Colonel Sanders Defines "Socialism"

[cornographic]

How to Steal the Economy in 6 Easy Steps:

 

[I AM FOOT FOOT]

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

 

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

[Moiraine]

 

 

 

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

I know you're not replying to me here but there's a difference between a small to medium size business owner and a billionaire business owner and I don't think corn is talking about the former. The latter ladder is not really climbable except with a few extremely rare exceptions.

[HuskerNBigD]

 

Socialism in the classroom. Everyone has heard it....

 

 

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little ...

 

The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.

 

In my opinion, and I know what socialism is on a very basic level. So I'm not going to try to throw out a bunch of stuff that isn't true, for lack of knowledge on the subject. I'm going to assume that middle class americans would be better off in this instance. The concept of income equality or inequality...does this mean that everyone is suppose to make the exact same amount, regardless of job/career? As I'm trying to have thoughts come through my head I think about the students I have and the difference socio economic status' they come from. There is a very wide range. I don't know how much I like having income equality forced on to the people. This, coming from someone who is and will be "low-end" to average middle class their entire life. We may sneak into the high end by the end of our lives if we both get masters degrees (me and the wife)...anyway that's not the point. I've always thought that people should be brought up to suppress the feelings of greed and nurture the quality of humility and grace.

 

In 2012 the total personal income was 13.4 billion dollars ($13,401,868,693). The United States population in 2012 was at 314.1 million.

 

Math says that each person should then get $42.66. I mean that's the only way it is "fair" by that term. I'm not well versed in economics so, someone without being an a-hole or smartass want to explain this "Socialism" thing to me. I'd would like a pro point of view and a con, please.

 

Thanks.

 

Well, to understand socialism/capitalism more fully, it requires a class analysis. In capitalism, you basically have the owning/investor/business/capitalist class and the working/middle class--"The People". Capitalism concentrates the wealth to the former, that's the point of it: the owning class controls the surplus value, the profits. The latter basically rents himself/herself out to the capitalist for a wage/salary, which, in general, is kept as low as possible by the capitalist so the latter can concentrate as much wealth as possible to themselves. The capitalists are always seeking a working class population that offers the lowest cost of labor, thats why they are always moving overseas.

 

Currently, ~62 people own more wealthy than 50% of the world's population(~3.5 Billion people). That's the most extreme e.g of income inequality and what has people up in arms. The extreme wealth at the top erodes any chance @ democracy and tends toward fascism.

 

Anyway, if you are seriously interested in the subject, I highly recommend taking the time to listen to economist RD Wolff's weekly "Economic Updates". He's the best source I know of. If you listen to 20+ of them, or so, you will get a clear picture. Michael Parenti is great too, in a more philosophical sense and you can find vids of him on YTube.

 

http://www.rdwolff.com/articles/audio

 

As to class room dynamics, well, thats up to teachers and students to decide. Ideally, rather than setting students against one another in stark competition, it's aim should be to encourage and bring out the initiative of each student, especially the ones that struggle. Have the "best" ones help out the struggling ones, for e.g. As to "how much should people make", again, that is up to the people to decide, but, unfortunately, the people in the current system often don't have much say in it, but that's why they form unions.

 

 

That's the problem. Ideally, you'd love to have the best ones help out the struggling ones but it's a two-way street. How do we know that they aren't helping? Or maybe they're trying to and there are some individuals who would rather scrape by on the coattails of someone else. Differing levels of patience or effort would cause individuals to butt heads really quick.I'm not saying this is always the case, but in today's society - there are too many variables to re-engineer the entire population to think this way. Hell, I'm 26 years old and would consider myself to be reasonably successful and a hard worker, but if social media taught me anything, there are a lot of individuals my age that could give two you-know-whats about putting in time and effort to establish a career or life for themselves. They're too busy choosing between the Nashville or Gingham filter on Instagram, or re-tweeting a riveting thought from the Kardashians. We're at a point, in society, where we are not going to be able to get everyone to collaborate and work together towards the greater good. It's pathetic to say, but that is a simple fact.

 

You state that it is up to the students and teachers to decide...if they couldn't get a college classroom, which would have a sample population that is more similar - in regards to age, education levels, backgrounds, etc - than an entire country's population, its hard to believe that we could get the country on the same page. There are just too many differing viewpoints within the population to realistically believe we can all work together (again, sad to say).

[I AM FOOT FOOT]

 

 

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

I know you're not replying to me here but there's a difference between a small to medium size business owner and a billionaire business owner and I don't think corn is talking about the former. The latter ladder is not really climbable except with a few extremely rare exceptions.

