--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > How about their treatment of their employees? > Horrible sex discrimination. > locking workers into the stores overnigtht. He does > ot look down on the > shoppers. He looks down on the corporate management. > Contrasts Walmart (and I would > add Costco) who treat their workers with dignity and > respect
There is undoubtedly sex discrimination at WalMart, as there is at most companies. There's _no_ evidence that this was a corporate policy, though. Have they done bad things? Sure. The government should police them, as it does every other company. Are those bad things a matter of corporate policy? I somehow don't think Sam Walton was telling people to lock up his stores at night. I do love the trumping of CostCo, though. It kind of proves my point. CostCo has the wealthiest demographics of any of the large discount chains, by a huge amount. CostCo is basically the rich man's WalMart. So of course limousine liberals like it - they shop at CostCo. It's those icky poor people who shop at WalMart. WalMart is (for example) according to a McKinsey study, responsible for (I believe) _20%_ of the growth in US productivity in the 1990s. Not WalMart and its competitors. Just WalMart all by itself. WalMart may be the last major company in America where a high school graduate can get a six figure salary - because everyone at WalMart starts out on the floor and works their way up. I actually think this may be another reason the chattering classes don't like it, actually, because it degrades the value of the educational credentials that they tend to confuse with moral worth. WalMart does more to get the poor and lower middle class in this country cheap (and high quality) food, clothing, and basic necessities than every charitable organization combined, and the growth of WalMart has done more for the well-being of the poor in America than any economic program of my lifetime. This, of course, means it's inevitable that it's attacked by self-proclaimed advocates of the poor. But, as Caitlin Flanagan brilliantly commented in a discussion on Slate on this topic, those advocates may complain about it, but when she talks to _actual poor people_, "they love WalMart". Because, of course, it gets them what they need at prices that they can afford and, when you get down to it, that's the real problem that people have with it. It replaces all those charming small stores that were only too expensive for the poor to use. But it didn't bother those elites, so what does that matter? ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
