Thursday, May 12, 2005

They Just Get Dumber

This one is rich.

Thomas Sowell, one of the Right's favorite voices, claims that Wal-Mart is, so, paying its employees plenty of money, and anyone who claims otherwise is just a yappy Academic busybody.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050512.shtml

To support his case -- well, he doesn't, of course, bother to support his case. (Occasionally Sowell, like Coulter, will provide support for some of his lame contentions, but, as with Coulter, when you track down his sources, you find them to be suspect, bogus, or misrepresented.)

Instead of supporting his case, Sowell just trots out Winger cliches.

....sure enough, the New York Times finds a Wal-Mart employee who complains that he is not making "a living wage."

How is he living, if he is not making a living wage?

Oh, ha ha ha.

I think I heard that one first about three years ago, from my right-wing brother, the one who's a Rush Limbaugh fan. I don't know where Rush got it.

Here's how he's living, Mr. Sowell: he's collecting food stamps, he's collecting Welfare(because he's actually probably a she, you know) for his two kids, she's collecting Medicare when those kids get sick, because she can't buy medical insurance on what Wal-Mart pays her-- and who pays all for that, Mr. Sowell?

Oh, yes. I do. And you do. And the rest of America does. We all subsidies Wal-Mart, so that Wal-Mart can continue to underpay its employees, so that Wal-Mart's stockholders -- who might some of them be the retired teachers you sing so sweetly about, but are more of them rich white guys and their wives driving Porsche SUVs and giant yellow Hummers, because I live among them, Mr. Sowell, NW Arkansas is Wal-Mart Central, that's who we're paying giant hunks of our income tax to subsidize, Mr. Sowell, so don't come getting all yappy to me about any social contract and how you didn't sign it.

Let the executives at Wal-Mart cut back just a bit. Pass on some earnings to their employees just a bit. Take some of the burden off the taxpayers of America. Be, in other words, a responsible business.

What, exactly, about that offends you, sir?

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