----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 12:25 PM Subject: Re: Br!n: some thoughts and quotes.
> > No, it's not. It's Economics 101. WalMart has given > many of the poor and uneducated jobs that they could > never have gotten without it. This is a huge benefit > to the poor. Why? Why wouldn't whatever stores sold stuff instead of WalMart hire workers? Even if Target and K-mart had not been as good as WalMart at cutting costs; that would not have meant that they would not have hired almost as many workers if they filled that niche. It's allowed enormous numbers of the > poor - many of whom _don't work_ at WalMart - access > to food and clothing that fits within their budget. > There are two ways to help the poor. One is to give > them more money. The second is to make what they need > cheaper. WalMart does the second better than any > other company in history. It has the thinnest profit > margins of any major retailer (IIRC). It forces its > suppliers to become more efficient - and then passes > those savings on to the consumer instead of pocketing > the difference. The few cents you save from shopping > at WalMart might not make much of a difference. Try > raising a family of four on $18,000 a year (the > disgracefully low national poverty line) and see if > your attitude changes a bit. But, a woman with two kids working for the average wage at WalMart would not make that poverty level income. If the kids were young, it would be far worse. You know I agree with you on WalMart itself not being the problem. I don't see mall boutiques paying $20/hour to retail workers. But, from what I've seen in Texas, the open shop rules essentily limit effective unions to traditional strongholds, such as trademen (and related fields) or longshoremen....and some government unions like police and fire. Teachers unions are powerless in Texas. This requires governmental intervention of some sort or other because the natural tendency of the market is for wages to keep falling until a bottom is found. Since people are willing to do whatever it takes to feed their families, when push comes to shove, I don't see how...outside of legislation facilitating unions or minimum wage, that a floor can be kept under retail wages. > No. But your antipathy to WalMart that is driven by > that nostalgia would, if it were enacted in > legislation, harm the poor more than almost any other > likely legislative change (the only thing that could > even come close is the onset of protectionism). How would retooling labor laws to take out the anti-union bent put in during the 80s hurt the poor? I realize that other things may be discussed, and I'm not sure that labor laws are the best place to adress this problem....but it isn't an inherently anti-poor option. BTW, the upper class Republicans around me, tend to believe that poor people are that way because they don't have as much gumption as themselves. If those folks were to have worked as hard as oneself, then they wouldn't be poor. That's not always true, but I've seen a lot of snobbery towards the poor around the Woodlands. I'm not saying that there are not liberal snobs, but there are certainly a lot of Republican snobs around me. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
