Posted by wunhuanglo [ 66.157.17.9 ] on August 19, 2005 at 15:05:03:
In Reply to: Re: wal-mart posted by manualblock on August 19, 2005 at 13:30:10:
By the same token they offer goods, however shoddy you believe them to be, at prices that people at the bottom of the economic ladder can afford - where else would "working poor" people buy stuff they need these days? The people who make that stuff might be paid sub-slave wages; would they be better off with no alternative but to pick through the garbage dumps?
It's a double-edged sword. WM might pay slave wages - are those people better off with no wages? WM doesn't ask very much of their employees qualifications at hiring- I doubt most of the clerks there are biding their time waiting for the job as CEO of Westinghouse to open up. Should WM pay their staff a so-called living wage plus bennies and raise their prices so high that those who turn to WM as the only source of afordable stuff spend all their money at Goodwill and in thrift stores?
Look, there's a lot of goddamn misery in this world and I sure as fuck wish there wasn't. There's no doubt in my mind that if all the self-professed christians in america acted on the beliefs they claim to hold there'd be a lot more equity. No CEO needs 500X or 1000X times the income of their lowest paid employee; corporate boards these days are just a facade for theft from stockholders fueled by insatiable greed; there's evil upon evil and I don't dispute that for a minute.
But there's also an inter-relationship between all the parties involved that does benefit all who participate - it may not be shared equitably but it's not clear to me that if WM disappeared tomorrow or never existed in the first place that their thousands of employees and their supporting vendors/contractors would be better off without them.
[ Dungeon Forum ] [ Help ]