A faltering business model: Profit on cheap, abused labor and cheap goods

NYT: Paige Murdock, a manager, went weeks without getting a day off or seeing her family but, as a salaried employee, did not receive overtime pay. The company limited the hours she could give to her staff, she said, which often meant she was running the store short-handed. 

When a manager said Ms. Murdock, 44, couldn’t take her previously approved vacation week to help her daughter, who is in the military, move to Texas, she decided to quit. “If you look at my résumé, I am a very loyal employee,” Ms. Murdock said. 

“I will work my heart out. .... I don’t ask for much.”

Oh yeah, you asked for too much, so bugger off, you lazy ingrate. 

As the Donald would say, YOU'RE FIRED!!

By now, it is clear to anyone paying any attention that as a general rule capitalism does not care about anything except profit. Perks are necessary public relations (propaganda) measures needed to retain employees. Concerns such as human misery, environmental degradation, and low worker wages with non-existent benefits, or nearly non-existent, do not amount to things that lead to significant improvement. Sometimes those things lead to campaign contributions and fees to public relations companies (professional deceivers and liars) for corporate protection. They do not lead to protection for customers. 

That's just business as usual for most companies, most of the time, in most places. 

The New York Times writes:

Sandra Beadling was fed up with the 70-hour workweeks, the delivery trucks running days behind schedule, and the wear and tear on her knees from all the stooping to restock the bottom shelves.

The manager of the Dollar General store in Wells, Maine, Ms. Beadling, 54, had tried to hire more help. But that was a tough sell when Walmart was offering $16 an hour and her store was paying $12.

Ms. Beadling had spent long stretches this summer as one of only a few workers in the store, tending to the register and trying to help shoppers. She had pleaded with her managers to allow the store’s part-time workers to have more hours, but to no avail.

Dollar stores, which pay among the lowest wages in the retail industry and often operate in areas where there is little competition, are stumbling in the later stages of the pandemic.

Sales are slowing and some measures of profit are shrinking as the industry struggles with a confluence of challenges. They include burned-out workers, pressure to increase wages, supply chain problems and a growing number of cities and towns that are rejecting new dollar stores because, they say, the business model harms their communities.

The troubles follow a year of soaring profits and a period of staggering growth in the industry. Roughly one in every three stores that have been announced to open in the United States this year is a dollar store, according to Coresight Research, a retail advisory firm, a sign of how well the industry did in 2020.

The business model, which relies on relatively cheap labor and inexpensive goods, is designed to flourish even when its core customers are hurting financially. The strategy was honed during the high unemployment and wage stagnation of the Great Recession of 2008.  

In a statement, Dollar General said, “We pay competitive wages, which are determined based on several factors including the relevant labor market.” The company added that “our operating standards are designed to provide stores with sufficient labor hours, and it is not our expectation that store managers should work 70 to 80 hours per week.” 

Part-time workers sometimes encounter the opposite problem of not having enough work. As a store manager, Ms. Beadling said, she was constantly trying to find additional hours to give to her employees who needed the money, including one worker who was living in a tent because she couldn’t afford rent.

But the allotted hours for the store were limited by higher-up managers, she said.

This summer, social media buzzed with photos of dollar stores, from Lincoln, Neb., to Pittsburgh and beyond, where employees had taped up signs in the front door announcing that they had walked off the job.

“Capitalism will destroy this country,” read one sign in the window of a Dollar General in Eliot, Maine, this spring. “If you don’t pay people enough to live their lives, why should they slave away for you?”

DG's statement that it is not a “corporate expectation” that store managers should work 70 to 80 hours per week is public relations (a lie). Regular people's real world expectation that such a statement is corporate bullshit, a/k/a/ public relations, a/k/a lies and deceit.

a/k/a/ = “also known as” in legal jargon

A hungry lizard, poor thing, just looking for food

in its natural environment and being harassed by cruel 

cowboys with guns 

Eons ago in August of 2019, back when cowboys with six-shooters were wrangling grumpy but emaciated T. rex lizards on the prairies (and elsewhere) in defense of rich people and campaign donors (tied for first and second), God third, nation fourth and average people maybe 7th or 8th, I posted a discussion about an alleged nascent social consciousness among major corporations. At the time I dismissed that squeak of corporate moral concern like this: 

That is aspirational, but vague to the point of being meaningless.

