2004-08-01
OUTSOURCING
"Everyday Low Prices"; plus... low quality of life, too? |
Okay | Full disclosure time | I have shopped at Wal-Mart; probably will do so again in the future | Don't feel guilty about it, yet... at the same time, I recognize the company for being the exploitive, bad citizen in the community that it often is accused of | Many have written about WalMart in this context including Margot Ford McMillan* | But WalMart is one of many, and the cheap prices they offer do not deter even those who have been stripped of higher wage jobs, from shopping with the retail beheomoth |
They aren't the only corporate titan selling out the folks who live down the street | And Outsourcing [or Offshoring] of the USA workforce is not going to stop tomorrow |
What I'm getting at is that WalMart shouldn't be taking all the heat | This Week's [2004/08/02] New Yorker Magazine [print edition only, regrettably] has a thought provoking piece by John Cassidy entitled Winners and Losers, which looks at the down and upsides [yes, there may be some upsides in this] to companies shuttling their production off the continent | The "upside" isn't one likely to benefit the guy in Peoria who lost his job to a Bangeladesh programmer, but to lead, perhaps, to a more equitable distribution of wealth across the planet |
Where does that leave the now cash-strapped and out of work Heartlands job hunter? | S-O-L, perhaps | for the short run at any rate |
What seems to go unanalyzed here is the whole question about distribution of wealth locally, within the nation that is | The analysis that is called for needs to look at the gross disparities of wealth [See Billmon's 22 july 04 entry on Minimum Wage as well as his Building a Bridge to the 19th Century ] and you'll get a sense of what I'm getting at | Call it
"communist" if you will, but you'd be incorrect, but the implication here is that many among the rich, have ~for far too long~ been running on "Spiritual Empty" and feeding at the public trough | They now have to begin to redistribute that booty of dispropotinatly allotted gains, and share it more equitably with those who help create those profit margins for them | Mind you, I'm not against people being wealthy, but that the distribution of wealth needs to be based more upon the burden of the workload taken on while gaining it | And ideas-traders, often placed at the top of the rewards heap, only play one part of the total package of wealth manufacture | The large mass at the bottom helped create it |
As for the corporate criminals like Kenneth Lay, well, hell, ENRON never actually had a product anyway | They traded on futures of oil and other energy sales spike | They were gamblers who took the pot before the game was over | They didn't win, they looted the treasury | That's right, take the wealth from those suckers | Treat them like drug trafficers | Interdiction seems at the very least more kind than the guillotine |
Responsible opposing viewpoints will be heard | More later |
¶ 13:59
"Everyday Low Prices"; plus... low quality of life, too? |
Okay | Full disclosure time | I have shopped at Wal-Mart; probably will do so again in the future | Don't feel guilty about it, yet... at the same time, I recognize the company for being the exploitive, bad citizen in the community that it often is accused of | Many have written about WalMart in this context including Margot Ford McMillan* | But WalMart is one of many, and the cheap prices they offer do not deter even those who have been stripped of higher wage jobs, from shopping with the retail beheomoth |
They aren't the only corporate titan selling out the folks who live down the street | And Outsourcing [or Offshoring] of the USA workforce is not going to stop tomorrow |
What I'm getting at is that WalMart shouldn't be taking all the heat | This Week's [2004/08/02] New Yorker Magazine [print edition only, regrettably] has a thought provoking piece by John Cassidy entitled Winners and Losers, which looks at the down and upsides [yes, there may be some upsides in this] to companies shuttling their production off the continent | The "upside" isn't one likely to benefit the guy in Peoria who lost his job to a Bangeladesh programmer, but to lead, perhaps, to a more equitable distribution of wealth across the planet |
Where does that leave the now cash-strapped and out of work Heartlands job hunter? | S-O-L, perhaps | for the short run at any rate |
What seems to go unanalyzed here is the whole question about distribution of wealth locally, within the nation that is | The analysis that is called for needs to look at the gross disparities of wealth [See Billmon's 22 july 04 entry on Minimum Wage as well as his Building a Bridge to the 19th Century ] and you'll get a sense of what I'm getting at | Call it
"communist" if you will, but you'd be incorrect, but the implication here is that many among the rich, have ~for far too long~ been running on "Spiritual Empty" and feeding at the public trough | They now have to begin to redistribute that booty of dispropotinatly allotted gains, and share it more equitably with those who help create those profit margins for them | Mind you, I'm not against people being wealthy, but that the distribution of wealth needs to be based more upon the burden of the workload taken on while gaining it | And ideas-traders, often placed at the top of the rewards heap, only play one part of the total package of wealth manufacture | The large mass at the bottom helped create it |
As for the corporate criminals like Kenneth Lay, well, hell, ENRON never actually had a product anyway | They traded on futures of oil and other energy sales spike | They were gamblers who took the pot before the game was over | They didn't win, they looted the treasury | That's right, take the wealth from those suckers | Treat them like drug trafficers | Interdiction seems at the very least more kind than the guillotine |
Responsible opposing viewpoints will be heard | More later |
¶ 13:59
