Suburban Bus Assignment

Part One:
While waiting for the bus on a cold and snowy January morning, I decided to engage with the first part of the assignment. Waiting for the bus has been a daily occurrence that has occupied much my time for many years now. It has been a monotonous task that is typically paired with impatience for the arrival of the bus, and anxious anticipation for what is in store for the day. This assignment made my morning more interesting, as I glanced around the bus stop, questioning where and how particular goods went from raw materials, to intermediate goods and eventually to final consumer goods. In order to stay consistent on my analysis, the first part of this assignment will focus on one particular good.
At the suburban bus stop where I was waiting, the good that caught most of attention, were the hordes of Toyota Siennas driving towards the nearby elementary school to drop off their passengers. The Toyota Sienna is a very common and reliable vehicle that is a staple of suburbs everywhere across the country. Toyota is a Japanese car company that began in 1933, a time where Japanese car exports to Canada were non-existent (Encyclopedia Britannica). In 2016 we can safely say that Canada has not only opened its economy, but that Toyota has marketed their cars impressively well in the North

Canada and other consumer driven economies depend on weaker developing economies who strongly rely on production to drive their economies. The problem here is that the poorer developing countries found themselves dependent on foreign demand from more wealthy consumption-driven countries. The developing countries are too impoverished to even consume the goods they arduously produce. The only way they can stay afloat in the global system is by catering solely to foreigners in distant lands, instead of having the ability to take steps in becoming a more diverse and sustainable