Is Capitalism to Blame, or is Wal-Mart Just Evil?
- Thread starter 2-0-Sixx
- Start date
exactly my point.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
------------------------------------------
let the market work itself. if they are really underpaying their workers they can quit and go find another job. which will make the workers more money elsewhere and then if Wal Mart has a shortage of workers then they can pay more.
i swear, uneducated non high school graduates or their agitators crying because they arent makeing as much as some1 with a PhD/Masters/BA
------------------------------------------
let the market work itself. if they are really underpaying their workers they can quit and go find another job. which will make the workers more money elsewhere and then if Wal Mart has a shortage of workers then they can pay more.
i swear, uneducated non high school graduates or their agitators crying because they arent makeing as much as some1 with a PhD/Masters/BA
Nothing
If they want to stay in business i think they would want thier product sold in the biggest retail store in north america
the alternative would be not to have thier product sold in Walmart which leaves what? Target? Sears? Neither company comes close to having the sales of wal mart.
Its an american job that is lost to overseas. If there is a competing company where the workers could go, im sure they would be in the same situation with either cuttign costs in the US, or sending work over seas where the labor is cheaper.
Nobody is putting a gun to anybodys head. I personally would never work for them, they are far below my standards.
I dont think they are doing anybody any favors offering someone a low paying job with no benefits and forcing them to work extra hours for free. A full time job at Walmart is not enough to get by on, especially if someone had kids.
If they want to stay in business i think they would want thier product sold in the biggest retail store in north america
the alternative would be not to have thier product sold in Walmart which leaves what? Target? Sears? Neither company comes close to having the sales of wal mart.
Its an american job that is lost to overseas. If there is a competing company where the workers could go, im sure they would be in the same situation with either cuttign costs in the US, or sending work over seas where the labor is cheaper.
Nobody is putting a gun to anybodys head. I personally would never work for them, they are far below my standards.
I dont think they are doing anybody any favors offering someone a low paying job with no benefits and forcing them to work extra hours for free. A full time job at Walmart is not enough to get by on, especially if someone had kids.
Greed = one of the seven sins, inherently evil. Greed is truly whats fucking our world up. Why do big companies do the things they do? To make more profit, fatten their pockets further and make the share holders happy. They don't give a shit what consequences their actions have, just as long as they end up with increased profits.
I'm currently reading a book called 'China Inc.', which tells the story of how China is becoming the next global superpower (yes, thats right - within a decade or two America will no longer be top of the food chain). WalMart is simply trying to maximise profits - as one of you said earlier, it's not their fault for selling us cheap goods - it's our fault for buying them.
Every company want's the 'China price' on their goods now, which essentially means the lowest possible price. Factory workers in china work for about 40cents per hour, and instead of investing in machinery to do the work (which can cost several million dollars), they do it all by hand, making it a lot cheaper. WalMart is now buying Billions of dollars of goods from china - why? Because they can 'pass the savings' onto their customers, giving them the cheapest price.
Ofcourse, you Americans are just shooting yourself in the food by buying these goods. Sure, it's a bit cheaper, but you have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to china in the last 20 years and the trend will continue. Now you have a massive trade deficit to China. It's not just WalMart - General motors bought $80 billion dollars of parts from China in 2003, a figure which is set to rise further.
You can't have your cake and eat it too - either you want the cheapest price (which will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a partial collapse of your economy), or you want to pay a little extra and keep jobs in America. It's up to you.
I'm currently reading a book called 'China Inc.', which tells the story of how China is becoming the next global superpower (yes, thats right - within a decade or two America will no longer be top of the food chain). WalMart is simply trying to maximise profits - as one of you said earlier, it's not their fault for selling us cheap goods - it's our fault for buying them.
Every company want's the 'China price' on their goods now, which essentially means the lowest possible price. Factory workers in china work for about 40cents per hour, and instead of investing in machinery to do the work (which can cost several million dollars), they do it all by hand, making it a lot cheaper. WalMart is now buying Billions of dollars of goods from china - why? Because they can 'pass the savings' onto their customers, giving them the cheapest price.
Ofcourse, you Americans are just shooting yourself in the food by buying these goods. Sure, it's a bit cheaper, but you have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs to china in the last 20 years and the trend will continue. Now you have a massive trade deficit to China. It's not just WalMart - General motors bought $80 billion dollars of parts from China in 2003, a figure which is set to rise further.