 

aah I see. yes being a line worker and moving to the top of a fortune 500 type gig isn't going to be a shoe in no matter how hard you try. I speak in shorter ladders I guess.

[BigRedBuster]

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

I know you're not replying to me here but there's a difference between a small to medium size business owner and a billionaire business owner and I don't think corn is talking about the former. The latter ladder is not really climbable except with a few extremely rare exceptions.

aah I see. yes being a line worker and moving to the top of a fortune 500 type gig isn't going to be a shoe in no matter how hard you try. I speak in shorter ladders I guess.

It's happened enough to prove its possible.

 

And....yes corn pretty much hates all sizes of business owners.

[cornographic]

 

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

 

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

 

Well, that is consistent with my argument: you change your class position, you become an owner instead of a wage worker. In capitalism, most people have to be wage workers(or chatel slaves) to make the thing work, obviously. You need more "Indians" than "Chiefs" to produce the sh#t that the owner then owns and profits from. In the current set up, the owner controls the "surplus value", not the workers.

[cornographic]

 

 

Socialism in the classroom. Everyone has heard it....

 

 

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little ...

 

The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.

 

In my opinion, and I know what socialism is on a very basic level. So I'm not going to try to throw out a bunch of stuff that isn't true, for lack of knowledge on the subject. I'm going to assume that middle class americans would be better off in this instance. The concept of income equality or inequality...does this mean that everyone is suppose to make the exact same amount, regardless of job/career? As I'm trying to have thoughts come through my head I think about the students I have and the difference socio economic status' they come from. There is a very wide range. I don't know how much I like having income equality forced on to the people. This, coming from someone who is and will be "low-end" to average middle class their entire life. We may sneak into the high end by the end of our lives if we both get masters degrees (me and the wife)...anyway that's not the point. I've always thought that people should be brought up to suppress the feelings of greed and nurture the quality of humility and grace.

 

In 2012 the total personal income was 13.4 billion dollars ($13,401,868,693). The United States population in 2012 was at 314.1 million.

 

Math says that each person should then get $42.66. I mean that's the only way it is "fair" by that term. I'm not well versed in economics so, someone without being an a-hole or smartass want to explain this "Socialism" thing to me. I'd would like a pro point of view and a con, please.

 

Thanks.

 

Well, to understand socialism/capitalism more fully, it requires a class analysis. In capitalism, you basically have the owning/investor/business/capitalist class and the working/middle class--"The People". Capitalism concentrates the wealth to the former, that's the point of it: the owning class controls the surplus value, the profits. The latter basically rents himself/herself out to the capitalist for a wage/salary, which, in general, is kept as low as possible by the capitalist so the latter can concentrate as much wealth as possible to themselves. The capitalists are always seeking a working class population that offers the lowest cost of labor, thats why they are always moving overseas.

 

Currently, ~62 people own more wealthy than 50% of the world's population(~3.5 Billion people). That's the most extreme e.g of income inequality and what has people up in arms. The extreme wealth at the top erodes any chance @ democracy and tends toward fascism.

 

Anyway, if you are seriously interested in the subject, I highly recommend taking the time to listen to economist RD Wolff's weekly "Economic Updates". He's the best source I know of. If you listen to 20+ of them, or so, you will get a clear picture. Michael Parenti is great too, in a more philosophical sense and you can find vids of him on YTube.

 

http://www.rdwolff.com/articles/audio

 

As to class room dynamics, well, thats up to teachers and students to decide. Ideally, rather than setting students against one another in stark competition, it's aim should be to encourage and bring out the initiative of each student, especially the ones that struggle. Have the "best" ones help out the struggling ones, for e.g. As to "how much should people make", again, that is up to the people to decide, but, unfortunately, the people in the current system often don't have much say in it, but that's why they form unions.

 

 

That's the problem. Ideally, you'd love to have the best ones help out the struggling ones but it's a two-way street. How do we know that they aren't helping? Or maybe they're trying to and there are some individuals who would rather scrape by on the coattails of someone else. Differing levels of patience or effort would cause individuals to butt heads really quick.I'm not saying this is always the case, but in today's society - there are too many variables to re-engineer the entire population to think this way. Hell, I'm 26 years old and would consider myself to be reasonably successful and a hard worker, but if social media taught me anything, there are a lot of individuals my age that could give two you-know-whats about putting in time and effort to establish a career or life for themselves. They're too busy choosing between the Nashville or Gingham filter on Instagram, or re-tweeting a riveting thought from the Kardashians. We're at a point, in society, where we are not going to be able to get everyone to collaborate and work together towards the greater good. It's pathetic to say, but that is a simple fact.

