LexHumana's comments

You shouldn't count on southerners' pronunciations, as they are truely unique on the planet. There is a town in Georgia named "Cairo" that is pronounced "Kay-Row". The street in Atlanta is pronounced "pon-s" by the locals, but in Puerto Rico it is pronounced "pon-seh" (not a long "pon-SAY", but a short "seh" sound). Of course, we anglos tend to butcher spanish pronunciations anyway.

In Georgia, I have also seen the word "Houston" (which is pronounced "hew-stun" by everyone else) pronounced "House-ston". The word pecan is a "pee-can" in Georgia, and a "puh-khan" everywhere else.

Of course, I shouldn't pick on Georgia exclusively. I was originally born in Missouri, where we have towns named Milan (MY-lan), Versailles (Ver-SAILS), Creve Couer (kreeve-coor), Auxvasse (ox-VASS-y), and Rolla, which was named after Sir Walter Raleigh, but nobody could apparently spell back when the town was founded.

@ rewt66

You say that my "snark" didn't address hedgefundguy's position, namely that "hedgefundguy challenged R.A.'s position, arguing that replacing mom-and-pop businesses with WalMart had some significant negative effects on the community."

If you re-read the posts, you will see that I directly challenged this premise at its root level -- Walmart did not displace mom-and-pop stores to begin with. Mom-and-pop stores are dying off for reasons that have nothing to do with whether Walmart is around or not. You and hedgefundguy are creating a false correlation, assuming that Walmart causes the death of mom-and-pops, when in reality there are underlying social, economic, political, and demographic changes that enable stores like Walmart to flourish and mom-and-pops to die. When hedgefundguy raised his polemic against Walmart and for mom-and-pop stores, the underlying premise was "Walmart bad, small retailers good", implying that the job opportunities Walmart brings are not worth it... thus my statement that he is implying that the unemployed are better staying unemployed.

Walmart, just like every other major retailer, is merely taking advantage of changes in our demographics. Mom-and-pop retailers are dying because of those same changes. Neither is directly correlated with each other; instead, they are both correlated to common, underlying causes. The villagers need to put away their torches and pitchforks, because there is no Frankenstein's big-box monster lurking about murdering small local retailers.

@ rewt66 and hedgefundguy,

I am snarky when I see ridiculous illogic being spouted as gospel. You both are reciting, chapter and verse, the myth that Walmart drives small mom-and-pop businesses out of business and harms the community. I have patiently attempted to explain using basic economics why this is not true, and why the mom-and-pop stores are REALLY dying off. However, it is painfully clear that you are on some sort of misguided crusade against big-box stores, somehow believing that if they simply went away the mom-and-pop stores would be thriving and local communities would be better off. To be blunt, Walmart could disappear tomorrow, and none of the mom-and-pop retailers would magically spring back to life, because the reasons they ultimately went out of business have nothing to do with Walmart.

Some people are clearly so driven by their mythological worldview that they are incapable of recognizing basic economic facts.

rewt66 wrote: Mar 1st 2011 8:46 GMT
"No, hedgefundguy is saying that WalMart drives out local businesses, and local businesses pay better. That is, WalMart does not create new jobs, it merely moves them. The choice is not jobs at WalMart vs. no jobs; the choice is between jobs at WalMart and jobs at local businesses."

Funny... soooo... you're saying that Walmart moves into an area that has no unemployment and somehow entices all those workers at small businesses to leave their higher-paying jobs and come work for them at a lower wage?

Or maybe you are saying that Walmart comes into an area with no unemployment, and somehow -- without hiring any workers beforehand -- manages to drive all the small businesses out of business, thus forcing the now-unemployed workers from the small businesses to take lower-paying jobs at Walmart?

Or maybe you are saying that Walmart moves into an area with high unemployment, and sucks up all the available labor into lower-paying jobs, thus starving all the small businesses -- who would pay higher wages -- of available workers, thus driving them out of business?

Somehow, your economic theory seems flawed....

Now, now M.S., lets not get all in a twist just yet.

The first public school in the U.S. was started in 1821. Teach for America is a private charity that was founded in 1990. So for 169 years, public education in America managed to survive and educate generations of Americans without any input from Teach for America. Moreover, Teach for America, as a private charity, exists with private contributions whether or not the federal government chooses to contribute to it.

