[the_devils_advocate_666]

I just don't get it...

[Phantom Lord]

How many of those lining up for these shoes do not have health insurance and demand that taxpayers buy it for them? Instead of wasting money on items such as these sneakers they should be purchasing things that are actually beneficial to them. Such as insurance, an IRA, a savings account, etc...

But no, that would require self discipline and putting off immediate gratification for future financial security.

[martin_fierro]

Modeled after a Hummer?

[Landru]

"I just don't get it..."

If that's not a "Quote of the Day" candidate I don't know what is.

Simple, concise, precise & as far as this article goes?

...says it all. {g}

[EggsAckley]

Years ago I accompanied my best friend and her 9 y.o. grandson on a mission to find him some new sneakers. Being on a tight budget, she certainly couldn't afford the pricey "endorsed" shoes, and we found a perfectly good pair, for a reasonable price. Her grandson found a pair with a 49ers logo on them, triple the price, and demanded that we buy THOSE. We felt so bad leaving the store with the less pricey shoes and him in tears.

I find it an abomination that children are utilized and abused by these 'endorsers.' I've never purchased anything with a sports logo on it, and I never will.

[TheBigB]

And in other news, the Cavaliers themselves are 6-19.

[uncbob]

If this doesn't prove there ain't no recession I don't know what does

[FBD]

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/10/8/213305
Some expenses in China:
• A quart of milk: $0.82 – over three hours’ wages
• A liter of orange juice: $1.45 – nearly six hours’ wages
• A "Big Mac" with fries and a Coke: $1.93 – nearly eight hours’ wages
• A movie: $1.81 – over seven hours’ wages
• A pair of Nike sneakers: $81.93 – nearly five and a half weeks’ wages
• Men’s new shoes: $24.10 – over 96 hours’ wages
• One man’s T-shirt: $2.41 – over nine hours’ wages
• A cheap, plain woman’s two-piece outfit: $12.05 – 48 hours’ wages

According to Business Week magazine, which investigated the Chun Si Enterprise handbag factory in Zhongshan in southern China, abuses included paying workers $22 a month while charging them $15 a month for food and shoddy lodging, locking their 900 workers in a walled factory compound except for the one hour a day they were allowed for meals, making them work 14-hour days without paying overtime, allowing guards to punch and hit workers for talking back to managers or even for walking too fast, and fining workers as much as $1 for offenses such as taking too long in the bathroom.

The factory also supplied workers with illegal documents that made it impossible for them to flee the factory, because if caught they would be jailed for not having the proper credentials – internal passports required in the communist state. Workers thus risked arrest if they ventured out of the factory’s neighborhood.

Workers also were forced to help pay for a phony factory setup to fool auditors hired by U.S. firms such as Wal-Mart and Payless Shoes to check on conditions at Chun Si, which made Kathy Lee Gifford handbags and Payless shoes.

Meanwhile, back at Beaverton;
$90,000,000 dollars, for an ENDORSEMENT...

[PermaRag]

Why bother with stores at all? Isn't one of the preferred methods of acquiring much-"needed" products such as these, to wait for some poor sap to buy them, and then steal them off of him? Would that be a "shoe-jacking"?

[zeaal]

I recall vividly the "Air Jordan" phase of Nikes. Had a 12 year old at the time. LINESSSSS

[petercooper]

anyone paying $110 for a pair of sneakers manufactured in some sweatshop by someone making 50 cents per hour with materials costing $1.27 is a MORON!

[Jarhead_22]

Who?