Nice 200$ shoes, Phil.
If Nike spent just 1% of its advertising budget on improving the wages in it indonesian sweatshops, Phil Knight could raise 12,000 of the young indonesian women working for him above the poverty line. Mr. Knight has said that the reason he does not make shoes in the united states is that "What it really comes down to is that the average American really doesn't want to be a shoemaker." Good thing for the "average american" and Mr. Knight then that there are plenty of improverished third-world workers ready to do whatever it takes to make a sub-standard living, even if its means being a lowly shoemaker. Phil has been called on repetedly to pay his workers a living wage, enough money to survive, but he refuses and goes on building his empire on the backs of the poor.
Since founding the Nike company in 1972, Phil Knight has built his company around creating a mindless, impluse-driven customer who will drool at the mouth when his favorite basketball or football player appears on the tv wearing Phil's newest sneaker. That athelete, who makes a million dollars a year or more already, will be paid many times more than what the Indonesian person who made the sneaker will be paid in a year... for 30 seconds of bad acting. Phil has taken over the greek word for and god of victory. He has polluted our mindspace with billboards of sweaty models in his lastest spandex fashions. His nonsensical and apathetic slogans have diluted the vocabulary of action into a commercial jingle. And the shoes are just plain ugly.
Phil Knight's latest gripe is with his alma mater college, University of Oregon. Fond of giving gifts to the school, Phil got kinda pissed off when the school decided that Mr Phil Knight and his sweatshop tactics are scummy, and joined an anti-sweatshop group. So Phil knight, supporter of evil, decided not to give the school a gift of $30 million dollars that he had previously planned to give because of they do not like sweatshops. The contents of a letter from phil knight explaining his position can be found here.
Hoodsie Guitars