Hot For Teacher

If only I had teachers who looked liked her in school...

Wal-Mart: Evil Empire or Merely Misunderstood?

WAL-MART!

The word alone conjures up strong emotion from people. Let's take a moment to understand why this corporation, one of the largest companies in the world, inspires such strong reaction.

I had an opportunity recently to attend a screening of the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and was fascinated to watch the reaction to the information presented by those in attendance.

I'm not really a big Wal-Mart fan but as a concerned third-party who occasionally buys from there, I think that it's important that a fair and balanced approach to evaluating this company be undertaken.

There's a lot of research on how and why Wal-Mart is bad. I'm not disagreeing with the majority of it. Wal-Mart does do some things that are less than appropriate for a company that seemingly pledges to be a good corporate citizen. I mean, come on...

Labor abuses aside, there is a pervasive and ongoing effort to obtain tax breaks & relief at the expense of all of us... As a taxpayer, I prefer to lower taxes whenever possible and corporate subsidies do not usually do anybody any good, especially for a company that is valued at around $240 billion (US Dollars) with revenues of over $300 billion and $10 billion in profit in 2004. Admittedly, while I admire their efforts to lower costs for profitability, one must ask, when is it enough? Are they this century's robber barons?

Before all the sandal-wearing, patchouli-chewing hippies think that I've come over to their side, I have to say one thing. Get a sense of scale and scope before you get up in arms about Wal-Mart.

• Wal-Mart employees have a program whereby they donated $5 million to support their fellow workers. That's a very impressive $3.85 per employee over the course of a year! The 5 Waltons donated $1,200 each. Unfortunately, no statistics or information was provided about what Wal-Mart management donated.
• Wal-Mart only has a 3.3% profit margin, they HAVE to cut corners in order to remain solvent and continue offer low prices. Think about what would happen if 1.3 million people suddenly lost their jobs because Wal-Mart determined that they couldn't remain afloat because of unionization or other high costs.
• With around 3,500 locations, Wal-Mart has a presence in all 50 states bringing tax receipts and jobs to markets everywhere. Unfortunately, one of the greivances against Wal-Mart is that they do not provide a living wage or adequate benefits for their employees.
  

Suffice it to say, Americans will eventually need to wean ourselves off of a good bargain because if we don't, we'll perpetuate the cycle and that's a situation where nobody wins. The trick is to find the balance between profit, research & development of new products/services and meeting customer needs.

Meet Your New Mommy

OMFG...

Has everybody seen the FOX network show Trading Spouses?

I just watched the first two episodes of the second season... I'm speechless. Don't take my word for it though, read the episode recaps for episode one and episode two!

Talk about a ridiculous, hypocritical and closed-minded person. We have an absolute winner in Mrs. Margaret Perrin! Hoo boy...