You can't have your cake and eat it too - either you want the cheapest price (which will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a partial collapse of your economy), or you want to pay a little extra and keep jobs in America. It's up to you.
just thought i would post this article. its a couple years old but it was written by a leading economic professor in our country
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2003/11/26/170486.html
Jobs come and go
Nov 26, 2003 by Walter E. Williams
In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.
What should Congress have done to save those jobs? Congress could have taken a page from India's history. In 1924, Mahatma Gandhi attacked machinery, saying it "helps a few to ride on the backs of millions" and warned, "The machine should not make atrophies the limbs of man." With that kind of support, Indian textile workers were able to politically block the introduction of labor-saving textile machines. As a result, in 1970 India's textile industry had the level of productivity of ours in the 1920s.
Michael Cox, chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and author Richard Alms tell the rest of the telecommunications story in their Nov. 17 New York Times article, "The Great Job Machine." Spectacular technological advances made it possible for the telecommunications industry to cut its manpower needs down to 78,000 to handle not the annual 9.8 billion long distance calls in 1970, but today's over 98 billion calls.
One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss demagoguery is the consumer. Long distance calls are a tiny fraction of their cost in 1970. Just since 1984, long distance costs have fallen by 60 percent. Using 1970s technology, to make today's 98 billion calls would require 4.2 million operators. That's 3 percent of our labor force. Moreover, a long distance call would cost 40 times more than it does today.
Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?
It's my guess that the average anti-free-trade person wouldn't protest, much less argue that Congress should have done something about the job loss in the telecommunications industry. He'd reveal himself an idiot. But there's no significant economic difference between an industry using technology to reduce production costs and using cheaper labor to do the same. In either case, there's no question that the worker who finds himself out of a job because of the use of technology or cheaper labor might encounter hardships. The political difference is that it's easier to organize resentment against India and China than against technology.
Both Republican and Democratic interventionist like to focus on job losses as they call for trade restrictions, but let us look at what was happening in the 1990s. Cox and Alm report that recent Bureau of Labor Statistics show an annual job loss from a low of 27 million in 1993 to a high of 35.4 million in 2001. In 2000, when unemployment reached its lowest level, 33 million jobs were lost. That's the loss side. However, annual jobs created ranged from 29.6 million in 1993 to a high of 35.6 million in 1999.
These are signs of a healthy economy, where businesses start up, fail, downsize and upsize, and workers are fired and workers are hired all in the process of adapting to changing technological, economic and global conditions. Societies become richer when this process is allowed to occur. Indeed, because our nation has a history of allowing this process to occur goes a long way toward explaining why we are richer than the rest of the world.
Those Americans calling for government restrictions that would deny companies and ultimately consumers to benefit from cheaper methods of production are asking us to accept lower wealth in order to protect special interests. Of course, they don't cloak their agenda that way. It's always "national security," "level playing fields" and "protecting jobs". Don't fall for it -- we'll all become losers.
=====================================
Since 1980, Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.
Professor, George Mason University and syndicated columnist
About Walter E. Williams:
Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 1980, he joined the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College (1967-69), California State University (1967-1971) and Temple University (1973-1980). From 1963 to 1967, he was a group supervisor of juvenile delinquents for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
More than 50 of his publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review and Social Science Quarterly and popular publications such as Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. He has made many TV and radio appearances on such programs as Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose," William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," "Face The Nation," "Nightline" and "Crossfire."
He is also the author of several books. Among these are The State Against Blacks, later made into a television documentary, America: A Minority Viewpoint, All It Takes Is Guts, and South Africa's War On Capitalism.
In 1981, he began writing his weekly column called "A Minority View" for Heritage Features Syndicate. And in 1991, he joined Creators Syndicate as part of its friendly takeover of Heritage Features.
Williams sits on many advisory boards, including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, the Research Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, the Taxpayer's Foundation and the Hoover Institution.
The awards and honors Williams have received are many. These include the National Fellow at the Hoover Institute of War, Revolution, and Peace; the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; the National Service Award from the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies; and the George Washington Medal of Honor from the Valley Forge Freedom Foundation. In 1984-1985, he received the Faculty Member of the Year Award from the George Mason University Alumni. He is also a member of the American Economic Association, the Mont Pelerin Society and is a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation.
Williams participates in many debates and conferences, is a frequent public speaker and often gives testimony before both houses of Congress.
