Action in the House or Senate? Forget it. The most that bunch can manage is a Band Aid to staunch severed arteries. Action is what's needed, so we must look elsewhere.
I believe far more in business than government to solve great problems. Getting back to Wal-Mart, it's there that a change could be made to move the country forward into prosperity, helping their balance sheet while solving the un-solvable.
One hundred years ago, come January 3, 2014:
Henry Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.
A Cleveland, Ohio newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression." The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.
Ford was a pioneer of "welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers. (Wikipedia; Henry Ford, the $5 workday)
Wal-Mart can take us there again, if they care to and dare to. They're powerful enough to do it and the country is in steeper decline than 1914. Perhaps there will be no centennial celebration of Ford's $5 day, but it's a lovely idea and would be yet another "gift' to an America where leaders of the business world have often led the nation. That might be particularly fitting under these circumstances. While an America without Wal-Mart is possible, a Wal-Mart without America is escapist fiction.
As a post script to this conversation, it's more than likely that the broad-based future of America lies more in the trades than occupations requiring a university degree. The current 52% jobless rate among college graduates supports that outlook. "We need more educated workers' has been overblown as a concept. Student-loans surpassing $1 trillion nationally (more than all credit-card debt combined) is the latest and most dangerous "bubble' in the economy.
We badly need a workable, job sustaining, mutually fair and profitable alternative. I think building upon the enormous purchasing power of America's bottom forty percent serves that purpose.
What do you think?
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