[Vision2020] Costco Preferred Over Wal-Mart

[Andreas Schou]

On 8/30/06, g. crabtree <jampot at adelphia.net> wrote:
> My goodness, why argue using half measures? I'm surprised that you didn't
> take your supposition to its inevitable ridiculous conclusion. Costco comes
> to town and pays its lowliest hot dog vendor $16.00 per hour to start. All
> is sunshine and lollypops. Wal-Mart arrives and, in the throws of corporate
> greed, not only doesn't pay its employees a living wage, it charges them for
> the privilege of working  for a company as vicious and mean as them. Using
> this business model WM drives Costco and all Mom & Pop stores into
> receivership and eventually brings about the end of the world. This would
> have been the ultimate in proof that WM is a cross between a Cambodian
> re-education camp and hell.
>
> I find this technique for arguing against Wal-Mart to be puzzling. Pit them
> against a hypothetical paragon of virtue that isn't even a player in the
> local game, accuse them of indignities and atrocities that they do not
> engage in, blend well and present the results as though you had just read
> them out of a year end stock holders report. It succeeds in presenting WM as
> evil, I guess,  but it has no basis in reality. The one thing that you
> continually leave out of the worker/wage equation is the fact that the
> employees always have at least two choices when it comes to working for the
> dreaded corporate monster. There is no such thing as "no other work option."
> Unless, that is, we want to dive back into your "for the sake of argument
> fantasy world."

Dear Gary --

Please tell me about the world you live in, wher approximating the
economic forces affecting a real person's life involves entirely
ignoring the unacceptable risk -- for an individual making too little
to save -- of leaving a job they *have* for a job they *might* have?
For people making low wages without robust social safety nets, they're
forced to suck up the opportunity cost of *not* leaving for another
job because they don't have enough money to mitigate the risk if
something *does* go wrong. Their employer therefore gets to do
whatever they want.

Unlike Jeff, I'm not sure that you actually know this.

-- ACS