Progressive Wal-Mart. Really. #11

Sebastian Mallaby writes a little bit about the litter side of how Wal-Mart actually helps people. It helps the buyers for one because of the extremely cheap prices that they can sell their products at, which helps many American families who have low income. Especially in the food department many people who shop at Wal-Mart make 35,000 which is low income and they are able to shop here to get what they need to survive. He writes that this company is built like many other companies not to help people but to gain profit, which I think all businesses truly want money over happier employees. He also writes that a reason why Wal-Mart gets put down so much is its a big company everyone knows about it so people are going to talk. I think also that people tend to only write about the bad about something, because it makes for more interesting news. So even though Wal-Mart is unfair they are still teh leading retail store, so who's fault is it Wal-Marts for wanting to be profitable company or the people who still put money into it everyday?

Up Against Wal-Mart #10

Karen Olsson finds the truth about the hard working retail associates at wal-mart in her essay Up Against Wal-Mart. She begins with an individual employee Jennifer McLaughlin who is a mother of one child and lives with her boyfriend, and is currently employed with Wal-Mart in Paris, Texas. She works as an associate but is not just told to do one job but in a days work can go from working one department to the next and even putting products out and helping customers. She is a very hard worker and puts in a lot of effort everyday and its getting her no where. She is not able to afford life, with the amount that they pay her. The company Wal-Mart is not union so she receives no benefits, so if she wants to carry health insurance she would have to pay out of her own paycheck to receive it. Health insurance is to much to afford on her wage and has to rely on government assistance to give her child the things he needs. The author then writes about how the company started and how from day one Wal-Mart has been looking for ways to cut corners to save a dollar. All Wal-Mart companies are non-union, they are actually very against it if an associate is even to bring it up they could possibly loose their job. Wal-Mart has been put through many law cases on unfair wages and treatment of employees but they just continue to keep doing it. Wal-Mart is a big enough company that they can not be stoppped by the associates they have working for them. Wal-Mart holds all the power and has enough money to prolong cases and even if they do loose can just pay the fine and move on to doing the same thing. Associates are asked to do incredible tasks not just perform hard labor all day throughout the store but they are even asked to work over time with no pay. Who would want to work for no pay? I would think no one would volunteer their time to work at Wal-mart for free but it is happening all over. Why? Because they have to the associates want to hopefully get promotions or not loose their hours that they are getting or even far worse loose their jobs so they continue to put forth effort with no reward. It is extremely unfair what these employees have to do I don't understand why either because Wal-Mart makes so much money all over the United States. The profit margin for Wal-mart must be enormous that they can do all this to their employees free labor, that is slavery. I believe something should be done to help the associates their and I believe in unions. They help retail employees a lot because they aren't being paid very much but a union offers benefits like health insurance which is very important.

The Truth About Wages

In this essay author Bruce Bartlett talks about the wages of people today and how they are on a decline. He lists off possible answers to why this may be happening. His first reason is maybe because the labor union membership has stopped protesting to getting higher wages and doesn't know how to handle asking for a raise. The second reason is that people are happy with just having a job and that with all the lay offs and people loosing their jobs they don't think it would be possible to even get a raise. I agree with this factor because so many people who are working are just taking what they can get. Some people who have worked in high end jobs their whole life are now working at retail stores and fast food places because of lay offs and decrease in pay. People today are really watching their budgets and having to make many cut backs not getting raises to a job they may not even have tomorrow. Other reasons the author feels that its going down is because the changing demographics of the population. The baby booming age's kids are packed up and moved out to college, so now they have to pay for the high prices of college and maintain their own bills at home. I believe this is just another stage that our economy has to go through. It was rising for so long people believed that the good would never end and it did and no one knew how to deal with it at first. Now though as a whole people are watching what they buy and spend and making the decision to get needs instead of wants.

Reality Television: Oxymoron

George F. Will talks about the new television that has emerged on the scene "reality television". Some examples of these new shows include: Fear Factor, and Jackass. Each year another show tries to come out and become more dangerous and sexual than the next. like in his essay he talks about XFL that tried to make football even more aggressive and dangerous and the cheerleaders more revealing and entertaining. He talks about viewers having a choice on what they want to watch because there are so many things out there like kids shows, MTV, and adult entertainment. As time goes by though people are always looking for more, the next best thing. People want live entertainment with dangerous events happening and violence in them. He goes as far as saying people may watch "Who Really Wants to Be a Millionaire?" where willing participants will play Russian Roulette with their own lives. So how far will the entertainment business go? Will viewers be willing to watch other human beings die for their entertainment? I don't think it will go that far, but the new reality shows have taken the sexual and violence levels to the next levels.

The I.M.s of Romeo and Juliet

Roz Chast wrote a modern I.M. message version of Romeo and Juliet. In her version everything is shortened, and she uses new age slang. I think she is trying to show how communication has changed drastically because of technology. The characters Romeo and Juliet send I.Ms to each other and say almost nothing. Their feelings of love and the emotional drama that comes from the real story is taken away in the modern version. They are just two teenagers talking of their day and just touch a little bit on the matters and problems from the real story. I don't feel the love or emotion that I felt when reading the real version of this story. I think the author is showing that the new technology has taken away the feeling that we have when communicating. Since they are not actually talking face to face emotions can be misinterpreted and not understood. How can you tell someone that you love through a couple minute I.M.?

Bart Simpson: Prince of Irreverence
BY: Douglas Rushkoff
He begins his essays by stating that The Simpsons, “is the closest thing in America to a national media literacy program.” He talks about how the show is able to get away with a lot of things because the program is a cartoon. So they are putting forth that it is a family show and have been able to incorporate inappropriate material. The show began with a set of individuals who came up with the idea and was passed with not a second look at the material in the show or how the ideals of the show would affect the people watching it. He goes into how television programs are created, an author creates a story that the viewer can relate to and we watch the ups and downs of that character. He goes back in time to when televisions did not have remotes and people had to actually get up if they wanted to view a different program. Which many people didn’t do as often as someone who has a remote and has very easy access to change the channel with easy means. After the television controller the controller for video games came out and just made things easier to control at an individual’s fingertips. Now in the new the youth knows way more about the advanced technologies then even their parents. He then goes back into talking about The Simpsons, and the character Bart which is an anagram for “brat”. The media from the outside world is presented to Bart in this T.V. series where he can then interact with it and create comical stories that may or may not be true. He engages the fact that the author of this show can use the outside media and have it interact with his show. Like an episode about the super bowl, or a president election. This comes out to viewers that this show is feeding us media. The authors of this show create parody’s that resemble something real from our society and make a joke out of it. So the author can show the cruelness of the world and today and as long as it ends happy the viewers are happy.

Being Fat is OK

This essay talks about the propaganda behind dieting and obesity. The author himself is considered to be over weight because of the chart that judges every individual based on height. How exactly can this chart be true for each individual? The author talks about three major lies that the government and media has convinced people in believing. Lie #1
That fat people are less healthy than thin people. Lie #2 That fat people would be just as healthy as thin people if they lost the weight. Lie #3 Fat people can choose to be thinner. She then goes into how each of these lies are not full proof and some have no evidence of fact to them at all. She believes the market of the diet industry is milking off the media that is held up in every one should be thin. That in being thin a person can be healthy and live a well life. When there is no proof to back up these facts and an over weight person can be just as healthy. The truth of the matter can never be solved because there is just no real experiment that can prove the theory that thin is more healthier than fat.