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliams/2003/11/26/170486.html
Jobs come and go
Nov 26, 2003 by Walter E. Williams
In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.
What should Congress have done to save those jobs? Congress could have taken a page from India's history. In 1924, Mahatma Gandhi attacked machinery, saying it "helps a few to ride on the backs of millions" and warned, "The machine should not make atrophies the limbs of man." With that kind of support, Indian textile workers were able to politically block the introduction of labor-saving textile machines. As a result, in 1970 India's textile industry had the level of productivity of ours in the 1920s.
Michael Cox, chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and author Richard Alms tell the rest of the telecommunications story in their Nov. 17 New York Times article, "The Great Job Machine." Spectacular technological advances made it possible for the telecommunications industry to cut its manpower needs down to 78,000 to handle not the annual 9.8 billion long distance calls in 1970, but today's over 98 billion calls.
One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss demagoguery is the consumer. Long distance calls are a tiny fraction of their cost in 1970. Just since 1984, long distance costs have fallen by 60 percent. Using 1970s technology, to make today's 98 billion calls would require 4.2 million operators. That's 3 percent of our labor force. Moreover, a long distance call would cost 40 times more than it does today.
Finding cheaper ways to produce goods and services frees up labor to produce other things. If productivity gains aren't made, where in the world would we find workers to produce all those goods that weren't even around in the 1970s?
It's my guess that the average anti-free-trade person wouldn't protest, much less argue that Congress should have done something about the job loss in the telecommunications industry. He'd reveal himself an idiot. But there's no significant economic difference between an industry using technology to reduce production costs and using cheaper labor to do the same. In either case, there's no question that the worker who finds himself out of a job because of the use of technology or cheaper labor might encounter hardships. The political difference is that it's easier to organize resentment against India and China than against technology.
Both Republican and Democratic interventionist like to focus on job losses as they call for trade restrictions, but let us look at what was happening in the 1990s. Cox and Alm report that recent Bureau of Labor Statistics show an annual job loss from a low of 27 million in 1993 to a high of 35.4 million in 2001. In 2000, when unemployment reached its lowest level, 33 million jobs were lost. That's the loss side. However, annual jobs created ranged from 29.6 million in 1993 to a high of 35.6 million in 1999.
These are signs of a healthy economy, where businesses start up, fail, downsize and upsize, and workers are fired and workers are hired all in the process of adapting to changing technological, economic and global conditions. Societies become richer when this process is allowed to occur. Indeed, because our nation has a history of allowing this process to occur goes a long way toward explaining why we are richer than the rest of the world.
Those Americans calling for government restrictions that would deny companies and ultimately consumers to benefit from cheaper methods of production are asking us to accept lower wealth in order to protect special interests. Of course, they don't cloak their agenda that way. It's always "national security," "level playing fields" and "protecting jobs". Don't fall for it -- we'll all become losers.
=====================================
Since 1980, Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics.
Professor, George Mason University and syndicated columnist
About Walter E. Williams:
Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 1980, he joined the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and is currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College (1967-69), California State University (1967-1971) and Temple University (1973-1980). From 1963 to 1967, he was a group supervisor of juvenile delinquents for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
More than 50 of his publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review and Social Science Quarterly and popular publications such as Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. He has made many TV and radio appearances on such programs as Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose," William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," "Face The Nation," "Nightline" and "Crossfire."
He is also the author of several books. Among these are The State Against Blacks, later made into a television documentary, America: A Minority Viewpoint, All It Takes Is Guts, and South Africa's War On Capitalism.
In 1981, he began writing his weekly column called "A Minority View" for Heritage Features Syndicate. And in 1991, he joined Creators Syndicate as part of its friendly takeover of Heritage Features.
Williams sits on many advisory boards, including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, the Research Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, the Taxpayer's Foundation and the Hoover Institution.
The awards and honors Williams have received are many. These include the National Fellow at the Hoover Institute of War, Revolution, and Peace; the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship; the National Service Award from the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies; and the George Washington Medal of Honor from the Valley Forge Freedom Foundation. In 1984-1985, he received the Faculty Member of the Year Award from the George Mason University Alumni. He is also a member of the American Economic Association, the Mont Pelerin Society and is a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation.
Williams participates in many debates and conferences, is a frequent public speaker and often gives testimony before both houses of Congress.