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Wal-Mart shows us everything that is wrong with America, not Wal-Mart.

Sam Walton didn’t want to go to China for his goods.  It was necessary to continue to competitively provide products that everyday Americans could buy, and more of them.  And the company offers full-time benefits at well under the usual 40 hours — or at least they did.  Now, they no longer hire full-time because the required benefits make it cost prohibitive.  Yet they continue to hire vets, locally representative minorities, the handicapped, and provide supplemental jobs to the otherwise underemployed or retired.

And they’re deemed villainous for it.  It’s a miracle they don’t outsource door greeters to India via Skype, and I wouldn’t blame them if they did.

When people say “the workers of Wal-Mart don’t have a choice and are at their mercy” because there are no jobs available, that is half true.  Few employers will hire some of these people because of their lack of training, ambition, or ability to consistently show up for work.  And it’s not even the employer’s choice but the reality of cost analysis, being illegal to pay them as little as they are actually worth.  Thank you minimum wage.

And no redistribution of perceived inflated  CEO salaries can make up for the perceived injustices against the floor workers.

True Story

My brother had to work Thanksgiving at the local Wal-Mart.  There was a staged protest by the anti-Wal-Mart labor crowd.  I say staged because he was there, and knows that the “protested” only got out of their cars into the rain when the media arrived, and immediately left afterward.  Who knows who these people were — they weren’t employees at the store, that’s for sure.

And State Senator Tim Kennedy made a point to show solidarity with the growing hordes of comrades against the retail leviathan, saying

“Nothing is going to happen if nobody stands up and we are standing up today with the workers, not only here in western New York but across the country against Walmart.”

Really, Tim?  You want to alienate a state-wide employer and supplier of goods to people who might otherwise be unemployed or not afford everyday items?  But you don’t want them to go away, just be a slave to the masses of unthinking ungratefuls who were NOT primarily responsible for building the largest consumer entity on planet earth.

So when you tally up all the causes and effects, it is not Wal-Mart that does not deserve America — it is we that do not deserve good companies.

We are forcing Atlas to shrug, and will continue to pay for it — even Twinkiless — for as long as we ourselves create the conditions that are ignorantly blamed on Capitalist greed.

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