Interesting

Well, this is an interesting read. The Forbes article details how hard it is to avoid making the rich richer by detailing the ways your everyday spending lines the pockets of billionaires. The article highlights an app that helps you make different decisions, if you choose. (The most interesting part of the article, to me, was the slideshow showing how pretty much all of your purchases benefit a billionaire somehow.)

I've been frustrated in the past, especially when reading books like Salt, Sugar, Fat to realize how closely linked almost all the big brands are and yet how opaque it is to the consumer. The Buycott app (which I absolutely just downloaded) makes that a lot more transparent.

Should we care about things like whether our cereal company spent money to oppose labeling of GMO foods or that a CEO makes 11 times the average salary of someone employed in her company? I don't know. I go back and forth on the issue myself a lot of the time. I'm not going to live an ascetic life just to avoid the possibility of someone being exploited somewhere - it's not very practical. I can make small changes, like buying secondhand whenever possible and doing without a lot of "necessities". But what I really like about the app is that it gives you the information to make a choice when you do make a purchase, which I feel like has really been missing for the layperson.

How do you feel about your money going to make rich people richer?