The Horrible House of Walton

[Clara T]

The Horrible House of Walton
Lying, cheating and swindling their way to the top
Friday 2nd December 2005, by Joe Allen



With A new documentary highlighting its corporate abuses and a series of scandals finally emerging in the mainstream media, the Wal-Mart retail empire is coming under the type of public scrutiny it avoided for decades under its founder Sam Walton. Joe Allen tells the story of the robber barons of the 21st century.

Article begins Here:
The latest embarrassment for the Wal-Mart empire was the leak of an internal memo outlining a plan to hold down health care costs. How? By dissuading “unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart.”

If this smacks of the 19th century fad of the American rich known as “Social Darwinism” (“weeding out the unfit”), that’s not surprising. There are other features present at Wal-Mart that seem to come straight from that century.

With the five senior members of the Walton family tied for fourth place in Forbes magazine’s most recent list of the “400 Richest Americans” (one of the five, John Walton, died in a plane crash earlier this year), the Waltons are the richest family in the world, worth more than $100 billion altogether. The Walton family is beginning to resemble the “robber barons” of the 19th century America—the ostentatiously wealthy and corrupt capitalists who dominated the U.S. economy.

The robber barons of the past were hated figures. The names of the “great families”—the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Mellons, the Morgans—became synonymous with cruelty and mean-spiritedness. Yet the Waltons have, so far, largely escaped public scrutiny or criticism for Wal-Mart’s corporate practices.

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article12532.html

[Erika]

1. WalMart handing out state assistance apps said it all.

They want the CEO's earning the max, and the lowly workers getting nothing but the lowest possible wage. They want corporate to profit while transferring the costs of employee health care to the taxpayers.

[marbuc]

2. " transferring the costs of employee healthcare system to the taxpayer"

Npt to hijack this thread, but I've felt recently that this scandal, as well as Big Auto's gripes about their health care outlays are a perfect opportunity to renew the discussion of universal health care. I actually support shifting thr burden of health care from corporations to the tax payer, if we can do so in a cost efficient manner.

[Erika]

3. I have no problem with that either

As long as we can get corporations and their CEO's to pay taxes so they also become tax-payers.

[MissMarple]

4. Freeing access to affordable health care from the employer based model

that dominates our health care "system" is a needed change. How all of that is paid for is another discussion. People should pay something even if it is based on a sliding scale, and a copay can inhibit many from running to the doctor for every little thing. It has been shown that copays really work, yet don't prevent those who think they really need to see a doctor from doing so. Also, health care policies need to be tailored to individual needs, while also allowing folks to change levels of care with out penalty.

While the government can provide health care for a significant number of Americans, I still see individual private policies having a place in the health care system in this country.