Walmart sells things made in China- but, now, they’re trying to sell themselves as nice guys by handing out chump change donations for job retraining:
scholarships are the result of a $336,500 grant Sinclair received in August from the Walmart Foundation. Sinclair was one of eight U.S. community colleges to share in a total of $3.5 million as part of the Walmart Brighter Futures project.
via Sinclair gets grant from Walmart Foundation to help jobless [1].
These “jobs of the future” pay between $12-16 an hour, just slightly more than what Walmart pays. Never mind that these people we are “retraining” were skilled in making trucks that used to pay them between $12 and $35 an hour.
Greg Hunter and David Esrati talk about the real reasons we’re “retraining” our workforce in this 5 minute video- enjoy.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTc6Hpyilc[/youtube]Henry Ford had it right when he paid his first autoworkers well so they could afford to buy his cars. If the President had balls, he’d be laying down the law to Corporate America that there will be no million dollar salaries or bonus checks to anyone working in a company with publicly traded stock- if they lay anyone off- or fail to hire additional workers starting Jan 1, 2010.
They could have given no money, in which there would have never been an article to critique.
Could they do more? Sure. So could all of us. We make a lot of important things, not crap clothes and plastic nick knacks and fake this and that…. Companies opted to send that overseas. You folks want to see this go away, well then stop buying it. Most of the items are not necessity items.
The Wal-Mart thing is picking on the big boyz – I went into a craft store in Lebanon about three weeks ago (after a few bets!) and most of that stuff was made in china and more importantly was sold at the Wal-Marts of the world first and are trying to be past off as crafts. I have an identical picture that I bought at Meier years ago. So every store (most every store) is guilty.
People want low, low prices and many times the only way to get them is to buy the stuff from overseas. Like Gene said, we sent the business there. We get mad that we can’t understand “Kevin” from Bangalore when we call a customer service line, but we put the fiber-optic infrastructure in place that made that possible. I’m not a WalMart fan, but they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The companies who took bailout money should absolutely be subject to rules and limitation on compensation and like matters. Companies who did not take our money should be left alone.
This is refreshing stuff, my favorite show yet.
The 500 jobs…. for the bulldozer place….what did the county and Cable give away..??
Are the jobs 20 hour a week jobs with no benefits..??
Did they give tax abatements..??
@JR a lot of money- and tax abatements.
“good quality vehicles right here in Dayton, Ohio?”
Such as the Chevrolet Trailblazer (Consumer Guide rating 54 out of 100, one of Consumer Reports’ 11 worst cars of 2008) and its twin the GMC Envoy?
And bringing up Clinton and NAFTA? Really? Sure, it’s easy to bash Clinton for NAFTA, but how can you blame him with a straight face for the failure of GM and the Moraine Assembly plant? The Moraine Assembly plant hung on almost 15 years after NAFTA. The Moraine Assembly plant didn’t fail because GM outsourced the production of SUVs to China; it failed because during times of economic downturn, no one wants to buy poorly made, expensive to operate SUVs.
If the President had balls, he’d be laying down the law to Corporate America that there will be no million dollar salaries or bonus checks to anyone working in a company with publicly traded stock- if they lay anyone off- or fail to hire additional workers starting Jan 1, 2010. (David Esrati)
Gee David, the Old Bandito didn’t know the President had the constitutional authority to do any of the things you suggest. Unless, of course, he has graduated to Emperor, or El Duce, or Der Fuhrer, in which case he can do anything he wants. But while he’s dictating what folks can make, maybe he can lay down the law that Brady Quinn gets minimum wage unless the Browns’ offense can come up with some touchdowns. El Bandito however, will not speculate, as you did David, whether or not the President has any balls……….
@IceBandit- apparently the president has the ability to bail out Wall Street- AIG, GM etc…if you take the liberty of being trusted with others money, there is no reason you shouldn’t have some responsibility with it. If you consider how much was lost in public pensions, endowments, etc with their reckless handling of OUR money- then you start to understand the connection.
Ice Bandit beat me to it. I was going to say something similar to the same ridiculous statement at the end of your post.
“apparently the president has the ability to bail out Wall Street- AIG, GM ” – D.E.
I believe it was congress that came up with HR 1424, and it was signed by George Bush.
Limiting the talent pool that they can fish from to get executives needed to move their business forward isn’t going to solve anything. If I have a business to run and I have to lay off 10% of the work force to protect the other 90%, then I should be punished for having to make the hard decisions?
@Steve Varner “If I have a business to run and I have to lay off 10% of the work force to protect the other 90%, then I should be punished for having to make the hard decisions?”
Maybe you shouldn’t be paid multi-millions for doing it?
If it’s your company (privately held)- pay yourself anything you want, do as you please- but, if you get to play with Wall Street Monopoly money- you have to have some risk- because technically- profit is a return for risk.
That’s the part that Wall Street forgot.
The risk is getting thrown out when things out of your control combine to hit earnings. As a CEO, you are responsible to the board of directors and the shareholders. A job is like anything else out there for sale, it has supply and demand. In order to get good talent that will maintain and grow a business, you have to pay a lot of money, because there’s a very limited pool out there. If someone isn’t performing well, there won’t be a need to give them a “pay cut”, they will just get dismissed.
You also forgot to mention that a lot of executive compensation isn’t liquid (options) and if the business goes downhill, they lose money as well.
And just to clear things up, there are a lot of privately held companies out there that are still funded by Wall Street Monopoly Money. (btw: Wall Street Money is a collection of capital from sources all over the planet from 401k’s, University endowments, to corporate and foreign investments. It is quite the opposite of a monopoly. )
@ Steve Varner- you go play monopoly next time- only you supply real money, and your opponents get to play with the money that comes in the box…. that’s what I mean by monopoly money- it’s not their own cash at risk. As to options- do they really matter when you make more than a million a year? Are you going to go hungry, decide between buying medicine or meat with your paycheck?
My heart bleeds to the assholes who ran GM into the ground- but left with big severance packages and a pension.
I don’t think your little pay cap and forced hiring manifesto fixes the problem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem
Does it really seem reasonable that capping pay lines up executive incentives with shareholder incentives?
@IceBandit- apparently the president has the ability to bail out Wall Street- AIG, GM etc…if you take the liberty of being trusted with others money, there is no reason you shouldn’t have some responsibility with it (Dave Esrati)
When the Ice Bandit was a sad sack PFC at Fort Benning’s Infantry School, one of his same ranked comrades was suffering from the “no respect” Rodney Dangerfield syndrome. So to cure this ailment, this dude went to a Columbus, Georgia, thrift store, purchased the dress uniform of a captain, and masqueraded as an officer until he was busted in a Phenix City, Alabama brothel. His crime? He, like you, David, confused ability with authority. With an afternoon off and a half tank of gas, El Bandito or Dave Esrati have the ability to speed thru stop signs, commit armed robbery, and enter Mattress Masters and spend some time ripping those “Do Not Remove” tags off their wares. But certainly no one would argue that these were legal or beneficial acts. Several weeks ago on your blog, David, we debated what tag we should hang on this President. Fascist, the handle that yours truly advanced, seemed to have credibility with fellow posters. Perhaps the Obama campaign was the classic case of the political bait and switch; he posed as a liberal moderate, and once inaugerated, ripped off the facade of moderation and advanced his balls to the wall agenda of fascism. Ok, ok, I mentioned “constitutional authority” which, apparently, is so meaningless it never enters political debate nowadays. But checking Obama’s polling numbers, which are going down faster than Linda Lovelace on amphetamines, it is apparent most Americans don’t trust the President with his distribution of taxpayer buckeroos…………