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Karmastic -> RE: Wal-Mart driving down wages (6/7/2012 5:00:11 PM)
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fr-
just some personal observations.
back in the day, nobody complained too much when Whitefront, the then giant warehouse retailer, did the same types of things as Walmart. they put my dad's Citizen Band (CB) radio store out of business when CBs really took off. he couldn't compete offering service and knowledge compared to half price. ironically, they were before their time, and went out of business themselves.
so rather than bitch and moan, my father went into the computer business. cut to many years later, and same thing happened. his small mom and pop PC store couldn't compete with Radio Shack and other vanilla retailers dumping cheap or under-powered shit with no service (when PCs really took off).
rather than bitch, he went back into his old profession (engineering). bwaa hahahahaha, you know how that goes, right? it's a very outsourced field. well, he retired not too long after that anyway.
from my own perspective, the rates and wages i can ask and charge for what i do have significantly gone down because of cheap overseas competition being shipped in. it's an abuse of the H1b Visa program, because there's plenty of qualified Americans ready and willing to do this highly paid work.
rather than bitch and moan, i've tried to differentiate what i have to offer. I've played up the qualities (such as superior communication abilities and management skills) that allows me to at least still try and get better rates and wages.
my overall point is, we cannot stop economies of scale and businesses trying to optimize and be efficient, even if it's at the expense of society and workers. no amount of bargaining or public protests will stop the Walmartization of our society. one town stopping them means they move to the next. the alternative is worse - a bloated government controlled market, ala the Greeks, and many EU countries soon to follow. I.e., inefficiency and govt control is NOT the way to go.
the best we can hope for is to reverse this trend of government actually rewarding this poor behavior (taxes, labor laws, Etc), and turn it around so that it's cheaper to hire local or at least U.S. labor. no matter what we do, the labor and job market is like electricity - it will flow to the easiest most profitable spots. let's not end up like the old Soviet Union, who were arguably bankrupted trying to keep pace with the West, and who finally collapsed and adopted Western market reforms, such as more entrepreneurship, and open efficient markets to be able to compete.
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