Other people also questioned the motives of a strange corporate burp of social conscience, as discussed here last August: 

“But do people like [USB Bank chairman Axel] Weber really believe this stuff? .... The idea that banks were selling ESG [environmental, sustainability, green, etc.] products seemed a little like priests in the medieval Catholic church selling ‘indulgences’ .... the noise in the system was concealing a more important area of silence.

The issue at stake revolved around risk management. If you listened to the noise around ESG, it seemed that the movement was all about activism: vocal campaigners were calling for social and environmental change, and companies and financial groups were shouting about what they were doing to support this. But if you looked more closely at ESG, with an anthropologist’s lens, it was clear that there was a second factor at work that was less openly discussed: self-interest.

So, once again, money talks and real people, the environment and everything else, e.g., democracy, and civil liberties walks. Unless ignoring those disgusting non-profit things ding profits too much, they get ignored, denied, or spun into faux realities by public relations professionals, a/k/a dividers, liars, and/or deceivers. 

Questions: Are low paid American workers just spoiled whining wuss? Does pay reflect what the market will bear and if you don't like, quit and get a better job? Is this yet another bucket of worms where American government is neutered and unable to respond so that uncaring market forces, i.e., insatiable profit lust, are in control? How meaningful are civil liberties if you are so poor and tied to your job that you are generally unable to exercise them, e.g., insufficient time to vote or become informed, insufficient time to get vaccinated, etc?

Corruption and anti-democratic rot in the two-party system

ProPublica reported on how one provision of the December 2017 tax cut for rich people and big corporations law came into being:

In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”

Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.

Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.

The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses.”

Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.  

The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.

That speaks for itself: Quid pro quo. Pay-to-play. Corruption parading as free speech. 

In another ProPublica article, Republican anti-democratic rage over the 2020 election is still white hot. It appears to be intensifying in at least the some places, not softening. ProPublica writes:

HOOD COUNTY, Texas — Michele Carew would seem an unlikely target of Donald Trump loyalists who have fixated their fury on the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president.

The nonpartisan elections administrator in the staunchly Republican Hood County, just an hour southwest of Fort Worth, oversaw an election in which Trump got some 81% of the vote. It was among the former president’s larger margins of victory in Texas, which also went for him.

Yet over the past 10 months, Carew’s work has come under persistent attack from hard-line Republicans. They allege disloyalty and liberal bias at the root of her actions, from the time she denied a reporter with the fervently pro-Trump network One America News entrance to a training that was not open to the public to accusations, disputed by the Texas secretary of state’s office, that she is violating state law by using electronic machines that randomly number ballots.

Viewing her decisions as a litmus test of her loyalty to the Republican Party, they have demanded that Carew be fired or her position abolished and her duties transferred to an elected county clerk who has used social media to promote baseless allegations of widespread election fraud.

That speaks for itself: Anti-democratic American-style fascism that demands loyalty to the fascist Republican Party, not loyalty to democracy, voting rights, or election integrity. And this is from rank and file Republicans, not national elites.

Finally, multiple sources have reported that Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) has received significant campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. She is one of two conservative Democratic Senators who are blocking passage of two infrastructure bills. She refuses to give reasons for her opposition other than to say the bill she opposes is too big at $3.5 trillion. The reconciliation bill imposes a requirement for the government to negotiate drug prices instead of letting companies charge whatever they can get away with. Based on those facts, (campaign contributions, her silence, and corporate profits at stake) one can reasonably conclude that Sinema is giving pay back to the pharma industry for their generosity.

Salon writes:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the controversial Arizona Democrat who threatens to derail President Biden's legislative agenda, received more than $750,000 in donations from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. After that, she announced her opposition to a Democratic plan to lower prescription drug costs.

Sinema told White House officials that she opposes House and Senate bills that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs, sources told Politico this week. Democrats estimate these bills would save $450 billion over the next decade and thereby pay for a large portion of President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan.  

Sinema is a longtime favorite of the pharmaceutical industry and now appears ready to undermine Biden's entire agenda as Big Pharma wages a lobbying blitz in hopes of torpedoing the bill, which nearly 90% of voters support. Sinema and several House Democrats who oppose the drug pricing plan have received major financial support from the industry. Given a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House majority of 220 to 212 (with three seats currently vacant), their opposition could sink the proposal or even the entire budget bill.

