[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
Yet another bad idea, because it makes states less attractive to business, and businesses in those states less competitive.
Unsubstantiated (as usual). Now for the other side of the story:
"Wal-Mart?s Health Care Benefits are Competitive in the Retail Sector"
In particular:
We are providing access to private insurance: Wal-Mart provides health insurance to full- and part-time associates after a waiting period considered standard in the retail industry. For many associates, a job at Wal-Mart means new access to health coverage. Surveys of hourly associates showed that 30% had no health coverage before coming to work for Wal-Mart. After joining Wal-Mart, the percentage of associates who are uninsured drops. By our estimates, we have helped over 160,000 associates get off the rolls of the uninsured.
We are taking people off public assistance programs: According to a survey by The Segmentation Company, 7% of associates join Wal-Mart on Medicaid. Only 3% of associates remain on Medicaid after working for Wal-Mart for two years.
[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
I find your "collection of facts" to be biased and often more anecdotal than factual. Your case would be more persuasive if it weren't colored with such emotion, laced with so many pejoratives, and based on such selective sources. It would be even more persuasive if it dispassionately rebutted the case for Walmart with real facts, not just charges and opinions.
What a shock.
So it's OK for him to oppose competition (in his own self interest), but not OK for folks like Verizon and SBC/at&t? Nice value system. ;)
Actual facts to support that?
Tough. Governments are giving those subsidies because they feel, based on considerable evidence, that Walmart, like other major businesses, is good for them.
That's an opinion piece based on anecdotes, not a study.
What you critically omit is the plethora of assumptions on what that study is based. It's easy to show that small changes in those assumptions could easily swing that study the other way. For example:
The increased property tax revenues by the new Wal-Mart will be offset by declines in property tax value for other local commercial properties proportionate to the amount of business and employment that will be displaced by the new Wal-Mart.
In effect, the conclusion is built into the methodology. It's inevitable that jobs will be lost for a given amount of economic activity when efficiency is increased. Should we go back to building everything by hand? Do you really think that would increase manufacturing employment? There is no showing that Walmart would actually displace other businesses, and no credit is given to Walmart for the benefits of lower prices to consumers and to boosting overall economic activity. When consumers pay less for goods at Walmart, they have more to spend at other local merchants.
Again, this is simplistic and misleading. Walmart employs those at the lower end of the skill spectrum that are not able to get jobs with higher pay and/or more benefits (or they wouldn't be taking the jobs at Walmart). It makes no sense to criticize Walmart for giving these people employment. When Walmart opens a new store it typically gets a huge number of job applications. For example, Walmart reports that, 18 months after the Chicago City Council torpedoed a South Side Wal-Mart, 24,500 Chicagoans applied for 325 jobs at a Wal-Mart opening in south suburban Evergreen Park, one block outside the city. If they really have better options, why are they then flocking to Walmart?
[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
That's their choice in a free market. Do you think you know better than they do? Do you presume to tell people what to do?
In all too many cases the local alternative is much worse and/or much more expensive than big chains (including In 'n Out). Most people clearly prefer the overall quality, consistency, and efficiency of big chains to their experiences with local outlets.
Shame in freedom of choice? What a bizarre notion.
A great many people obviously disagree with you.
Seems to me that your real complaint is with the choices people make, even though you're mostly attacking the choices themselves. Again, bizarre. I think you should focus your attention on consumer education rather than blaming the choices that people now prefer.
As I wrote, most local businesses do precious little of that.
Most consumers clearly prefer the convenience, large selection, and great efficiency (low prices) of bigger retailers. You're effectively arguing against giving them what they want. That's not arrogant? ;)
I don't think so. In addition, the greater efficiency of large chains makes it possible for people to have more money to spend themselves on worthy local causes. I think that makes more sense then leaving it in the hands of businesses, local or otherwise.
You forget that savings from lower prices at Walmart are banked by local customers, who can then spend the money in town supporting other local merchants. That's undoubtedly more efficient and effective.
Like this really happens. More likely they save their money to spend at Wal-Mart another day. Any savings accrued from shopping at Wal-Mart do not do other local merchants any good at all; otherwise, you would not see so many closing up shop after Wal-Mart come to town.
[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
It's not a "problem" when consumers are being given what they want. Again, you're blaming the big-box retailers for the choices made by their customers, which makes no sense.
So you're smarter than they are? You presume to tell them that they should make different choices? And blames businesses for giving them those choices? I find that pretty bizarre.
We'll just have to agree to disagree.
I think that's incredibly defeatist and protectionist. Of course we can compete. It's called productivity.
You decry the fewer jobs that come from greater productivity, yet it's that very productivity that sustains those better jobs by keeping us competitive. Our challenge is to become more competitive by increasing productivity, efficiency, and output, thereby creating more good jobs. Yet you'd have us doing the opposite, forcing us further behind. We underinvest in education, R&D, and infrastructure, the very things that are needed to make us more competitive. A big part of the problem is that we have been running huge deficits that sap our ability to invest.
The days of good low-skill manufacturing jobs, fueled by our advances in efficient manufacturing automation (productivity), are now well behind us. We need to be investing in high-skill jobs of the future, not trying to protect the low-skill jobs of the past. Instead we are allowing ourselves to fall behind, which is why even high tech is now moving offshore.
Hardly. The real problem is that as a society we haven't been investing in our own competitiveness.
Our employment numbers are the envy of most of the world, so these policies are clearly working.
These studies fail to take into account the fact that Walmart is employing people at the lowest end of the skill spectrum that aren't able to get better jobs. That these people consume more public services than higher-level employees isn't terribly surprising, and isn't the fault of Walmart.
I disagree. Studies show that a great many service jobs are equal to or better than the rote manufacturing jobs of yesterday.
Their best bet is to upgrade their skills.
Times change. It was also an axiom that (say) cars were relatively more expensive and lower tech.
They need to come up with that themselves, and a good place to start is by investing in their own skills, rather than sitting around complaining.
There's ample evidence that continued investment in higher skills has a clear and direct payback. The key word there is "continued" -- it needs to be a never ending process.
There you go again. You know better than most Americans? You presume to tell them they are wrong? So move to France. I've been there, and I (like so many others) prefer it here,
Are you really that arrogant?
They just leave them on unemployment, and are having an increasingly hard time doing so, which is why they are trying desperately to reform their labor markets from broken systems in which the productive are forced to support the lazy. No thanks.
You cetainly have. Every time anyone suggests that government intervene or regulate in the interests of fairness, morality or for any other reason, you huff and puff about it as "unwarranted and counterproductive interference in the working of a free market."
You have done it several times just in this thread alone.
Based on that history, it's clear that you would have manned the barricades when child labor laws were introduced as being just another unwarranted intrusion on the then-cozy workings of business.
Any evidence you might provide to the contrary will be evaluated.
You are of course ignoring many other deleterious impacts on the local economy and community, including taxpayers having to foot the bill for inadequately paid and insured Wal-Mart workers using excessive amounts of publicly-funded assistance, destruction of local businesses, loss of local uniqueness, tendency to force vendors to shift production offshore to meet Wal-Mart price demands ends up further eroding the US manufacturing industry, etc etc etc.
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