A $315 Shoe You Can Kick Yourself With

You know what really shaves my ice?  Many things, apparently, but the latest bit o' outrage is over a new sneaker that will cost $315 a pair. 

It's not the cost itself that gets me--after all, Nike is recognizing a market in incredibly stupid people who think buying a LeBron James endorsed product will somehow make them something better than the incredibly inadequate athletes they already are.  Here's some news--LeBron James can probably slam dunk you any day of the week barefoot and playing on a court of broken glass.  Basketball shoes make a difference up to a point, and that point is crossed long before you reach three hundred dollars.  It's one of the laws of the universe--if you're paying that much for basketball shoes, you should do the world a favor and stand in front of the microwave until you've ensured the world of the future that they will not have to suffer your offspring. 

No, what does it for me is at the end of the article--Nike explaining that the high cost of the shoe is due to having to pass on to the consumer the high costs of the materials that go into making the shoe--like cotton.

Yes, cotton is that elusive, hard to harvest product that only grows on the north side of certain Alpine valleys in the shade of edelweiss, blooming once a century and therefore only available to the extremely rich.  I have heard legends of this "cotton" you speak of!  Clearly, Nike cannot make a shoe that uses endangered "cotton" for less than $300, otherwise they might have to cut the average daily pay of their overseas factory workers from three stalks of bamboo to two. 

Nike, go on ripping off the incredibly stupid--someone's got to do it, and those people aren't going to impoverish themselves--just don't add insult to it by claiming the cotton costs have bumped up the price.