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Wal-Mart

Of course they should be unionized, when unions were big, the middle class was also big, when the unions started declining so did the middle class. Coincidence? I think not. :2wave:
 
Agnapostate said:
You don't know what market power is?

Market power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hmm... so it's basically how much of a monopoly/monopsony something is.

Well, seeing as Walmart is neither of these things, not even close, and is just a simple retailer with tons of competition in the form of other simple retailers, "the effects of market power" are negligible.

Now let's move on to "labor market coercion".

Hm... according to Wikipedia, economic coercion requires market power, so it too can be disregarded.

Now, what are these "severe inequalities" you speak of?
 
Agnapostate said:
That's already wrong to begin with, and doesn't consider the additional elements of oligopoly/oligopsony. Start over.
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Okay, so tell me what these "severe inequalities" that cause all this are.
 
Dav said:
Okay, so tell me what these "severe inequalities" that cause all this are.
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Principled objection will be to the nature of permanent class divisions and constrictions on social mobility that are so prevalent in the U.S. This enables a financial class to exert control over the means of production, and use the power they've consolidated over their private property to deprive the remainder of the population from access to it unless they engage in wage labor. It's a matter of the threat of resource deprivation being a source of coercion in the capitalist labor market.
 
Unionized workers for Walmart - yes !
From what I have seen at Walmart, the productivity and efficiency of their workers without an union is fair at best.
Then the smaller mom and pops will have a better chance if WalMart is unionized (aka the UAW)... But, if this makes any difference, I really do not know....
 
Dav said:
People choose to work there, people choose to buy from there.
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The state chooses to massively subsidise it.

That is terrible. Stores should not need permission from the government to exist.
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Oh the irony.:lol:


Not that I'd be adverse to a bit of light, decentralist regulation and incentives to encourage localism and keep away the likes of Wal-Mart but even talking about that before removing all the incentives to economic consolidation and corporate-capitalism that the states supplies is a bit of a waste of time.
 
Dav said:
I wasn't aware
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You should get learnin' then. For analysis into how income inequality and restricted social mobility are more prevalent in the U.S. than in most European countries, consider Gangl's Income inequality, permanent incomes, and income dynamics: Comparing Europe to the United States.

In most of Europe, real income growth was actually higher than in the United States, many European countries thus achieve not just less income inequality but are able to combine this with higher levels of income stability, better chances of upward mobility for the poor, and a higher protection of the incomes of older workers than common in the United States.
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Supplement that with analysis into the probability of intergenerational transmission of corresponding economic success, specifically the probability of children belonging to the same income level as their parents. Consider Corak's Do poor children become poor adults? Lessons from a cross country comparison of generational earnings mobility.

In the United States almost one half of children born to low income parents become low income adults. This is an extreme case, but the fraction is also high in the United Kingdom at four in ten, and Canada where about one-third of low income children do not escape low income in adulthood. In the Nordic countries, where overall child poverty rates are noticeably lower, it is also the case that a disproportionate fraction of low income children become low income adults. Generational cycles of low income may be common in the rich countries, but so are cycles of high income. Rich children tend to become rich adults. Four in ten children born to high income parents will grow up to be high income adults in the United States and the United Kingdom, and as many as one third will do so in Canada.
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So we can thus clearly observe the nature of intergenerational transmission of an effectively matching income level being a significantly occurring pattern in the U.S. and other Western countries.

IncomeDecileProbability.jpg


We may be able to attribute a sizable portion of that to direct inheritance, for which we'd consider a source such as Summers and Kotlikoff's The role of intergenerational transfers in aggregate capital accumulation. Consider the abstract:

This paper uses historical U.S. data to directly estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers to aggregate capital accumulation. The evidence presented indicates that intergenerational transfers account for the vast majority of aggregate U.S. capital formation; only a negligible fraction of actual capital accumulation can be traced to life-cycle or "hump" savings.
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Aside from that, there's also the obvious matter of a myriad amount of inequitable environmental conditions skewing human capital attainment, thus creating a prohibitive obstruction to upward social mobility.
 
Maybe someday, when I have lots and lots of free time, I'll get back to you on that.
 
No, Walmart doesn't need a union, if you don't like the working conditions at Walmart, go find another job. :doh
 
Dav said:
Please, tell me what you mean.
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You just HAD to do it, didn't you??

It's like asking hypochondriac Aunt Emma "How's things?" :doh
 
Goshin said:
You just HAD to do it, didn't you??

It's like asking hypochondriac Aunt Emma "How's things?" :doh
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I've sort of put myself on a mission to discover what the **** Agnapostate is always talking about.

It isn't going well so far.
 
LOL! I did know that two people who scream about income taxes being "socialism" and don't appreciate me talking over El Rushbo might complain, believe it or not. :rofl
 
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