Sinema has received $519,988 from PACs and individuals in the pharmaceutical industry throughout her political career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. She brought in more than $120,000 in pharma contributions between 2019 and 2020 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Sinema has also received $190,161 from donors in the pharmaceutical manufacturing space and $62,797 from the medical supplies industry.

That speaks for itself: Quid pro quo. Pay-to-play. Corruption parading as free speech. Contrary public opinion be damned.

Questions: Is our two-party system seriously corrupted by campaign contributions? Is democracy under serious attack by an American style fascism or authoritarianism?

The Eastman memo: A fascist plan to subvert an election

The Washington Post writes about a way to overthrow the US government that a legal adviser to the ex-president wrote to steal the 2020 election for him:

it’s a good bet that most people have never even heard of the Eastman memo.

That says something troubling about how blasé the mainstream press has become about the attempted coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election — and how easily a coup could succeed next time.

The memo, unearthed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, is a stunner. Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.

In other words, how to run a coup in six easy steps.

Pretty huge stuff, right? You’d think so, but the mainstream press has largely looked the other way. Immediately after the memo was revealed, according to a study by left-leaning Media Matters for America, there was no on-air news coverage — literally zero on the three major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. Not on the evening newscasts watched by more than 20 million Americans, far greater than the audience for cable news. Not on the morning shows the next day. And when Sunday rolled around, NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the only broadcast network show that bothered to mention it. (Some late-night hosts did manage to play it for laughs.)

“The Horrifying Legal Blueprint for Trump’s War on Democracy” read the headline on Jonathan Chait’s piece in New York magazine’s Intelligencer section. And in the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie took it on with “Trump Had a Mob. He Also Had a Plan.” The Post’s Greg Sargent hammered away at it.

Some national newspapers paid attention, but not much. USA Today with a story; the New York Times with a few paragraphs dropped deep into a sweeping news analysis.

For the most part, the memo slipped past the public — just another piece of flotsam from the wreckage of American society, drifting by unnoticed.

Questions: 

1. Has the MSM failed to report responsibly on the Eastman memo, or is it merely an aberrant curiosity of little importance and the MSM did a fine job by mostly ignoring it?

2. Is corporate ownership and/or capitalism of news media mostly compatible with competent, professional journalism, or mostly incompatible? Does it matter that corporations are people and unlimited dark money can flow to politicians to buy them? 

Status check: The Democrats and judicial nominees

Under current broken government circumstances, political partisan appointments to the federal bench are the most direct way to move politics to the left, right or anywhere else. Congress is hopelessly broken by hyper-partisan fascist Republicans. Republicans in power don't compromise unless there is absolutely no alternative. Democracy demands compromise. Republican refusal to compromise is anti-democratic authoritarianism.

Under our fascist and crackpot ex-president backed by a fascist and crackpot Republican Party Senate, putting radical right judges on the federal bench was a top priority. Arguably the top priority. What is it under Biden and the Dems?

Wikipedia writes about the status of judicial nominees as of Sept. 30, 2021:

This is a comprehensive list of all Article III and Article IV United States federal judges appointed by President Joe Biden as well as a partial list of Article I federal judicial appointments, excluding appointments to the District of Columbia judiciary.[1]

As of September 30, 2021, the United States Senate has confirmed 14 Article III judges nominated by Biden: five judges for the United States courts of appeals and nine judges for the United States district courts. There are 27 nominations currently awaiting Senate action: eight for the courts of appeals and 19 for the district courts. There are currently five vacancies on the U.S. courts of appeals, 71 vacancies on the U.S. district courts, two vacancies on the U.S. Court of International Trade,[2][3] and 32 announced federal judicial vacancies that will occur before the end of Biden's first term (11 for the courts of appeals and 21 for district courts).[4][5] Biden has not made any recess appointments to the federal courts.

In terms of Article I courts, as of September 30, 2021, the Senate has not confirmed any judges nominated by Biden. There are currently two nominations to Article I courts awaiting Senate action; both for the United States Court of Federal Claims. There are currently four vacancies on the United States Court of Federal Claims, two on the United States Tax Court, and one on the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. On March 2, 2021, Biden designated Elaine D. Kaplan as Chief Judge of the Court of Federal Claims.[6]

Regarding Article IV territorial courts, as of September 30, 2021, the Senate has not confirmed any judges nominated by Biden. Biden has not elevated any judges to the position of Chief Judge.

