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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (38772)	11/24/2014 11:45:46 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

>> They're also successful by keeping employee cost below a living wage. And having government, you and me, take up the slack. Is that Libertarian or gaming the system? It isn't government's responsibility to "take up the slack." That is something that a group of politicians dreamed up, something that IMO has been harmful to the American people, so I certainly don't blame that on Walmart. As to the difficulty of competing, I don't think anyone ever said it would be easy. But it is an essential component of both markets and exceptional productivity. The alternative is not attractive. Although I agree a Walmart store is less attractive as a facility than a cluster of mom-and-pops. One of the key marketing ingredients of the big brands is consistency. Back in the day there wasn't consistency and it was surely less boring. But consistency is important: McDonalds burgers are consistently lousy but you have a pretty good idea what you're going to get when you walk into McDs. OTOH, when you walked into one of my dad's fast food joints, there was an element of surprise if you hadn't been there before -- it could be great, or it could be lousy -- and you wouldn't know until you found out. In the town in which I live there is a little dairy-ette named "King Kone." Been there since I was a little kid. Still one of the best places in town to grab a burger. But I seldom go there, for some reason. There is a certain sadness about it but life does move on.

To: Road Walker who wrote (38772)	3/12/2015 9:47:34 AM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By i-node Respond to of 42652

They're also successful by keeping employee cost below a living wage. And having government, you and me, take up the slack. Several problems with that statement. 1 - Its the government's action to decide to pay welfare, food stamps, etc. Not Walmart's. 2 - Walmart doesn't increase the cost to the government it reduces it. The government pays out less in benefits because of Walmart jobs. 3 - Benefits paid by the government probably increase the cost of low skilled labor by increasing the reservation rate of potential low skill/pay employees. So you have an action by government, not Walmart, that isn't made more costly by Walmart, and that increases cost for employers of entry level employees (and might have contributed to Walmart's decision to go to $10/hour).