Why [snip]? Was not the rest of the paragraph relevant?
No I am not generally contemptuous of others [there are some exceptions]. Just stating fact. Many people just don't want to spend the time and effort to get a good job. They take the easiest way out. Sure they want the good job, but unless they're in the right place at the right time, they likely will settle for mediocre. It's human nature - at least in this country. Of course there are exceptions.
Not when you can't see them right in front of your face.
You directly contradict yourself because on the one hand you try to claim simplistically that "if better jobs were available they would take them", and then turn around and try to claim that "most people don't want to better themselves and therefore are happy (even grateful) with the crappy-paying jobs Walmart offers".
What I have said is that Walmart has driven down wages in the industry and geographical areas that they do business in. This is a quantifiable fact. Whether you want to call it "blame" or not is your business.
Please read what I wrote more carefully. I was not talking about "hiring" someone, I was talking about "promoting" them. Apparently if someone came to you asking for a raise, you would be inclined to deny it based on the justificiation that it is their societal and genetic destiny to have a low-paying job the rest of their life and "it's not my fault" for not wanting to give anyone a raise. I can just see you intoning: "If you don't like it, take a hike, bub!".
What an amazingly simple world you appear to live in. I personally know some people with a history of being very diligent and productive, who found themselves on public assistance simply because of unexpected health problems or other factors beyond their control, and having something to keep them alive while they worked-through these problems was and is a critical service to help prevent people in such a position from falling further into destitution.
I have my issues with how the system is conducted in the USA, but to simplistically proclaim it is inevitably a "disincentive" is ridiculous. I think you are poisoned by your WASP inclination to assume that those on such programs are automatically lazy good-for-nothing slobs.
I would have great doubts that the best course of action for someone looking to upgrade their skill-set in the job market would be to go to work at Walmart at less-than-subsistence wages and hope that they "learn" how to get a better job. For one thing, it is not in Walmart's financial interest to train people to find better employment, and we know how focused on profit that company is.
Unemployment insurance assumes you have been working for a significant period of time before it is of significant use. Apparently I was right about your proclivity to view those who are long-term unemployed or who have other work-related challenges as lazy good-for-nothing slobs who should be sent to a modern version of "the poorhouse". (or more likely just to the street, to die)
Society theoretically is better off when everyone is working, but no society that I am aware of has ever achieved this (unless they re-defined the term), and to think that this is somehow the goal is absurd. There will always be people at the fringes of a society that are not conventionally or easily employable, so the question becomes whether we just put them in the poorhouse or send them to the street to die, or whether we try to train them or otherwise find a place for them to live with a modicum of health/safety. Unfortunately modern western culture has moved away from familial support-systems and its capitalistic architecture tends to emphasize individual rights and indulgences, so this problem ends up more in the lap of the public institutions to deal with rather than the family which used to play a larger role here.
More importantly, I vigorously question the notion that those that Walmart employs at less-than-subsistence wages are "otherwise unemployable". I would argue that in the past, those same employees would likely have found decent jobs that paid them a living wage, and what has changed here is not the level of "otherwise unemployable" workers, but simply the inclination by some companies to not pay decent workers a decent wage.
You sure do come up with some bizarre reasoning. The facts speak for themselves. (ie: you're wrong)
When there is only 1 alternative, people aren't "choosing" any more than I am "choosing" to have the water in my house supplied by the single entity that is capable of doing so where I live. Walmart may not be "the only" employer in an area, but their size and economic power places them in an increasing position of dominance in the labor market as well as in other markets, and as such they have a very substantial impact on such things as what kinds of jobs are available in a given geographical area.
Unfortunately the record shows that Walmart's competitors in the same industry, in the same geographical area, for the same types of stores pay their employees, on average, a much higher wage. How do you explain that?
I am assuming people understand that we are talking "non-governmental entities" here.
And speaking of getting the facts straight, Walmart is indeed the largest non-governmental employer in the world.