Just because something may be a good idea does not automatically mean that the federal government MUST subsidize it. I would love to see trees planted along every sidewalk in America, and have public dog parks for all neighborhoods, and a host of other quality-of-life initiatives.... but I also realize that the government may have more pressing things to spend its money on, and that the private sector can plant trees and build dog parks if it is really motivated to do so. I also realize that when we ask the government to subsidize all these great ideas, the money doesn't come out of thin air. That money is appropriated out of our collective pocketbooks, which means that we all collectively have a little less to pay our bills and stimulate our personal economies.

You people act as if 1) the only funding in the world MUST come from the government, and 2) every socially valuable idea you can think of MUST be paid for from the public fisc. Get over yourselves.

"Nothing like a rich man arguing that new jobs aren't likely to be good enough for workers who are currently unemployed."

Amen R.A.

People have to stop looking at small businesses through rose-colored glasses. Mr. Shallal and Walmart are the same thing - capitalists. Capitalism does not contemplate charity. Capitalism is about one thing and one thing only, maximizing profits. Shallal wants to maximize profits by preventing low-cost competition. Walmart wants to maximize profits by using economies-of-scale to undercut high-cost competitors and making up for the difference in volume sales. Neither gives a damn about you or the local community until their primary purpose (maximizing profits) is met.

Western economies have only one real growth sector -- opinion blogs, which are growing as common as barstools and free time, and whose actual value is probably inversely correlated to both.

Bernardo O'Higgins wrote: Feb 26th 2011 7:24 GMT
"The US already has a very successful cap and trade regime in place for sulfur in industrial emissions (once the cause of acid rain in the northeast and upper midwest). The system works fine despite trading on "hot air" and none of the issues you cite (measuring CO2 emissions, setting a price, etc) have been an issue in the sulfur program."

There are several critical differences in the sulfur dioxide cap and trade system that you didn't mention, that make it very different from the CO2 market.

Sulfur dioxide acts at a regional level -- emissions in Detroit cause acid rain in that region, but do not cause acid rain in Hong Kong. As a consequence, you can set up a regional cap and trade system and ensure that all relevant actors are properly encompassed in the scope of the system.

CO2 has a global effect (if you are a global warming believer). Detroit could reduce its own CO2 emissions, but if CO2 emissions go up by a comparable amount in Hong Kong, the net effect globally is zero. Moreover, the industries in Detroit will have taken on the extra cap-and-trade expenses as an additional cost of production, while their competitors overseas do not have such costs to worry about, making Detroit less competitive in the global marketplace. This is why a regional or even national CO2 cap-and-trade scheme is doomed to pointlessness -- the costs of compliance effectively act as a locally imposed tax, while not guaranteeing anything will be accomplished from a global warming perspective.

The only way a CO2 cap and trade system can feasibly work is a global agreement that MUST include all industrialized polluters. Of course, the problem is not only getting everyone to agree to participate, but also getting everyone to agree on what price to set on emissions, how much emissions should be permitted, how to measure compliance and catch cheaters, and what sanctions to impose on cheaters. If the Copenhagen talks were any indicia, the likelihood of getting any of this sorted out globally is nil. The international community cannot agree on meeting times and seating arrangements, let alone global emissions protocols.

@ teacup775 and @ AJ76034:

"The purpose of a union is to represent labor in negotiations with those who pay their salaries. Intelligent Management balances union demands against the profit and investment required to continue functioning and continue providing jobs for union members."

"Let's be very clear about reality here: Business exists to make profit for the shareholders, not provide jobs, unionized or no."

Both of these comments miss the larger issue: the government is not a business. A buiness has to meet a bottom line, otherwise it goes bankrupt. In contrast, when government "goes into business" it can always shift its losses to the taxpayer. Thus, a government never really "goes into business," for it never truly has to make ends meet, which is the first requisite of business. A private sector business is constrained by the market -- if GM makes union contracts that render it insolvent, it doesn't have the luxury of simply passing the cost on the consumer, because the consumer will take their shopping elsewhere. The poor taxpayer has no such option -- when the government gives away more and more money, the taxpayer can't take their business to the government across the street because there is none: the government is a monopoly.