I'm not sure if Walmart simply misjudged what people want this year...

[DU Ute]

You're right I misread Ireland's membership rate in the tables I was looking at. It's hard to measure in Europe because France supposedly has the lowest rate of membership, but their unions have massive political clout because they are the organizations that deliver health and unemployment benefits.

[YOUTUBE]WQkHajhJFfM[/YOUTUBE]

[Jeff Lebowski]

How Costco became the anti-Walmart:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/bu...agewanted=all&

[Uncle Ted]

Important safety tip... don't shoplift at Walmart:

Accused shoplifter dies after Walmart security place him in choke hold

Black Friday shopping weekend took a dark turn Sunday morning in Georgia: a man accused of shoplifting died after being tackled by a Walmart employee and a contract security officer. Police say the contract security worker "placed the suspected thief in a choke hold." The deceased reportedly stole two DVD players from the Walmart. Police found him "unresponsive and bleeding from his nose and mouth. The contract security worker is no longer working for Walmart.

[...]

[frank ryan]

Important safety tip... don't shoplift at Walmart:

Wal-Mart won't let their regular employees engage shoplifters. Recently some of them got fired after disarming a gunman. I guarded some detained shoplifters on more than one occasion. There are certain groups much more likely to steal than others. Girls pilfering makeup, old people just taking stuff, and professional shoplifters. A lot of times they just let the old people go.

[Moliere]

Wal-Mart won't let their regular employees engage shoplifters. Recently some of them got fired after disarming a gunman.

This is not unusual and in fact is a smart policy. Regular shelf stocking employees aren't trained to engage shoplifters, and especially not gunmen. That's a job better suited to police or trained security. I worked for years in a bank and the first rule of getting robbed was to do exactly as the robber asked and don't try to be a hero. We had one branch get robbed and an employee followed the man out the door, took him down in the street and got the money back. The employee wasn't fired, but he was pretty close to being fired for what he did. Luckily this robber didn't have a gun.

[U-Ute]

What unions do is quite simple. They negotiate higher wages for the employed, which results in lower overall employment. So if you want your state's unemployment rate to go up, support your local unions.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2000...ill-employment

Twice as many people working for half the wage does nothing for local economics.

[All-American]

Twice as many people working for half the wage does nothing for local economics.

You're assuming that each person making current minimum wages would also be paid the minimum if the floor were further reduced. That may be the case in some instances, sure, but where the market works properly, employees are compensated according to the value they add. If minimum wage is at $10, an a potential employee would contribute $10 of value to the company, then the company would make the hire since the marginal cost is not greater than the marginal benefit. If the minimum wage were $9, the company would hire a potential employee who brings $9 of benefit as well as the other who brings $10, and under a correctly-functioning market, would pay them $9 and $10, respectively.

There are certainly times when that doesn't happen and they are both paid $9, but that's a market weakens found throughout the system, not just at the lowest levels. I've not heard an explanation why the weakness should be so intolerably prevalent only at the lowest wage levels or why a minimum wage does not do more social harm by preventing the mutually-beneficial transaction that would have otherwise occurred below the minimum wage level. Why wouldn't reducing minimum wage levels be Kaldor-Hicks efficient, even if not Pareto efficient?