Questions: 

1. What grade should Biden, Schumer and Senate Democrats reasonably get so far about putting Democratic judges on the federal bench, A, B, C, D or F? 

2. Should Biden's choices not be called Democrats, and if not, why not? Since Republican judges are clearly partisan Republican politicians, should Democrats take the "high ground" and not worry too much about political partisanship, or are we now past that and it's time to drop the pretense?

Words of inspiration… or not.

 

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

What do you think?  First, let me plant some mixed seeds in your brain, just for the hell of it:

• I believe it beyond question
• I believe it, but with caveats
  
• I don’t believe it, period
  
• What a crock, but it makes people feel better
  
• Only after we’ve exhausted every other possibility
• Correlates based on certain variables (e.g., skin pigmentation, bank account balance, how well-connected one is, based on one's GPS situation, other)
• Morality and justice are ECCs (essentially contested concepts) that are in the eye of the beholder
• The moral universe keeps changing the goal posts and can’t be kept up with in a timely manner
• There is no "universal arbitrator" of morality and justice
  
• God decides justice and morality, not man
• Justice is just a four seven letter word
• Idealistic, bleeding-heart bullshit
• Theoretical, not real.  Wake up and smell the corruption
  
• “The [arc] wall is high, and too hard to climb,” a la Juliette
• “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows”
• “What’s morality got to do, got to do with it?”
• “A tree grows in Brooklyn,” but that’s about the extent of it
• “There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.”  And she’s mostly effed.

Okay, okay, getting a little weird here just for the dramatization (and I know it 😉).  Anyway, here’s the question:

Do you believe that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice?

Bloviate.  And recommend.

Pragmatic rationalism: Another forlorn attempt to explain it

Germaine's predicament -- cognitive rocks are super heavy

This blog post is another of my proverbial lost causes. But I'm a modern day Sisyphus. In my opinion, my past attempts to explain my political anti-ideology ideology, pragmatic rationalism, have been unsatisfactory.

Nonetheless, Sisyphus is persistent. He keeps pushing that rock up the hill, hoping the spouse doesn't, uh, interfere?

Hey tweety pie, could you please let that thing go and get some groceries?? 

You can play with your rock later. I'll make sure it 

stays at the bottom of the hill. 

Aw, crud, do I have to?

Yesterday, I tried to explain why I now believe that the Republican Party and its rank and file supporters are fairly included in the label of FRP (fascist Republican Party). I got entangled in this quite useful politics back and forth, also known among experts as "to and fro."  

The following is from yesterday's discussion here about the fascism or lack thereof among Republican rank and file voters.

Opening volley: I don't think your description of the Republican party is either helpful or entirely fair. You basically are saying that there are 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News. There isn't enough daylight between these groups to call them separate.

Most of the people who actually care about fiscal conservatism (read: tax cuts) are a separate group. The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. Likewise, the base is willing to parrot the points of the elites, but they don't really care about the priorities of the elites. Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons. The elites are fine with it because it solidifies their power. The base is fine with it because it lets them impose their will on others.

Sisyphus response 1: 

The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. .... Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons.

That is a really nice, clear way to describe the situation. Well done.

That is how I see it. The elites are happy to, and expert at, using the base to serve their own interests.

But I do not understand the unfairness you see in how I characterize and label the FRP. I'm missing something in your reasoning. Is fascism the wrong label, and if so, why? What is a better label, or is it better to assign labels to the different groups to be more accurate?

For example:
elites = three groups (i) anti-democratic laissez faire capitalists, (ii) anti-democratic radical Christian nationalists, and (iii) anti-democratic racists, fascists and/or White supremacists
R&F = ? (some of all of the above?)

Volley 2: The label of fascist is fine for the party as an organization. What's unfair is saying that there are only 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News.

You stated that there are 2 groups. The elites, radical ideologues whose main goals include Christian nationalism, and the rank and file, 50% of whom are Nazis, and 50% of whom are deluded by Fox News. By your reasoning, all Republicans fall into one of those 3 groups. That's what isn't fair.

