I guess I don't understand what the alternative is.

As long as buying products from China is legal, someone will fill the role of walmart. Punitive tariffs are not possible given the PRC's t-bill holdings, it's a trade war we'd lose.

You can chose not to shop walmart, but you also need to not buy anything from China—which is virtually impossible as I try not to, myself.

So I really can't fault walmart, if it wasn't them it would certainly be someone else. The fault is farther back with the idea of "engagement" with commies. Of course had we not engaged China, the conversation might be about India, instead.

<shrug>

There are a lot of people who have felt the same way throughout history. Their jobs are all gone now. Back in the day, it was the peasants and sharecroppers and later the mill-workers and who were getting all bent out of shape about mechanization stealing their jobs.

As it turns out, all their whining didn't change a thing, and thank God it didn't. Labor-intensive agriculture was eventually streamlined, making food cheaper and more readily available. The mill staff got smaller and smaller, and the textile industry has pretty much ceased to exist in the US, though the battered remains of their once-mighty lobby of dinosaurs still manage to extract tariff and subsidy concessions from Washington when they run sob-story ads about the mill closing in some bass-ackwards town.

Now we get most of our clothing from CAFTA countries, China, Indonesia, India, and Taiwan; places that actually appreciate textile jobs and can use them as a way to climb out of poverty in the same way western nations once did. The US remains a leader in agriculture, but now machines do most of the work, and it's the agriculture conglomerates like Archer-Daniels Midland, Conagra, and Monsanto that control the industry and give us affordable and plentiful food.

Is the country worse off for that? No, not even close. There are a lot more jobs now then there were when the heel-draggers first started protesting industrialization and mechanization and the jobs pay a lot better.
Here's what i know and what i see.

That may be what you see, but it's what you and others with similar opinions don't see that will cost you your job. Manufacturing jobs have been lost in the millions in the US because the firms became complacent. The US auto industry is a great example. After ww2, the US was the premier auto manufacturer in the world. It was already heavily unionized, and the industry was primarily concerned with making cars bigger, faster, more stylish, and more luxurious. The industry was rich and the workers did well.....for a while.

What US automakers failed to realize was that the world does not stop turning just because they're on top. While they stuck to their business modeland kept churning out battleships on wheels, the rest of the auto world was quietly innovating. We all know what happened after that, of course. Once the gas crisis manifested itself in the late 70's and fuel prices rose, the industry tanked because it didn't change quickly enough. Foreign automakers gained tremendous market share over the subsequent few decades, and still maintain control over large amounts of it. When you snooze, you lose.

And that's as far down the road as you can see? It's true that there are "corporate raiders" who sit on some boards and sell off assets or downsize solely for the purpose of enhancing their bonuses, but the companies they lead don't last for long unless idiotic and/or unethical policymakers bail them out. Case-in-point, American Airlines. That company should have been dufunct years ago, but the government has saved it on several occassions, the most recent being the $15 billion bailout after 9/11.

The rationale behind this was the too-big-to-fail argument coupled with an emphatic argument that the airline's insolubility was not its own fault. The complete opposite was true. American was a lumbering, unionized, failure that should have gone out of business and been replaced by an efficient airline where former employees could have attained jobs. Instead, we're still stuck with AA and the board members are still a bunch of counterproductive a-holes. Most recently, there was a dispute between labor and management when the company returned to profitability but voluntarily lowered union wages were not increased, though the board got huge bonuses. Capitalism and progress didn't do that, the government is what made it possible.

Your father may be a skilled craftsman, but if his industry can't compete, or a machine can do his job, or no one wants to buy the things he crafts, there is no point in keeping his job around. It would be like paying to keep boilermakers around after we quit using steam engines; just economic dead-weight.

I don't know what your father's situation is, or yours for that matter, but you should also consider that whatever firms employ you, unless they're just closing entirely, may actually be preserving jobs by outsourcing yours. If the firm can remain competitive, it can remain in business, and at least some people won't lose their jobs. The ones who will get your job need it more than you do, anyway, because they're poorer and they don't live in a rich country.

