Please don't shop at Walmart's

The Guardian has published a really important article entitled, "Blood and coal: the human cost of cheap Chinese goods" about the lack of mining safety standards in China. Of course, the coal is used to power the factories that make the inexpensive products we import. We already know that Walmart's uses sweatshop labor. We already know that they discriminate against women. We already know that the medical insurance they make available to their workers is utterly unafforadable on the extremely low wages they pay. Now we learn of still another form of exploitation taking place because of the demand for low price Chinese imports:

More than 5,000 Chinese miners are killed each year, 75% of the global total, even though the country produces only a third of the world's coal. Working under appalling safety conditions, they are sacrificed to fuel the factories that make the cheap goods snapped up by consumers in Britain and other wealthy nations.

Faced with energy shortages this winter, the government has stepped up the pressure on mine operators to raise output. This has contributed to a spate of the worst disasters in the country's history. Last month, 216 miners were killed at Sunjiawan mine in north-east China in the most deadly accident in 50 years. Last October, another gas explosion killed 148. Last Thursday, a cave-in at a mine in Sha'anxi province killed 16 miners and left another 11 trapped underground.

Countless other accidents at small unregistered mines go unreported because the owners - often in collusion with local officials - buy off or threaten the victims' families. There is widespread anger that miners' lives are being sacrificed for economic growth. "It's said there is blood on every piece of coal in China," says one of the widows, Mrs Wang. "My husband used to talk about the danger all the time. But we are very poor. We have children. What else could we do?"

Why do we Americans feel so entitled to cheap goods? We are capable of paying a fair price for what we buy so that others have a living wage and decent working conditions. Remember what Gandhi said: "Live simply that others may simply live."