Consumed by this blog

[amandawat]

AUPE rallying against newly-tabled labour legislation

The union representing government workers is poised to protest two bills, tabled in the legislature Wednesday.

A union is when a group of workers join together to influence work conditions, salary, work hours and benefits. By joining together each worker gets more influence because they are acting as a group instead of an individual. Unions have been successful in improving the working conditions and wages for many employees. When the union members are unhappy with their salary or work conditions they can go on strike, which means the company’s production is halted reducing their income. This is how the workers bring about change. A strike is very similar to a boycott except inverted because it is the workers that are unhappy instead of the consumers.

Four days ago the government of Alberta proposed two new pieces of legislation that would impact Alberta unions. Bill 45 is designed to protect Albertans from illegal strikes making the penalty for illegal strike action 1 million dollars a day. According to the Alberta union of public employees (AUPE) president this new law if passed would cripple any union that goes on illegal strike. Bill 46 proposes to impose a contract on AUPE by the end of January if the government and the union do not come to an agreement before that time.

 Even though the Alberta government is trying to limit the power of unions, I believe unions are important because they protect the rights of the workers. Without unions we would be at risk of having sweatshops where workers get taken advantage of. Even thought the cost of running companies are more when the workers are unionized I believe that it is important that workers have a certain standard of living. Paying a little bit more for a product in this situation is worth it in my view.                   

[amandawat]

[amandawat]

This section covers various issues related to marketing that targets children and youth.

[amandawat]

Advertising turned anti-consumerism into a weapon – Adam Corner – Aeon

The more we hate it, the more it agrees with us. How advertising turned anti-consumerism into a secret weapon

This is a really cool wed site that sheds light on a very neat perspective!

[amandawat]

[amandawat]

[kalindeevan-blog]

The Story of Stuff is an awesome video about what goes on behind the scenes! Do we ever really consider where our stuff comes from and where it goes? 

[amandawat]

I think that this video is very powerful and the fact that it stuck with me since I watched it in grade seven speaks to how powerful it is. 

[amandawat]

“Americans used to be ‘citizens.’ Now we are ‘consumers.” ~ Vicki Robin

[amandawat]

So in conclusion we decided that Canada really does provide its citizens with a better quality of life than the USA.  The main area that informed our decision was health care.  Canada has a system that ensures that no matter how much money you have or don’t have, you can still get equal health care. I think we talked about this the most because we have grown up learning about it and we hear so much about it and how good Canadian health care is. Some other points that I had, but that I really didn’t get to address included other points in my equality pillar such as education, seniors pension, income assistance, and gay marriage and how it is now legal in Canada.  

[amandawat]

swap city

I really enjoyed this event because it gave us the chance to experience a very different kind of economy. I enjoyed the barter economy because it allows us to trade for what we want based on our personal values. In this experiment I personally did not trade anything because I did not feel that anything in the pool of goods outranked the value I felt my object had.  I thought the trade experiment was very successful because many people told me that they ended up with something better that what they started with. Approximately half the class thought that they ended with something more valuable to them than the object that they started with. The rules for the swap were that you could swap for material goods or that you could provide a service for example on kid offered to be a bodyguard for a day.  

[amandawat]

“To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, and not love things and use people.” ― John Powell

[amandawat]

To me this picture represents how we are all trapped by what we want and what we have to buy. Our society is so orientated around shopping and buying things that we are trapped in a perpetual stage of wanting more. Our society is so focused on getting more money so that we can buy more stuff, but we don’t really need it. Often after a few months we just discard that thing after it stops working or we are tired of it. This kind of mind set traps us into thinking only about having more and consuming stuff. 

[amandawat]

Mash up

In the novel Three Cups of Tea the main character is trying to build a school in the village of Kophe. This initiative began when Greg (the main character, who was rock climbing in the area) stumbled upon this small village. And after spending a few days in this village and learning all about the people, he saw how these children learned, which was in the dirt without a teacher most days. He made a promise to the village leader that he would build a school here for the benefit of the children. In this area of Pakistan a teacher costs 1$ a day and the village had no hope of paying that every day so they shared the teacher with another village. This is how impoverished the village was. It is humbling to think that in our society 1$ buys us very little. In fact some people may think that a loonie is so useless that if they drop one it may not be worth going back and picking it up. It is impowering to realize that instead of leaving that coin lay there, if you donate it to someone less fortunate than you, you could make such a difference. This book really made me think about how different our society is from a developing country such as Pakistan.          