 

You state that it is up to the students and teachers to decide...if they couldn't get a college classroom, which would have a sample population that is more similar - in regards to age, education levels, backgrounds, etc - than an entire country's population, its hard to believe that we could get the country on the same page. There are just too many differing viewpoints within the population to realistically believe we can all work together (again, sad to say).

 

Education is an very complex subject and I am not a professional teacher, though I have taught some things in the past. Here's one thing I do know: you don't get the best out of students or create an optimal learning environment by brow beating them with a competitive grading system that rewards a few, setting students against one another. The kids lower on the grading totem poll usually end up feeling like sh#t--and maybe that, in part, is why they end up "failing", as you describe. Their initiative gets destroyed. The point of education is about one finding out what one really wants to do in life--one's passion, preferrably. People have different aptitudes for different things: you go astray if you are trying to force a would-be brilliant artist into being an engineer, for e.g. Of course, education in the USA capitalist system is modeled off the Prussian/Leipzig/Pavlovian models--i.e. regimented to create workers for the system.

 

Indoctrination, as they say.

 

The Steiner or Montessori schools have some very good approaches, IMO, and everyone I know of--parents/students--who are involved with them tend to be thrilled with the educational approach. Maria Montessori was banned by Mussolini because her approach was a threat to the conformist system.

 

Anyway, big subject.

[cornographic]

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not too knowledgeable on the subject either. But I see anything that we have that's paid for by taxes and used by the public as forms of socialism. E.g. road repair, the fire department, medicaid. I'm not pro pure socialism and Bernie is a democratic socialist. I want everyone to have their basic needs (e.g. health care) met, and I want the super rich to pay more taxes since most are unwilling to pay fair wages, and do anything they can to make things cheaper, like have children in China make their goods. I don't want everyone to have an equal amount of $ no matter how much or little they work. I think the super rich should still have a lot more $ than the others. It's incentive for people to work hard. But if those people are unwilling to help out society and continue to pay employees as little as possible when they have more $ then they could ever possibly use in their lives, their children's lives, and their grandchildren's lives, they should be taxed more and those taxes should go to the super poor. Yes, that's wealth re-distribution, and I have no problem with that. There isn't one person on this planet that's worth 300 times more than another human, but right now that's how it works.

Yep, good post. The deal is with the working class is one rents one's labor/skill for a wage while the owners take all the spoils. Well, you can "work hard", work your ass off your whole life as a wage/salary worker and guess what, still be poor or just getting by. It's the difference between ownership and labor.

a lot of business owners started out as hourly wage workers. the ladder is climbable, even if you make your own ladder.

I know you're not replying to me here but there's a difference between a small to medium size business owner and a billionaire business owner and I don't think corn is talking about the former. The latter ladder is not really climbable except with a few extremely rare exceptions.

aah I see. yes being a line worker and moving to the top of a fortune 500 type gig isn't going to be a shoe in no matter how hard you try. I speak in shorter ladders I guess.

It's happened enough to prove its possible.

 

And....yes corn pretty much hates all sizes of business owners.

 

False, Brofessor. I prefer collective ownership--WSDEs--remember?

[BigRedBuster]

So yes....you hate someone who invests in their own business and owns it.

[cornographic]

So yes....you hate someone who invests in their own business and owns it.

Depends on the business, I guess. If your business is that of a pimp, or human trafficker, or an arms dealer, or heroine dealer, or junk food manufacturer, etc etc, yeah, gotta problem with it. And, if you are a penny pinching miser that has no regard for your workers--again, problem. If you are a gigantic corporation that buys up all the land, spreads pollution, runs sweatshop labor, creates some useless pc.s of crap for the sole purpose of profit: problem. Ted Turner owns 2.5 million acres of land in GA to graze some cattle. I gotta problem with one guy owning that much land. I gotta problem with slumlords. If you buy up aquafers to privatize water and sell it back to people--problem.

 

I generally have a problem with the idle investor class living off the backs of the working class.. I gotta problem with idle, self entitled, trust fund kids, but they generally have more problems than me, so wtever.

 

Feelin' me, here, Brofessor? You gotta nuance this thing. Small business owners with integrity I don't have much of a problem with. The problem is, that Labor usually is not taken care of adequately. The wages offered in a smallish mom and pop endeavor are often the worst out there--no can live on them. No benes, either, FTMP.

