Big Box stores, desperate to be Robber Barons

The next Big Labor Moment - fair treatment and pay at Walmart. ... Well, not really.

For one thing, Walmart will simply fire the strikers. Walmart doesn't actually care about the wages and conditions of its employees. Besides, the low wages fits with their business strategy - people who earn good money tend to go shop at other stores, like Target. (Another vulture retailer.) And they don't particularly care if the wages it pays ensures its workers have to use food stamps. After all, who's going to complain about such a government subsidy? Not Walmart. No other wealthy retailer, either. Don't forget, those people don't support America as "e pluribus unum" - they support a Ayn Randian dystopia, a world where they are just getting by on a few tens of millions a year and no one is picking their pocket to get by on a few tens of dollars a year.

And who gives a toss about the employees working conditions? If they don't like them - they can go get jobs somewhere else. You know - in the town center that Walmart destroyed (I've seen what Walmart does to towns, all across America). Or at the manufacturing plant that Bain Capital and its buddies outsourced to China. Or the call center that is 200 miles away. Either way, demanding better, fairer conditions and pay isn't American, is it? Greedily destroying the competition and forcing workers into desperate straights? Well, that's what the Titans of the Robber Baron Age did. It worked then, why shouldn't places like Walmart, Target, JC Penny, and all the other big box stores differ?

It's not as if consumers don't have a choice... They can shop at the big box retailer, or they can look at an empty town and wonder where all the small retailers went as they drive through on their way to mall and the big box stores.

Carolyn Ann