Occupy WalMart
Jenson Hagen
It was a slip of the tongue the other night when I said Occupy WalMart. I meant to say Wall Street. In reality, what I said correctly pinpoints the epicenter of our economic woes.
Wall Street is more of an indirect participant. The biggest drag on our economy and real wages is the ongoing exportation of our jobs and productive operations and the importation of cheap goods (and services) from developing nations. Releasing currency pegs can reduce some of this exchange. The dollar would decline but our exports would become cheaper on the global market.
This massive trade imbalance has suppressed real interest rates here at home fueling the flames of the money bonanza seen over the past decade. A relaxation of financial regulations was the ember. How much has been done to reinstitute financial regulations? Please! This has become a cosmic joke. Nothing significant has been done.
Allowing companies to outsource operating activity will prevent any economic recovery. Money is flooding out of this country faster than the Federal Reserve can jump into action and pump more from the banking system. We will again need to resort to high-risk money schemes to inflate our money supply if we don't stop this outsourcing craze.
We have not only seen wages stagnate, we have seen the loss of retirement funds and full health benefits. Include our benefits into the picture and the American dream is slipping away extremely fast. Recovering full-time jobs is made more difficult if the floodgates to moving job overseas is still wide open. We scrape together 100,000 jobs only to see 100,000 better paying jobs move elsewhere.
A better symbol of our problems is WalMart. It's all the crap they sell and it's our insatiable appetite to buy the cheapest crap we can. Camp out on the WalMart parking lot if you want to exact real change. Just don't buy your camping gear from WalMart beforehand.
2:26 p.m.
Nov 15, '11
This is off topic but I was reminded when I read your article. About 10 years ago I was doing a business deal with a man who traveled here from his home in the SE part of the USA. He was driving a motor home that cost at least $900,000 and he was towing a Mercedes G class vehicle worth at least $100,000. Anyway, while he was working with me here, he parked his RV and his tow vehicle overnight in the parking lot of the Vancouver Walmart because they allowed free camping so he could save $25 - 40 per night in camping charges as compared with parking at an "RV Park". Now there was a guy who lived the slogan "watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves".
10:45 p.m.
Nov 15, '11
If you want to occupy Wall Mart, you should also encourage occupying Fred Meyer, Safeway, Target, etc. because they're all selling the same products from the same manufacturers.
11:44 a.m.
Nov 16, '11
Even more effective would be for all of you with righteous indignation to commit to buying no foreign products that have domestic alternatives. If you decry Walmart for exporting jobs, while you buy foreign goods that are the direct cause of jobs being exported, then your outrage rings hollow. That would be as hypocritical as a "union yes" sticker on the back of a Nissan or Hyundai.
6:30 a.m.
Nov 17, '11
Oh, you mean like the guy who was driving around Woodstock harassing women driving Japanese cars? Seriously. He'd slow down and yell "Buy American!" but only at women. Meanwhile, he's driving a Chrysler from the Daimler-Chrysler era...so buying from a German-owned company was "Buy American?"