Thursday, November 10, 2005

See the Wal-Mart documentary in your neighborhood next week

This is pretty cool -- there are 7,000 showings of the new documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" around the nation over the next week.

You can go to a neighborhood premiere and see the movie for free.

Click here to find a premiere or to buy the DVD or even to host your own premiere.

I'm glad that the Illinois General Assembly has again shown leadership on this issue by requiring that employers report to the state how many of their employees are on public assistance. Mary Flowers, with help from Speaker Madigan, got that into law. My archive on the issue is here.

It's good to be in Blue America!

4 comments:

Bill Baar said...

I have to tell my boss what I receive from the Government?

I have to tell my boss I'm on a partial pysch disability?

What's my boss need to know about me and Uncle Sam.

This sounds like a gross law.

Nathan said...

http://midwest.chicagofedblogs.org/archives/2005/11/can_higher_educ.html

on another topic related to the economy, see the URL above

Dan Johnson said...

Nathan -- that's a great blog you've found. Bill, do you think it's OK for the most profitable (or at least the biggest retailer in the world) retailer to pay less than a living wage to their employees so that taxpayer-supported programs need to pick up the slack?

Bill Baar said...

I don't want any employeer to survey their employees about other sources of income, especially public assistance.

I don't think it's their business and appalled the Illinois GA would consider this a good idea.

I remember hanging Nixon's price control placards in my Dad's dime store in Oak Park in the 1970s. Price controls, including price controls on wages, a horrible idea and we paid a huge price later with horrible inflation that could only be brought down with huge interest rates and 20% home mortgages.

I'm not fan of price controls.

I would favor programs getting companies out of the health insurance buisness. In fact getting companies and employeers out of all of these benefits.

I'd rather see a universal application of the Federal Employees Health Benefit program accross the board.

So yes, I would like to see the connection between Health Insurance and Employeement broken in favor of National Programs and the burden for the lowest income folks picked up by tax payors.

Bush Ownership society ideas offer a lot of opportunities in this direction by turning people into investors and savers as opposed to wage earners and consumers. I think in the long run the burden on the gov will be less.

Clinton had a chance to do some creative things here with National Health Insurance. He failed by going into these secret meetings lead by Ira Magaziner and then coming up with a huge turkey of a program; so on top of his many character flaws and weaknesses, he failed to deliver on the one thing he promised to do.