Of course, if you really don't give a crap about the guy in India whose malaria-ridden family is starving in a crowded hovel with sewage for a front lawn, there is a way to end this recession and bring good jobs back to the US and create newer, better ones in very short order. All we have to do is cut corporate taxes to 0%, disband some expensive regulatory frameworks, sclae back anti-business legislation, and remove tariffs. Lots of outmoded and uncompetitive industries would die immediately, but the move would create a lot of jobs as firms from other nations flocked to the US and new businesses sprang up. It would be like Switzerland or Hong Kong, but on a world-dominating scale. To put it another way, who cares if the factory is in China if the company owns China?

Can't really argue with that, but I think you're misidentifying the causes of it. When Wal-Mart or whoever runs a successful business, it does not make the standard of living decrease. It's easy to see how one could think that just by looking at a Wal-Mart greeter working for $8.00 an hour, but what you don't see is the 75-yr old guy sitting at home and going bankrupt with no way out because he planned poorly for retirement and has no job and no way out because there is no job. You don't see the 16-yr old kid not bagging groceries to save money for a car because he has no skills worth more than 8 bucks an hour. Wal-Mart creates employment for the otherwise unemployable, and creates services for the consumer of little means. Their motto, "Save Money. Live Better", is actually true.

By contrast, when the government taxes people, and when it agrees with heel-draggers who whine about their jobs being lost and steals money from others to keep them unproductively employed, the economic pie really does get smaller. The income does allow them to buy things and particiapte in the economy to a degree, but overall they create a net loss. That's why the government is so heavily in debt, and why companies get so spendthrift; they have to keep pace with the costs of doing business.


Wal-Mart execs, like most execs, get payed the big bucks because they do big things. The arguments have already been made that their salaries are a drop in the bucket, comparitively speaking, and I mentioned corporate raiders, but I'd also like to mention "caring capitalism" and CEO bonuses. Ben and Jerry's ice cream company tried limiting CEO income on the grounds that they could not justify the wealth disparity between execs and line workers. They limited the salary to five times the wage of the lowest paid workers. They got exactly what they paid for; the absolute worst execs caring capitalism could buy, and ended up paying a CEO 14 times what the lowest-paid worker earned. He wasn't good enough either, so they ended up paying another CEO even more and then they sold the company.

I understand how frustrating it can be to live in a world where your livleyhood can vanish in an instant; whisked away to some foreign shore because you were too expensive while the big-wigs make obscene salaries. It seems wrong on the face of it, but that's the way forward. You can choose to hang on to your lousy, endangered job and cost everyone else or start playing the same game that the execs do and think ahead. Innovate. Make sound, long-term investments in commodities or education. Discover the miracle of compound interest. Make your income count.

Admittedly, the state is making that harder and harder to do with the increase in capital gains tax, inflation, and taxes, taxes, taxes, in general, but there are still a lot of opportunities out there if you work hard and plan wisely.

The cute thing is so many people seem to WANT to be serfs serving a tiny, predatory elite. Licking the hands that beat and kill them. And that tiny, predatory minority has hired guns who's only job is to warp reality and make servitude sound reasonable. And OF COURSE these people want government small, or non-existent. Bullies don't like it when there is no teacher monitoring the schoolyard, either.

Hrm... I havent seen anyone mention one of the main reasons that Wal Mart is so hated...

Any guesses out there?

Competitors.

I've always been bothered by people who 'know' they're right. You don't discuss, you preach. You don't argue, you condemn. Anyone who disagrees with you obviously likes being wrong, or being stupid, or being a slave.

Of course we love being slaves to the evil corporations, but the salvation you have in mind for us lies in the wonderful, friendly, loving government? Some of us actually see the people in the government as worse monsters than your hated CEOs. Can you show me that I'm wrong about that?