There are plenty of Republicans who joined the party because they are anti-tax and/or anti-regulation. They don't care about Christian nationalists, Nazis, or Fox News, both in the sense that they don't necessarily share that ideology but also in that they feel no need to oppose it. Saying there's no difference between that group of Republicans and those who fall into your 3 groups is unfair and inaccurate.

Response 2: I understand your point. Not all Republicans are strictly in one or more of those three major groups. That is true.

But here is my problem. Reference to the FRP includes in people who aren't in one of the three groups, but they are in the genus group called Republicans, which includes all groups, not just the big three. If these outliers vote for Republican candidates who advocate for anti-democratic policies and rely heavily on anti-democratic rhetoric and dark free speech, what are those people? They support the fascism of the FRP with their votes. Maybe there are enough Republicans outside the big three groups that they are a necessary block of votes to win state and/or federal elections for anti-democratic or fascist Republicans.

In their minds they are not fascists. But in practice, what does their meaningful behavior amount to?

Volley 3: If you're just going to paint them all with the same brush based on how they're voting, you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore. If you're actually trying to understand them, though, you have to consider where they're coming from. The question, then, it what you're trying to do. Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

Response 3: 

... you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore.

It's not a charade on my part. It is an attempt to explain why the categories can collapse into the single FRP label. Some people accuse me of unreasonably lumping disparate groups into one genus and to be transparent, explaining the subgroups helps people understand my reasoning, which they are free to partly or completely accept or reject. At least when others decide, it will be on the basis of a reasonable understanding of why I lumped groups as I now do. I don't ignore the small groups but conclude that, by their actions or behaviors, they defensibly or rationally can be included in a larger generic group.

Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

I am trying to make a fair description of them. I try not to engage in irrational screaming. Not all criticism amounts to irrational screaming. But unless I explain myself and my reasoning, people have no objective basis to decide if I am unjustifiably screaming or fairly describing something that is complicated and open to dispute.

Without an empirical basis to understand my beliefs, people default to politics as usual, i.e., people who agree will see my opinions as true, and ones who disagree will see them as false or flawed. I don't want to do politics as usual. IMO, politics as usual is inherently toxic and anti-democratic. I want to do pragmatic rationalist politics and that requires enough explanation to afford people a better basis to decide for themselves than mere uncritical agreement or disagreement with an opinion not supported by any facts, truths and/or reasoning.

Volley 4: You really don't seem like you're trying to make a fair description. Your three categories look more like of a collection of insults than any kind of serious effort to understand them, and your dismissal of anyone who doesn't fit one of those three as being a small minority not worth considering only compounds that impression. The entire post makes me think it's unlikely you have any friends or family that are conservatives.

Response 4: Fair enough. At least we understand each other and that is a good thing.

To recapitulate, nothing I have said to try to explain myself in this blog post and my comments to you is sufficient for you to believe that my assertion of facts, truths and reasoning is nothing more than mere insults with no respect or serious effort to understand the people my comments discuss. 

Just curious, exactly what do I not understand about the people you believe I unfairly and/or irrationally smear, slander and/or falsely lump together or characterize? Since you offer almost no details of your facts, truth or reasoning, I assume you completely reject everything I assert as false or worse, with little or no probative weight in fact, truth or reason.

 

I am not trying to be obtuse or disrespectful to you. I am trying to explain myself. So far, my explanation is completely unpersuasive in your mind. I accept that, but don't understand why.

FWIW, some of my family is deeply conservative, but not my immediate family. Some of my friends are conservative, but not hard core T**** supporters -- they are uncomfortable with the modern GOP. Would a different family and friends situation for me necessarily make a major difference in my analysis and beliefs? How many liberal friends and family do T**** supporters have and would a difference in

Volley 5: to be determined if there is a return volley

The point I want to make

The core point I want to make here is in the comments highlighted above. Whether one agrees or disagrees with my assessment of rank and file Republicans as fascists is beside the point here. 

My point is this: One cannot do rational pragmatism without at least some explanation of asserted facts, truths and/or reasoning. Absent that, there is no rational basis to evaluate most political opinions in dispute, ~98% in my opinion. In those cases, politics defaults to politics as usual where people agree with opinions they like and disagree with ones they don't.

Questions: Other than facts, truths and reasoning, what else is there to evaluate the acceptability or lack thereof in disputed political opinions, e.g., personal morals and self-interest? Are morals and self-interest built into truths? Is this blog post too wonky?