Capitalism in Action

A perfect episode of Bullshit: in defense of Wal-Mart. I loved the part where the economist defended sweat shops -- even the ones in which children were employed. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Link via Pejman.

Comments

[Josh Scholar]

I haven't watched the video...

But a week ago, over at Harry's Place, there was thread on this. I was impressed by someone who's worked in the far east and seen factories in China, Tiwan, Singapore etc. over the years. He said that conditions have been steadily improving. The workers in these places, over time, get better paid, the economy improves - eventually it's night and day. He talked about places in China where the workers are approaching middle class by our standards...

And he said that the sweat-shop stage seems to be necessary.

Maybe I was taken in. But it's hard to argue with seeing success in parts of the world where everything else has failed.

[Josh Scholar]

On the other hand, the rise of the third world may doom the economy of the good old US of A, at least for lower middle class and down.

And you know, a job at wallmart isn't a very good job, is it.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

"And you know, a job at wallmart isn't a very good job, is it."

Then it follows that people who do take a job at Wall-Mart didn't have better options. They likely had to choose between Wal-Mart, other minimum wage jobs and unemployment.

That's really what it comes down to: Wall-Mart was one of the best choices for them. In a society where the skill set of a person can be from zero to a brain surgeon, some people will have to, at some time, take relatively "bad jobs".

[lucas]

there is nothing wrong with working at walmart. it is a good job. any work is a good job. it shows that you take pride in earning your way in life. once was a time when a hobo would chop wood for a ham "samich" now we just set around saying "gimme gimme" hell the poor people on welfare have ipods, cell phones, and computers. i am 25 years old and i can see that we have lost our american work ethic. if we can not get rich we do not want to work at all

[Josh Scholar]

I don't see the "goodness" of a wallmart job as being the important thing in what I wrote.

The big problems are bit more complicated than that and I'm way to busy to write anything really compelling on that today.

But when I wrote "the rise of the third world may doom the economy of the good old US of A, at least for lower middle class and down," I did make one mistake.

The fact is that we may find our economy shrink to nothing for middle class and even fairly upper middle class people too.

In the last few months I've talked to people who outsource jobs that you wouldn't think could be outsourced. Really, there is no reason for many companies to have any workers in the first world at all. And even many office jobs that serve offices in the United States are being outsourced. Some companies are actually administering there local computer networks and servers from the other side of the world splitting their IT departments between local workers and guys in India who make nothing. And China, and Thailand(!) etc. etc.

Engineering, product design, even doctors are being outsourced outside the country.