Words are inadequate

I don't really expect you to care whether blue-collar workers are treated like human beings, though.

I don't believe I addressed that issue. Perhaps I will a little bit. For starters, I don't think the solution to high medical costs is to pump money out of businesses to pay for it, but that's a whole separate topic. When in comes down to it, workers in this country are treated incredibly well compared to a lot of other countries. People in the US love to complain about how bad their job is, and they'll be happy to call you with their cell phone to tell you that, or drive over to your place in their car, or invite you up to their apartment where they get three square meals a day and discuss it. As a country we're spoiled as hell. Then, after all that the company is blamed for not paying all the health care costs, instead of the employee blaming themselves for mismanaging their finances. I know, I've gone the mismanagement route, but thanks to my wife we're on the track to improvement. Why do you think there are so many immigrants in this country? Because we treat our workers so bad and the living conditions here are so horrible? Hardly.

Furthermore, Wal-Mart added 99,000 jobs to the marketplace in a year when everyone is trying to say the economy is bad, and yet now we are supposed to boycott them. What is the purpose of that, to put all those new workers out on the street? Who exactly is getting shafted in that case? Wal-Mart has a turnover rate of 50%, that means 50% of the employees are leaving their entry level job to find better work, and opening up that 50% of the jobs for new workers entering the workforce. How is this kind of workforce turnover a bad thing? If anything, CostCo, by holding on to employees longer, is preventing new positions from opening up for those entering the workforce. On top of all this, the articles indicate that Wal-Mart is pretty much average in the retail industry, meaning that any retailer will look evil if you compare them to the shining star of CostCo.

However, is CostCo really that great? While it is a good place to work, it's bad for the economy in terms of available jobs and stock market issues. They also have a higher percentage of part-time employees who I'm sure don't get the max benefits listed.

Narrowly focused on the one issue of health care, and comparing Wal-Mart to only CostCo, you could easily say they are evil, but there's a lot more to the big picture. I'm not saying they are saints, but spare me the downtrodden blue-collar worker story. Perhaps if any of us had gone through the depression or worked in a turn of the century mill, we could talk about what real poor quality employment is like, but we have it too good to really fathom that.