of unkept poor people wearing dirty old vintage basketball jerseys. I can't tell if they are poor foreigners or just filthy hipsters.
Besides ruining entire economies with our good deeds, look at what we are doing to these people:
Click to read more ...
Wed, December 12, 2012 