[amandawat]

I thought that this quote was really powerful and completely true. It really makes you think about what our world would look like with no money, with no way to measure value other than its personal value. If this was the way our society was we wouldn’t have so much useless stuff. We would only have stuff that had a use or because it actually meant something to us. I believe that with no money we would all be equal. There would be no difference between nations or individuals because we would be all the same. We are all humans that eat, sleep and live.  Without money there would be no borders to separate us, because really what is money? It is something we define that has substantial worth to ourselves, but other than that money is just pieces paper that runs our lives.

[amandawat]

http://downloadmoviesfreee.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/tumblr_lhq71hhPrn1qbt6q7o1_1280.jpg 

I found this movie very inspirational, because it really made me think about what we need versus what we want. Some people in this world have next to nothing, and then there is the opposite where people have so much they don’t know what to do with it all. I thought one of the most powerful moments in the movie was when Chris, who is the main character, was talking about the Declaration of Independence, and how “Thomas Jefferson wrote ‘it is our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, how did he know to put the pursuit part in. Maybe it was because we are always searching for it but we can never actually have it.” I believe this quote is the backbone to the entire movie. I liked this movie because Chris was such a personable character. I found myself just wanting to like him.  He was also very hard working and that is one of my core values. I think that this movie and life story would have been very different if Chris lived in Canada instead of the USA. Canadian society has a core commitment to ensuring the greater good of the people in our country. For example, our health care system and our grade school education system is for everyone, no matter how much money you have.  One of the major things to consider while watching this movie is why they spell the word happyness with a “y”. The whole movie I wondered why. After reflecting on this I think they wrote it that way to draw our attention to the word “happy”. Throughout the entire movie you ask yourself, why can’t he just be happy? He is such a good, hard working man. He does everything so that his son can have a better life. He deserves to be happy and yet for the majority of the movie he just can’t seem to find “happy”ness, not with all the worries of money going through his head.  I was happy that in the end he found some happyness with his son.

[amandawat]

Boycotting Apple

One of the things that I said would be a good reason to boycott a company was if they use sweatshops to produce their products and I have found this article on apple sweatshops. I support Apple obviously because I have a MacBook, an iPod and an iPhone. When I bought these products I had no idea that they used sweatshops, now that I know that it make me a little bit disappointed. I will defiantly think twice before I buy another thing from Apple, if I ever do because I do not what a company that uses sweatshops to represent me as a consumer. I believe that if more people knew about Apple sweatshops they too would be disappointed with the company. If enough people were uncomfortable with this and stopped purchasing Apple products than this major corporation maybe persuaded to change their ways. This is fundamentally what a boycott is all about. As they say each time you buy something you cast a vote for what you want to be popular and I am choosing not to vote for Apple, And I am hoping you will vote with me.      

[amandawat]

This is what a week’s worth of groceries look like for my family of 5, including my cat. I think that my family is pretty healthy because we are very thoughtful about what we eat. As you can see we eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.  When we go grocery shopping, we always start by doing a full circle around the outer edge of the store as that is where all the fresh produce, fruit, dairy and bakery items are located. Almost all of the meat we eat is organic, as we purchase it from Balzac meats in the school fundraiser. I think that it is way healthier to get our meat this way because it does not have to be shipped from far away, it supports a local butcher and it raises money for our school. Something else about my family’s grocery shopping habits is that because we live outside the city it is inconvenient for us to make lots of trips so we usually do one bigger shop once a week. The main processed foods we buy are lunch and breakfast items because those are the two meals that are the hardest to make from wholesome ingredients.  As we live out in the country, we also do not eat out very often. We did not eat out at all the week that I did this project. That is another reason that I feel my family is very healthy.  Another thing that we do not consume is pop. We buy real fruit juice and milk but not pop. We also do not purchase bottled water. I really enjoyed this opportunity to explore my consumer identity through this project.