My Favorite Quote of the Day
From a Chicago Tribune editorial on the city aldermen blocking Wal-Mart construction in the city, via Carpe Diem:
Organized labor doesn't like Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart doesn't have union jobs. It just has jobs (with an average hourly wage of $12.05 in Chicago). The aldermen, of course, already have jobs. They get paid $110,556 a year and they figure that as long as they keep the labor unions off their backs, they'll keep making $110,556 a year.
Who says the City Council doesn't generate jobs? If you're one of the 50 aldermen, your unemployment rate is 0 percent. But the unemployment rate for the rest of Chicago is above 10 percent. One in 10 Chicagoans is out of work.
MJ:
Not to be picky, but shouldn't they be measuring the median hourly wage, instead of average (presumably the mean). It is widely known that income and wage distributions are significantly non-normal.
August 6, 2009, 3:34 amspiro:
Even though I shake my fist at Wal-Mart for making my life tougher as a small business owner, I admire my enemy for what they have been able to accomplish as a business. Kind of like the New England Patriots - evil, but damn impressive.
August 6, 2009, 9:32 amMy question for the "Wal-mart is Satan" crowd (the Religious Left) is: What other company has a corporate structure that helps people without college degrees advance to equivalent high paying managerial positions?
Wal-Mart-o-phobia is nothing more than elitist disdain for the proletariat. They shop at Wal-mart and work at Wal-mart, and, if you take a second to actually talk to them, you find out that most of them are pretty damn happy with their lives. Much happier, on average, than your typical social sciences grad student or faculty member.