I just watched a table full of media talking heads cluck and chinwag about the shame of Wal-Mart not paying its associates a "living wage".
Let's do some research!
We'll plug "Today cast salaries", without the quotes, into our trusty Google search box...
Let's see... Princess Lauer tops the list, raking in a cool $25 million a year for reasons that are unclear to me, as his shallow vacuity and clinical narcissism shine through even on the small screen. Two other Today cast members at that table also make it into the top tier: Al Roker at $7 mil a year and Savannah Guthrie at two megabucks per annum. Tamron Hall and Natalie Morales were there, too, but apparently they don't make the list.
Anyhow, this pack of mouthpieces, with a collective salary* greater than the GDP of Tuvalu lives on Fantasy Island, aka Manhattan, flitting through their daily lives past barristas, drivers, doormen, and waiters, most of whom would kill for the fair-to-middlin' benefits package Wal-Mart offers its full time minions, if it didn't mean having to move someplace icky, like Passaic, instead of sleeping four to a flat, waiting for someone to buy their script or call them back for a second audition.
It's as ridiculous as watching the pampered children of merchants and aristocrats call for the workers to rise up and throw off their chains.
*Although suggest it was a "collective" salary and should be divided evenly, and Princess Lauer would likely shriek to crack glass and flounce off with his 70% of it.
UFCW has spent millions preparing the battlefield. Wal*Mart is enemy #1. "Today" is just a small part of their propaganda arm.
ReplyDeletePampered Children, would that be a sly reference to Bolsheviks?
ReplyDeleteThat is want I am going to run with.
It is a wonder why the children of privilege are most vocal in tearing down the edifice that allowed them to exist.
Give them a break. If you'd lived your entire life on a three by thirteen mile concrete island, you might also be somewhat ignorant of the way the actual real world works, too.
DeleteIF they are that upset at Wal-Mart, which is actually a successful business that continues to open new stores, what must they think of Sears, K-Mart, and other failed megabox stores?
ReplyDeleteI hear no laments for Hechingers, a failed predecessor to Home Depots everywhere. The employees who used to work in those stores lost whatever wages they were getting as their stores closed down.
Former workers in factories specializing in buggy whips weep with sympathy over their previously high paying jobs, as they watch their underpaid neighbors line up outside the Ford plant hoping to be taken on line for the day.
Maybe Matt will share his money with his former GE brothers and sisters that were laid off after helping post a record earnings year in 2012.
ReplyDeleteGerry
That asterisked footnote? From your keyboard to God's eyes...
ReplyDeleteWhat Boat Guy said.
ReplyDeleteAll this 'progressive' crap sounds so touchy-feely good (to them) until it actually hits you in the wallet.
Tam, I couldn't watch the Today show w/o hurling...way to take one for the team.
WalMart employs 1 million employees in the US. The average wage for a full-time store worker is $12.83 per hour, which translates into a salary of about $27,000 per year.
ReplyDeleteYou should google the living wage law in DC. It applied only to retail stores over 50,000 square feet, with parent sales over $1 billion, who didn't have a union contract. Hmmmm...sounds like a UFCW funded fascist attack on a SINGLE employer. Mayor Gray vetoed the legislation when Wal*Mart stopped construction of the three stores they were building in the poorer parts of DC.
ReplyDeleteNot the biggest Walmart fan, but their store managers make on average north of $100k a year, and a *lot* make more than $150k a year. Not bad coin if you're not in Boston or San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteAnd Walmart has over 3000 stores. I'd say that they've done more for economic "social justice" than the Today show ever has.
At least they are creating jobs and selling products that people actually want, instead of bitching about how things aughta be and pretending they are relevant.
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