Gautam Mukunda wrote: > > 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.
Exactly! >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. And a rich republican would /never/ shop at CostCo because they like to shop with poor icky people. > > 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. That is some interesting stuff. > I actually think this may be another > reason the > chattering classes <Blatant uneccessary insult> >don't like it, actually, > because it degrades the value of the educational > credentials that they tend to confuse with moral > worth. I think you are arguing that the class warfare people keep telling me doesn't exist actually does exist. >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. I shop at WalMart. But saving a few cents here and there and the occasional dollar is not in any way equivilent to having an income or having your income supplimented. The above statement is ridiculous in the extreme. > 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, People also love WalMart because they are huge, and you can get almost anything you need. It is handy for one-stop-shopping. >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. People are always nostalgic for the things that were. I remember the neighborhood drugstore/5&dime/malt shop. When I was a kid I would go there to hang out and read comic books, buy candy or milkshakes, and just generally hang out. I knew the owners and the employees well and they knew me just as they knew everyone in the hood. It was a safe place to spend part of a summer day or to visit after school. Think you can ascribe some sort of evil liberal agenda to my nostalgia? > But it didn't bother > those elites, so what does that matter? The problem with these kinds of top-down-view arguments is that they are /all/ elitist. You totally miss the point by ascribing these views only to the affluent liberals when the same views are held by affluent conservatives, middle class *and* the poor. One can love shopping at WalMart and can still decry the loss of the corner/storefront shop at the same time. There is no binary choice involved. xponent Lets See What He Snips Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
