Two Tiered Morality. Read it and weep. Great essay.
One way to look at President Bush’s amnesty plan for illegal immigrants is through the lens of Southern California’s grocery shutdown. Employers such as Wal-Mart, already under investigation for hiring illegal immigrants and other malpractices, will use amnestied workers to drive wages and benefits down still further.
Along comes Wal-Mart, the world’s largest business, whose revenues equal an astounding 2 percent of U.S. GDP and whose power rivals that of the great trusts of a century ago. Specifically, Wal-Mart resembles the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which in its heyday owned 80 percent of the supermarket business, until Washington used the trust laws to whittle it down to size.
Wal-Mart plans to open 225 supercenters this year alone. That includes new stores and expansions of existing stores to add grocery departments directly in competition with Safeway (Vons), Ralphs and Albertsons, stores currently involved in the strike-lockout. Forty supercenters are planned for California in coming years.
It’s been said, and I’m sorry I can’t link the quote, that three out of every ten American dollars goes to Walmart. That’s a little nuts. They used to advertise how they bought from U.S. suppliers whenever possible, but like most corporate giants, they stopped when it was cost effective to buy from overseas.
Moreover, I believe the way they treat their employees is reprehensible. Shouldn’t one of the largest (and thusly one of the flagship) companies in the world set an example for the rest. I bet Sam Walton would go postal on his corporate staff if he was around today.
What’s sad is you could have a t-shirt with “I was held hostage by a supplier.” 🙁
But, would it be as funny with WalMart replaced by Dell, or Apple, etc.? Is it funnier with WalMart because everyone “knows” WalMart?
Funny to be reminded of that event (“spy”-plane crew held “hostage”), what with the current-events of crappy WMD-intelligence leading-up to the war in Iraq – since the reason the Chinese were so miffed at us – besides one of their pilots dying – was (at the time) we had recently killed 2-3 of their people, by “accidentally” bombing their embassy (Serbia?), due to a map-error.
Same kind of map-error that left a gondola cable off air-charts (in Europe), so a US-plane flying low could cut the cables, and kill a gondola-full of civilian tourists.
Anyway, I still like the fact that the Chinese wouldn’t let us fly the plane out – we had to disassemble it, and fly it out in a cargo plane. 🙂
I’ve always wondered what we (US) would have done if a Chinese “spy”-plane collided with one of our jets, off our coast – killing our pilot – and then made an Emergency landing at one of our Naval airfields.
Or, if a NAT O jet on a training mission in the US (farfetched, I know) had cut the gondola-cables at some US tourist attraction.
Would we have accepted the answers, which we gave, in similar situations?
Bummer. So much for using the wrong kind of brackets.
first line of previous post should have been: What’s sad is you could have a t-shirt with “I was held captive by a [insert corporate name here] supplier.”
What bothers me most, about Walmart bashing, is the idea that “they” are putting “Mom & Pop stores” out of business.
WalMart isn’t putting them out of business, it’s Mom & Pop’s “loyal” customers who are. If none of their customers switched to WalMart, Mom & Pop would still be in business.
Why not have a variation on: “What if they gave a war, and nobody came”? Why not: “What if they opened a WalMart, and nobody shopped there?”. Wouldn’t that send a ripple through the pond?
But, as soon as one opens, they draw customers like flies to stink. The people who fight to keep WalMart from building in their area must be the “vocal minority” – else they could just sit-back and watch the opening flop. But, they know the “couldn’t-care-less majority” will vote with their wallets, and not be concerned with how the prices are kept so low – just that they are low.
WalMart isn’t the problem, it is only a symptom. Because people wouldn’t work for such low wages/benefits, if they had a viable option. 🙁
Wasn’t it Pogo who said: “We have met the enemy, and it is us!”
Did anyone ever think that maybe Mr Walton made the call to the Chiese COnsulate to have the crew released or face boycotts of anything made in China?