Let Them Eat Cake
Some people have so little connection or conception of the life of the Average American, that even when they think they are working towards their best interests, usually without even consulting those they claim to represent, they can do more harm than good.

A case in point is the current Witch hunt against WalMart.

They claim "that the retailer is bad for poor Americans"

We read further in Prog-Mart at Right Thinking From The Left Coast and Wal-Mart -- The Poor American's Greatest Ally? at Right Wing News.

This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is “a progressive success story.” Furman advised John “Benedict Arnold” Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart’s discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart’s products."

But we hear from the pitchfork and torch crowd, Target and Costco are SO superior. They don't mention the fact that.

The average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco. Moreover, Wal-Mart’s “every day low prices” make the biggest difference to the poor, since they spend a higher proportion of income on food and other basics. As a force for poverty relief, Wal-Mart’s $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers may rival many federal programs. Those programs are better targeted at the needy, but they are dramatically smaller. Food stamps were worth $33 billion in 2005, and the earned-income tax credit was worth $40 billion.


Now it is no surprise that elitist would think the stores they shop at, which have higher prices are run more progressively. What is surprising is that this much maligned dirty Capitalist Enterprise actually benefits the Working Poor MORE than some of our lauded Government Programs.

And this TRAVESTY MUST STOP!

let's say we accept Dube's calculation that retail workers take home $4.7 billion less per year because Wal-Mart has busted unions and generally been ruthless. That loss to workers would still be dwarfed by the $50 billion-plus that Wal-Mart consumers save on food, never mind the much larger sums that they save altogether. Indeed, Furman points out that the wage suppression is so small that even its "victims" may be better off. Retail workers may take home less pay, but their purchasing power probably still grows thanks to Wal-Mart's low prices."

I ask anyone out there with the slightest modicum of reasoning. Would you spend $4.70 for a coupon that would give you $50 off your next grocery bill or a total of $200 off all of your bills? Would you think you had been "taken advantage" of???

Besides the above interesting bits of information, how do those who protest WalMart treat the people they employ?

Some time back in a Post called What's Wrong With This Picture? I looked at that issue.


The story was of a Union hiring Temp Workers to walk picket lines to protest WalMart's mistreatment of it's workers???

What sticks out to me is that these people are walking long hours in the hot sun for next to nothing for a pittance. They are protesting working conditions that compared to theirs look like paradise.

What happens if they do a REALLY good job? Well then the Union calls the Temp Agency and tells it they do not need these workers anymore, BUT if they can get jobs in a Union shop all by their own efforts?

Why the Union will be HAPPY to represent them and collect their dues.

That was the Story folks, Temp Workers, under conditions that any Union would shout from the rooftops in condemnation, if a corporation were to so shabbily treat their employees. To be sent out into the streets unemployed should they be successful in their picketing?

Let us call a spade a spade they are running a literal sweatshop operation outside in 100+ temperatures and when they no longer need these workers, they will discard them.

The Union justifies their actions with this sentiment

"This is an informational picket line only," Hornbrook said. "We're paying these people. They were out of work before (joining their picket lines). This is an in-between-jobs stop

What do Unions call Corporations if they were to be foolish enough to make the above statements?

These witch hunters know not one blamed thing about how the people with low paying jobs, live, work or shop.

To them all they can say is WalMart is BAD you need to shop Target, Costco, pay more.

The peasants are out of Bread? Let them eat cake.

Prowling the blogverse for kindred spirits I found
kaiser.com who relates his isolation,

"I am tuned in to the Walmart-bashing that's going on because the "Social Action" committee of my congregation is heavily promoting the campaign to bring the giant retailer to heel. Tactics have included protests that enlist children and explicitly liken Walmart's practices to those of inner-city sweatshops of a hundred years ago.

And the thing of it is, even though this is blatant anti-corporatist leftism, many of those involved cannot even imagine that what they advocate is so much as debatable, much less a flawed partisan position.

Let's let him know he is not alone folks. ;-)

Linked to
Those Bastards! at If it's Tuesday, it must be an OTA open trackback day
NIF at The wheels on the bus ...
Don Surber at Bush the Reformer & Open Post
Right Wing Nation at Tuesday Open Trackbacks
The Business of America is Business at OpenTracks: Train Tracks Edition
MacStansbury.org at Middle of the Tuesday Open Trackbacks
The Conservative Cat at Ecosystem

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