100 People Who Are REALLY Screwing Up America -- #4: H. Lee Scott

[Chichiri]

H. Lee Scott is the CEO of Wal-Mart, a corporation that has, over the years, become the personification of many aspects of American culture. To name a few:


* Low prices.
* Low wages.
* High turnaround.
* Crappy or non-existent benefits.
* Bad treatment of employees.
* Working overtime without pay.
* Sexual discrimination.
* The outsourcing of American jobs.
* Litigation.
* The death of small businesses everywhere.


Conservative defenders of Wal-Mart like to respond by saying, "Hey, they're just engaging in good business practices -- giving consumers what they want, at lower prices than the competition. They ought to be rewarded for it, not demonized!" The response to that is that conservatives, who believe in a country's ability to magically run itself without the need for taxation, pay higher taxes because of Wal-mart's existence, whether they shop there or not. It's called the externalization of costs: Wal-Mart shifts health care and other costs to taxpayers in the form of Medicaid and other state-funded health care assistance.

At a closed-doors press conference earlier this year, Scott stated that critics of Wal-Mart have an agenda (my copy of this agenda must have been lost in the mail) to maintain an unrealistic status quo intended to deny customers better prices. But when a reporter asked Scott why Wal-Mart couldn't reduce its 3% discount margin by a single percentage point, and put the resulting funds into improving pay for their employees, Scott obfuscated. He explained that we live in a "Brave New World" where competition and efficiency rule all. Apparently this paradigm excludes humane treatment for American workres.

Wal-Mart, like a number of other companies, are today so dependent upon trade with China that it would be more accurate to call them Chinese companies than Ameican companies. It need not be said that Wal-Mart, as much as if not more so than any of those other companies, no longer considers American patriotism to be a necessary virtue. Scott, as the head of this behemoth of America-screwing, has a lot to answer for -- and history, if no one else, will hold him accountable.

[Chichiri]

1. Vanity kick

;)

[johnfunk]

2. I'll second that kick!!