First of all, the Indian Railways is an arm of the Indian government, its employees are civil servants who are recruited via civil service examinations and it is subsidized by the Indian government. Secondly, Walmart's own figures now place their worldwide employee count at 1,800,000, whereas employment in the Indian Railways has been falling, and is planned to decline from the present number of about 1,585,000 to about
1,450,000 or less by March 2007.
I assume you will now go suspiciously silent on this "correction" of yours. (or come up with some silly retort because I am choosing to call you on it this time)
For the umpteenth time, you have nothing to back up that contention (and many others) of yours.
As just one example, if a different large retailer (ie Target or Costco) moved into an area instead of Walmart, they would employ a similiar category of worker, yet they would typically have a significantly higher wage/benefit package than an equivalent Walmart employee. This is a well-documented fact.
More on how Walmart shifts the costs of healthcare to taxpayers, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Actually your continued specific assertions that Walmart employees would be "unemployed if not working for Walmart", that workers should be "grateful" for the low-paying wages that Walmart offers and that if they're not more gainfully employed it "must be their own fault" demonstrates a real contempt for others.
Nice sentiment in general, but in practice you cannot discount the huge challenge in dealing with the difference in the cost of labor. Many have talked about the "shift to a service economy" in the USA, but the problem is that Walmart jobs are emblematic of the kind of poor replacement for previous jobs (ie in the manufacturing sector) that used to really pay a living wage. (Back in the '60s, the base cost of living was around 30% of _individual_ income -- it is now around 50% of _household_ income. If that isn't a massive step backwards, I don't know what is.)
The current presidential administration is trying to use other ways to address this, including protectionism (ie steel industry), conducting continuous wars to bolster the military industry and corporations that stand to benefit from occupation and reconstruction, and resisting global calls for responsibility on environmental issues where the US is a prime offender.
Stupidly, because the USA could turn around and make a successful industry out of things like environmental technology, rather than trying to bully the world into letting it maintain its status-quo.
Apparently US corporate management has a very short memory because when the Japanese auto industry came on hard and fast in the '70s and put a real big scare into US auto executives (causing them to study what made the Japanese industry such a competitive threat), much was made of the Japanese management model which, among other things, was distinguished from the US model by a much more "flat" compensation scale and a far less hierarchical architecture. With the kind of pay that US executives make, it's no surprise that workers feel unappreciated and exploited. (Akio Morita, the widely admired founder and head of Sony Corp. at the time, said as much in the book he co-authored entitled "The Japan That Can Say No")
Quit trying to deflect the argument -- you know damned well what's meant here.
The type of employers whom you incessantly defend are exactly the same as those who used to employ 12 year old children for 12 hour shifts -- probably spouting the same mindless arguments about "efficiency, productivity and competitiveness" that you spew daily.
Surely the children were free to seek a higher-paying job, if they only had the gumption to upgrade their skills.
You can be certain that the jobs of the previously "better qualified" employees of the former competing companies will disappear as soon as Walmart stamps out the competition. And it's hardly likely that they'll be shown any respect when they show up tugging their forelocks at Walmart's employment office.
And so goes the race to the bottom, led by China and India with their child workers.
One of the large difficulties that came out of the Daimler Chrysler merger was the tension among tthe top execuives of both companies. The Daimler execs wanted to be paid as were the Chrysler execs, while the American execs lived in mortal fear that their pay and perks would be cut to the level of their new German colleagues.
Neither does it prove my lack of credibility on narrow aspects pertaining to a particular locale simply because I haven't visited there. It's tantamount to discounting an astrophysicists view of the solar system by pointing out that s/he has not personally visited the stars and other heavenly bodies.
Wages aren't ever determined by what the employee thinks they need. It's based on the mutual agreement of what the employee and employer agree the position is worth. If either party disagrees, neither is forced to accept the conditions.
Unless you are willing discard the free market, pay is based on perceived skills and performance -- not what the someone thinks they need.
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