 

I think WSDEs are a better idea, though, and it's looking to me like they are the wave of the future. The interwebs are accelerating their advent--especially amongst the youth.

[Moiraine]

Wages should be based on how successful the company is. If you're telling that employee they're good enough to work there (by not firing them) then pay them a good wage based on what the company/CEO is making without putting the company out of business. This isn't happening in very many businesses.

 

I have no issue with a small business paying minimum wage. For a lot of them the owners are only making enough to make a living. Although the business owners I know only pay minimum wage for the first few months.

[cornographic]

Wages should be based on how successful the company is. If you're telling that employee they're good enough to work there (by not firing them) then pay them a good wage based on what the company/CEO is making without putting the company out of business. This isn't happening in very many businesses.

 

I have no issue with a small business paying minimum wage. For a lot of them the owners are only making enough to make a living. Although the business owners I know only pay minimum wage for the first few months.

Yep.

 

Well, I know plenty of small biz owners that are miserly millionaires that don't pay their help jack squat. So, just depends.

 

Share the chicken, baby, share that chicken!

[Scratchtown]

When I was growing up in a small town we had family businesses around and we also had corporate fast food in our town. It used to be that high school kids were working those minimum wage jobs in the small town I grew up in. Now, when I'm back home the 3 to 4 times a year, it seems as though adults are working all of those jobs and the kids don't work anywhere.

 

Does that have anything to do with anything? I don't know. Just a thought that came to my head. These places that got by with paying minimum wage was because HS kids can make enough living at home not paying bills and such on MW. Adults can't, thus the demand for higher wages?

 

I don't know if that's comparable to larger communities but I would have to think it is somewhat?

 

I hardly ever see high school kids working anywhere anymore. Maybe I'm having a hard time telling the difference between HS and college kids....idk.

[Moiraine]

When I was growing up in a small town we had family businesses around and we also had corporate fast food in our town. It used to be that high school kids were working those minimum wage jobs in the small town I grew up in. Now, when I'm back home the 3 to 4 times a year, it seems as though adults are working all of those jobs and the kids don't work anywhere.

 

Does that have anything to do with anything? I don't know. Just a thought that came to my head. These places that got by with paying minimum wage was because HS kids can make enough living at home not paying bills and such on MW. Adults can't, thus the demand for higher wages?

 

I don't know if that's comparable to larger communities but I would have to think it is somewhat?

 

I hardly ever see high school kids working anywhere anymore. Maybe I'm having a hard time telling the difference between HS and college kids....idk.

 

 

This was why my mom (I was in high school at the time) was always opposed to a big raise in the minimum wage and I agreed with her. The minimum wage jobs were done by high school kids. They didn't need to make enough money to make a living. But things have changed and because most minimum wage jobs are done by adults now who are on their own trying to get by, then the wage should also change, imho.

 

Another big problem is everyone is told to go to college now which has made the college degree worth less. If everyone has a college degree then there are going to be people with college degrees doing low paying jobs.

 

I'm sure there are hundreds/thousands of variables involved. This is a bit of a segue but I think more should have been done to incentivize keeping jobs in the U.S. It was/is morally wrong to have products made in China when how they treat their workers is illegal here. Why are we okay with letting our products get made under those conditions when we would arrest people here for doing the same thing? At the very least tariffs should be added but really, companies who do that should be prosecuted. It should not be legal. I think things might be a bit better now that China's economy is better but I dunno. I don't know enough about it.

 

Bigger segue: I honestly think the Walmarting of America has a big part in our economic woes. We can buy things a little cheaper (although they break faster) but there are less decent paying jobs because things aren't getting made in the U.S. anymore, and the people who run those businesses aren't putting much $ back into the economy.

 

If you have 10 small businesses making $1,000,000 in profit and 1 Walmart making $1,000,000 in profit, the small business owners are each going to be spending their $100,000 in profit just on essentials they need in order to live decently. That money is going directly back into the economy, being spent on goods at other stores. But with Walmart, $900,000 is just sitting in a bank somewhere not doing anyone any good except for a couple people in Arkansas and their descendants. Oh, and our taxes are spent to build roads that lead to Walmarts, or just to bring them into our towns. Oh, and Walmart spends less % on charity than the small businesses. That is a fact. But they'll make sure they tell everyone as loudly as possibly how much they're spending on it. They'll also argue that they bring in jobs, but people had jobs before Walmart existed. The costs of Walmart are hidden. They have cheaply priced goods but we're paying for them in other ways, even if we never shop there. The same goes for lots of huge stores.