Health Care

Shopping at Wal-Mart

This entry was posted in Business US Capitalism Economics Health Care Libertarianism on by

I don’t and the reason has nothing to do with the wages Wal-Mart pays its employees:

Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, last June redesigned its wage structure to boost salaries for some workers amid criticism by labor unions and other opponents of the retailer’s expansion that Wal-Mart pays workers less than local prevailing wages….
Unions including the United Food & Commercial Workers have said Wal-Mart pays its workers less than those at other supermarkets and doesn’t provide adequate health-care benefits.
The few times I have been in a Wal-Mart I found the stores unattractive, unfriendly, not particularly well priced, and nothing about the shopping experience incented me to make this chain a destination when I go shopping. I do admit to having many convenient, friendly, well stocked, clean, reasonably priced alternatives to the nearest Wal-Mart.
Working as a retail clerk at Wal-Mart is like working at McDonalds and a 1000 other low rent jobs: it is a starter job, a stop gap job, a second family income job. I’ve had to start at the bottom more than once with low wage, no or low benifit jobs to pay the rent. You do it, you do a good job, and you move on as quickly as you can to jobs that better satisfy your particular needs. As long as Wal-Mart has a ready supply of qualified folks who want the jobs, however briefly, at the offered wage there is no reason for them to change their practices and, really, no reason for others to complain. Oh, and, if I were a woman I damned well wouldn’t plan to spend very long working at a business known to discriminate against women…in fact, why even apply for a job there?
Via this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists and Mad Anthony.

Let the Kid Out Regularly

This entry was posted in Creativity Health Care Psychology on by

PZ Meyers posts his 3rd grade class picture:

And for you younger readers, I have to tell you�that buck-toothed kid with the crewcut in the middle row is still here. All of us greying geezers still have a little boy or girl somewhere inside us, and there are still days when we�re a little dismayed that we�re not going to have recess after lunch, or that we don�t get to go home to mom and dad anymore. Youth is never really gone, it just gets buried under layers of new stuff as time goes by.
You will feel more comfortable if you remove some of those layers from time to time….even if a tear or two flows.