His faultless logic is further explored here.

Still you’ll never get it right,
‘Cos when you lay awake at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
You can call you dad and he’ll stop it all.

(grin)

I wonder why anti-unionists hate America? And American coal?

Mining.

Wal-Mart drives the very people Adam Smith had in mind when he posited laissez-faire capitalism, the small business owners and entrepreneurs, right out of business, and this jackass thinks they WANT to be working at sub-optimal jobs in sub-minimal conditions?

Lordy, we really do need a new education system for the right wing…

Funny you should say this – that’s EXACTLY what happened with Adam Shepard. Ten months in, his mother got sick. Unlike actual poor people, he didn’t have to make the decision of “spend everything I own to be there for her or continue to scratch out my life and not see my extremely ill mother?” – he simply quit his “experiment”, got on the phone, and went home on daddy’s dime.

In other words, he failed. But like most “self reliance” wingnuts, he simply ignores the data that proves him wrong (i.e., the last 2 months of his 12 month game) and declares success.

Of course not. Unions have to acknowledge the macroeconomic reality that some workers just aren’t worth giving a shit about. That’s why they work at Wal-Mat, and besides, it’s not like they’re slaves.

I am shocked, shocked! that a globalised free market has taken away the continued reason for existence of so many people.

The eternal paradox which is wingnut welfare…

Which is great, if you’re a single, white, able-bodied male. Barbara Ehrenreich automatically didn’t have the same opportunities for advancement when she did her little sociological experiment; a woman who reads as poor and uneducated is almost entirely guaranteed to stay in poorly-paid service occupations forever. Change any one of those variables (white to non-white, male to female, able-bodied to disabled) and he’d have quit in disgust after the first three days…

I agree with his basic premise, just not the way he reads it. White, able-bodied men do still have a fair amount of potential upward mobility in the US. Unfortunately, there’s more of the rest of us than there are of him…

Wal*Mart didn’t intend to exploit them, but it saw the poor sashaying around without health care, openly flaunting their desperate desire to feed their kids and pay at least some of the bills and it just lost control.

I love how in the comments you have the obligatory lone “voice of reason” who doesn’t get all the outrage about a company merely trying to collect what is rightfully theirs, the good glibertarian he is. Yes, because large multinational companies ALWAYS do the right thing, it’s these deadbeat gradmas who we have to look out for.

Ironic that some lowly paid clerk – who apparently doesn’t realize he’s a pawn – would act like he’s the CEO of the Bank of Screw You and Your Little Dog Too. It’s sad when minimum wage Americans think they are self-made men.

Joe Max said,

February 8, 2009 at 18:21

Wal-Mart sells false economy.

And that’s your nutshell.

Six years ago we bought a coffeemaker for three times what WM charges, and we still have it. We’d have bought six coffeemakers from WM by now, so we’re ahead.

However, we had the extra scratch to lay out for that coffeemaker, plus the shipping because we had to buy online to get that quality. If you don’t have the dollars at the end of the week, or can’t buy ahead to wait for the coffeemaker to arrive, you go to Wal-Mart.

Every six months.