Life at Wal-Mart

Some of the things described in this article shows that wal-mart is implementing lean mfg ideas (or lean retail, rather).

Manufacturing is not much better. I worked in a lot of mfg companies during college. Starting pay with either at or a little above minimum wage.

There is no easy fix. Companies don't stay in business by paying people more than they are "worth" in economic terms.

Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for every other one.

"However, a lot had history, poli sci, or econ degrees."

It may turn out that history, political science, and economics degrees felt like investments but actually were consumption.

Of course. If you're not a felon, you're not a drug addict, and you're in good health, escaping a homeless shelter is pretty easy. [1] There are people (some of whom are my friends) who have full-time jobs trying to help people get out! [2] And there are a lot of incentives to leave. Nobody enjoys the homeless-shelter experience.

Almost all of the people who are chronic residents of homeless shelters have health problems (often, specifically, mental health problems), are current or former drug addicts, or have spent time in prison.

These problems tend to feed on each other. Mentally ill people often manifest erratic behavior that gets them sent to prison. Drug addicts get arrested and sent to prison. Prisons are a great place to be introduced to life as a drug addict, and can exacerbate certain mental illnesses. And sick people often attempt to relieve their own symptoms with drugs (a popular choice: alcohol). The technical term for the latter behavior is "self-medication", and it's a classic route by which an otherwise well-off person can get sucked into the poverty spiral.

Meanwhile, it also doesn't surprise me that a white, male, healthy, educated person with independent means and an active online life can really enjoy working at Wal-Mart. Slumming can be fun. Every grad student knows that. I'm told by reliable witnesses, however, that actual chronic poverty is an entirely different ball of wax.

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[1] Note, of course, that "escaping a homeless shelter" is not at all the same thing as "escaping poverty". Being homeless is only one of the more desperate forms of poverty. There are many others.

[2] One of the key skills for escaping homelessness: The ability to fill out forms. Social workers spend a lot of their time just helping people stay patient while sitting on hold, send in applications, get to appointments on time... It's easy to forget, from our perspective as high-end employees of the knowledge economy, that not all of our fellow humans are born with the requisite knowledge and patience to do these things. And that you and I are exactly one stroke or car accident away from losing those skills.

I was really surprised to read that every employee had access to profit margin data.

Kudos to Wal-Mart for a level of decentralization and transparency many startups and high tech companies don't even achieve!