Has it ever occured to you that you might be wrong? Is it possible to have a discussion, or does it have to be a shouting match? Or a put-down match?

Men that don't want to be serfs don't act like children.

You know what, even children don't need adults messing with most of their playground interactions. Asking a grown up to fix it for them means they never learn how to fix it themselves.

I read a great article by Jonah Goldberg. He said in effect that his kids had it great. They had loads of free time, everything they could possibly want, nice vacations, etc. He said he'd stop working and live their lifestyle—but he can't, because someone has to be the grown up.

On that note, I can't remember the last time Wal-Mart's "predatory elite" ever forced me to serve them. If I don't like Wal-Mart, I can go shop at Kroger, or Albertson's, or about ten thousand other retailers. I can go to work for 22 million other US companies.

The only elite that has ever preyed on me can come to my house and take away my rights and property and force me into improsonment or kill me if I don't surrender a significant portion of my wealth and my will to whatever cause they deem is best. They can send me to fight and die for them for a cause I don't believe in by giving me a draft number. They can make decisions that affect hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions of people around the globe negatively, and they are almost never held accountable for their mistakes.

Nope... I waited a full day and no one got it.

Wal Mart is anti Union.

Holy hell, Didnt even know my region of the country had that many walmarts.

Hmm, I say we lynch Arkansas, It all started there.:rotfl2:

We got few of these ''Govt mandated business'' and it works well (of course it's not perfect).

I can assure you that if you had choice between a job in a Wal-Mart and a job in one of our ''Govt mandated business'' you wouldn't hesitate long. ;)

Government employees in the US earn considerably more than someone in the private sector—and they work less even though the job description is the same (anyone who has seen 3 government workers supervising 2 more on break knows what I mean).

Having the taxpayers subsidize lazy employees is great for the employees, I have no doubt.

Again, to my post above, what is the alternative? Government mandated salaries is totalitarian, frankly. If trade with a country like China is legal, someone will sell their chit cheaply. Tariffs? Unlikely given that a trade war with our major creditor is a bad idea.

Grass roots? Maybe. If you don't like walmart, don't shop there. Write them letters saying you want their employees to make 2X what they make now, and you're willing to pay 2x as much so they will.

Here's an idea. Shop exclusively at walmart, and TIP ANYONE WHO HELPS YOU. Substantially!

The same applies to those that think we're not taxed enough, send Uncle Sam some extra money, he could use it!

Maybe in the US, but not where I live.

It's only a prejudice, as an example, our electricity is much cheaper than yours.

Again, only a prejudice.

----

Btw, I didn't say that the private sector shouldn't exist, I was talking about Wal-mart.

Huh? It's a fact. Government workers are less productive, but make more money. Every few years a TV news reporter will follow city employees in an unmarked car and film them. They hit a drive-through, drive to the middle of no place and hang out talking on the phone, etc. And on average they do get paid more. A recent study just confirmed this (again). It's not vastly more, but enough to make a real difference.

Where is the prejudice in sending a letter to walmart saying you'll not shop there until they do X, Y, and Z where perhaps one condition is that they pay low-end workers 2X more? Maybe I'm just being clueless.

I can sort of see the prejudice in me saying that lazy, government (redundant, sorry) employees getting paid more is good for the employees. The prejudice being that they are lazy. Of course, I know many people who have worked for the State here, and they all told me everyone was lazy. I used to do a lot of work with and for a museum here professionally. I was friends with a few guys that really wanted to improve the museum. They worked quite hard. They were constantly beating up against the wall of the bulk of their coworkers slowing them down. Why finish a project when you can do white paper after white paper to decide what to do? Or taking it to the next step and spending years testing out an idea, spending as much as the project would actually take to complete if they just did it? My prejudice is based on experience.

No prejudice at all. In fact, for people who feel that way it's a good thing to do. But it's easier to rant and about the 'evil' of it all, and more fun to tell people what losers they are for feeling differently.