Colin Kaepernick has been hired by Nike, the seller of vastly overpriced sneakers to impoverished Black kids, to be its public face. Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts tells us about it:
Nike to conservative Americans
Screw you! Yep. I have a feeling that Nike, like most corporations, would fly China’s communist flag if they thought it would increase their bottom line. There are hundreds of NFL players, or other athletes, Nike could choose. Nike chose this as a statement every bit as much as Kaepernick’s statement. It reflects Nike’s attitudes about the US, and those who don’t subscribe to the Kaepernick perspective. Note well, Nike did not – repeat, not – choose Tim Tebow, despite how popular or ‘inspirational’ he was to some.
Go here to comment. Nike has always been a bottom feeder of a business. They make their money by selling at vast markups overpriced footwear, disproportionately to poor black kids, by enlisting athletes to peddle the illusion that if the kids get the shoes they could be the next multi-millionaire athlete. While doing this scam, Nike has the shoes thrown together in foreign sweatshops by the cheapest labor imaginable. Nike has been under fire for the foreign sweat shops for decades, and this hiring of Kaepernick is a cynical ploy to shut up their critics on the Left and among Blacks.
Nike is exposed. Nike needs some integrity and some serious capitalist competition.
Nike is being stupid– that said, the graphic for the shoe is incorrect, at least in the last five to ten years. Labor and factory is about $25, not $12; taxes to the company is about right, little low.
The bulk retail markup of course ignores that they have to pay distribution costs and taxes and that retail is a lot less consistent in demand than “make these shoes.”
And Nike has been under fire for sweatshops because it makes the activists feel good. They don’t care if folks would be starving, or working for less pay under worse conditions, they care that they can feel good about it. It’s a shake-down “on behalf” of the poor, benighted little brown people who are obviously too incompetent to decide if they want to work in the factories, will never see any of the money paid to the extortionists, and…gosh, do you notice a lack of protests about actual slave labor, say at China’s apple factories?
*************
I am a geek, so the idea of buying stuff because of the name on the side is silly to me. That said, we do have a lot of shoes with the famous swoosh on the side, because we got them as hand-me-downs for the kids; some of them are almost old enough that I could’ve worn them as a kid.
They obviously at least HAD a quality product, so why are they being so freaking stupid now? Wasn’t it Michael Jordan who said something like “Conservatives buy shoes, too”?
(apple factory as in iThing, not fruit)
The 20c an hour claim is not credible. Formal sector wage employment in poor countries is a step up from informal sector employment (and much agricultural employment as well). It’s doubtful such workers are comparatively impecunious in any setting. Compensation per worker in such posited factories would be 0.5% of the American mean. There are almost no countries in the world with a nominal gdp per capita so low. Equatorial Africa is the only place you find that. Per capita income levels would be 4x that in Burma and 5x that in Bangladesh.
Foxfier wrote, “They obviously at least HAD a quality product…”
“Buy well, buy once” was my mother’s maxim.
I have an old friend, whom I see quite often at Riding for the Disabled. She has been carrying the same Hermès handbag for the last 30 years at least. It is always bulging; I know it contains hoof-picks, a spare stirrup-leather, purple spray and black wound-powder along with I don’t know what other equestrian and feminine accessories.
She cleans it once a week with Carr & Day & Marin’s saddle-soap and treats it with Neatsfoot Oil.
While Nike is lionizing a numbskull, 2,000 or 3,000 (a brigade) of America’s sons and daughters are at Fort Polk, Louisiana 24/7. There, in the heat and rain, they training for a combat deployment and each is prepared to “give everything.”
It Is Irrelevant Corporate Virtue-Signaling.
That being said, Nike-who?
Wall Street Says, “Get Woke. Go Broke.” Nike and Foot Locker stocks closed down about 3%. Same thing happened to Dick’s stock as a result of its pandering to gun hysterics played by Soros-funded rich kids from Florida. I know. I have no heart. I have a brain.
Re: Kaepernick and the other anthem-kneeling Mensa-members: They are the northern ends of so many south-bound horses.
.
MPS-
sadly, about mid-80s companies started to cash in on their reputation for quality…and sold crud. So you paid through the nose for stuff with the name of stuff that use to last, and only found out when it went to bits as quickly as the cheaper stuff.
Even Honda did it– I drove an ’83 Accord that was in better shape than the then-just-a-few-years-old ones my classmates drove.
“While Nike is lionizing a numbskull, 2,000 or 3,000 (a brigade) of America’s sons and daughters are at Fort Polk, Louisiana 24/7. There, in the heat and rain, they training for a combat deployment and each is prepared to “give everything.””
You need to send this comment to Nike’s marketing team.
That numbskull is no Michael Jordan. Isn’t he off contract because he had a shocking season. No club wants him. Could be those bad knees from all that kneeling. Maybe he should try kneeling at next Sunday’s Mass where it counts. And I read somewhere people are outraged and are burning their Nike in protest. It will hit Nikes back pocket.