Saturday’s Cavuto on Business focused on unions standing up to Walmart and causing a reconsideration of its plan to open a store in New York City. It could’ve been bought and paid for by Wal-Mart what with all the de facto spokespeople rhapsodizing about the big-box retailer. As for the small businesses who might have been driven out? “Ma and Pa need to get over it,” panelist and Fox Business Anchor Dagen McDowell scolded.
Gary Kaltbaum was first. “In a city like New York where there’s a high cost of living, you have a company that single handedly has lowered costs for consumers. …You’re not going to have the construction workers, potential for local suppliers. …They’re just dummies (for causing Walmart to back off).”
Substitute host Charles Payne said, “Everywhere I’ve been to a Walmart, people are happy. It creates jobs, it democratizes things that in the past only rich people had access to.”
Ben Stein seemed the most fervent supporter: “Wal-Mart is an incredibly great American institution. …Everyone who’s lived near a Wal-Mart gets a benefit of the lower prices as if they’ve had a substantial pay raise. These are union goons out there demonstrating. …It’s a very, very, very upsetting phenomenon to see New Yorkers deprived.”
Charlie Gasparino called the the news of Walmart’s pullback, “disgusting.”
Adam Lashinsky, the lone (somewhat) liberal, said that while he thinks the opposition to Walmart is “sincere," he didn’t find it “particularly fair to Walmart.”
“Sincere?” Stein asked.
“What about being unfair to people who live in these neighborhoods?” Payne asked. “You know, the South Bronx is the poorest Congressional district in America. You know how many people want a job there, how many people would love to be able to buy a flat screen TV? Are you kidding me?’”
Lashinsky added, “If you want to have a policy debate about this, you have to be prepared to tell me how many businesses nearby will go out of business as a result.”
Kaltbaum argued, “Wal-Mart is a job creating machine. To stop them from creating more jobs in a city that needs it is insane.”
Payne added, “For every two Mom and Pa mom shops that may close down, there’s a thousand jobs that would’ve been created.”
“Ma and Pa needs to get over it,” McDowell chimed in.
Stein said, laughing, “Get it on.”
In fact, there’s a lot not to like about having a Walmart store in your neighborhood. But Fox turned a blind eye to most of it and dismissed the rest.
“Now, because there’s nowhere else to shop, wages earned at Walmart go back to Walmart. It’s a monopoly.”
Like I said before, THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT. Remember the story behind the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, i.e. the blatant undercutting of the colonial tea merchants by the Britain-based East India Company? Lo and behold, Wal-Mart is doing the EXACT SAME UNDERCUTTING TODAY. Once the mom and pop stores are all run out of business by Wal-Mart, the following will happen:
1. Products will be GROSSLY OVERPRICED
2. The quality will be ABSOLUTELY P**S POOR!
Or has apple pie already been replaced by something else as the symbol of Americanism?
Payne’s a total fool: wouldn’t surprise me one bit to discover that WalMart workers are bugged so that anything they might say against the organisation can be held against them.
Does this come under the heading of “looking out for ‘the folks’”?
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“Ben Stein seemed the most fervent supporter: “Wal-Mart is an incredibly great American institution. …Everyone who’s lived near a Wal-Mart gets a benefit of the lower prices as if they’ve had a substantial pay raise. "
Yeah Ben, SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE THEY DO.
And pigs can fly.
Those who do not remember history are DOOMED TO REPEAT IT. Ben Stein obviously DOES NOT know or has TOTALLY FORGOTTEN about the Great Depression years. Yes, prices were very low back then, but that didn’t do any good because TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WERE FLAT BROKE!
’Nuff said.
Our prices from out-sourced Chinese labor helps take the sting out poverty for all those Americans who now work at 3 McJobs.
OK Gary, let’s see YOU or any of your loved ones try to keep a roof over your head (or even worse, try to raise a family) working LONG HOURS FOR CHUMP CHANGE AND NO BENEFITS at Wal-Mart. It’s time for perennially pampered slobs like you to PUT UP OR SHUT THE HELL UP!
