--- Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Maybe I missed something. Can you give an example > for "harming > WalMart", besides somply talking bad about the > company? > (It might have been shown and I forgot or missed > it.)
Sorry, I thought the logical conclusion of "talking bad" about it was doing something bad _to it_. > Are you speaking of some group specifically? I got > the idea you were > slamming liberals specifically with that. Well, the chattering classes are disproportionately liberal, sure, but not entirely so. I am, for example, unquestionably a member of the chattering classes, however unpleasant I find the prospect. But it's a description of them generally. > > Class warfare? I don't know about that. Do the > rich > > often try to screw the poor over? Sure. It's > just > > not the way that liberal elites want us to > believe. > > It's most often by restricting economic activity > that > > would help the poor because it offends their > > sensibilities. > > I read that as "paying a decent wage". Correct me if > I'm wrong. Well, it depends. If your definition of a decent wage is more than their labor is worth then you have just mandated not an improvement in their situation but their unemployment. This does not seem to me an improvement. > I see the current administration as being squarely > in the corporist > corner. Nor have I mentioned a defense of a single one of the Administration's policies in this thread. > I think this is why you and John are catching so > much heat, especially > lately. > (IOW, it is not just Brin you have had to argue > with.) Well, I'd say it's because there are a bunch of people on this list so fevered in their beliefs as to use inflammatory rhetoric constantly, so arrogant as to believe that the simple fact that they think something means that it is The Truth without reservation or possibility of doubt, so self-righteous as to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is morally and intellectually their inferior, and so cocooned in their homogenous little worlds that the idea of intelligent disagreement is entirely outside their paradigm. But that's just my perspective, of course. > According to people I know who work at WalMart, they > are not allowed > to work more than 32 hours a week. This is done so > that WalMart will > not have to provide them with insurance or other > benefits. This is a > nationwide policy. It may be. On the other hand, more than 90% of WalMart employees have health insurance, which I bet is better than a lot of companies that get criticism for not providing it all the time. It seems to me that this is at least as much an indictment of government policies that make benefits so expensive as to strongly discourage employers from hiring people as it is the employers who are making economically rational decisions. > > To my way of thinking, this provides WalMart with a > vast underpaid > workforce and gives them an unfair advantage in the > market. Why unfair? Everyone else has the same opportunity to compete against them. They're just better than everyone else. A lot better. > True. WalMart is mostly beneficial to people who do > not work there. Well, it's also beneficial to the people who do work there who wouldn't be able to work otherwise - probably a very large number of people. > > Also true, and it has the secondary effect of > bringing prices down in > other stores as the competition heats up. I can see > this happening at > several types of retailer. Yeah, but that doesn't matter as much, because so far no one has been able to keep up with WalMart in terms of discounting anyways. To the extent that it does, though, bravo, that's a great thing as well. > You may have forgotten that I am the oldest of 7 > children Yahoo, for whatever reason, truncated your message after this. OK, so you understand what it means to be poor (before WalMart, admittedly). It seems to me that you should agree with me, then. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
