Lyrics
[06-12-07]
Imagine, if you will, it’s nearly dinner time. Tonight, you’d like steak. A Porterhouse perhaps. So, out to the shed you go, where the steer you are about to slaughter, is waiting. He’s got nothing else to do. But, he’ll have even less tomorrow.
So, with one swift trigger, a bolt carves its way through his temple, and it’s dinnertime at the Anton’s!
Now, imagine how many vegetarians there’d be, if this were the manner by which food got to the table.
By having someone else process our steaks, we remove the offensive nature of our meal.
It’s the same thing with cheap prices.
By having companies cut prices, layoff workers, and outsource jobs, we enjoy the comfort of buying a CyberHome DVD player for under $20 bucks.
Take Huffy. As a kid, who didn’t want a Huffy 5-speed bicycle.
In fact, the popularity is what would eventually lead Huffy into bankruptcy, thanks to Wal-Mart, and you. Richard Wilson of American Educator knows the script all too well.
In the early 1980’s, Huffy, like most business partners of Wal-Mart, were struggling. Enter superman super sore Wal-Mart, offering a contract for Huffy to produce 900,000 low-end Huffy bikes. But with subsequent orders, came further demands from Wal-Mart on quantity, timing and of course, cost.
In order to pass the price along to Wal-Mart so Wal-Mart could pass the price on to you, Huffy closed its unionized factory in Ohio to Farmington, MO where it could pay $2 ½ dollars less an hour.
But with subsequent orders, came further demands from Wal-Mart…or have you heard this one before?
Still unable to keep up with Wal-Mart’s endless cutbacks, Huffy left Missouri for Mexico, where wages were half.
Still unable to keep up with Wal-Mart’s demands, but unable to turn away the lucrative contract, Huffy turned its production over to Shenzhen Bike Company in China.
A few years later, Huffy filed for bankruptcy.
A few months later, Wal-Mart builds a superstore on the abandoned property of Huffy in Ohio.
This is not mistake after mistake by Huffy, but rather a line by line recitation from a script perfected by Wal-Mart, and performed on other floundering companies, like a stripper on a groom.
Levi Strauss, once sold their jeans themselves. After seeing the Wal-Mart performance first-hand, they now have to import their own jeans.
Friday, while the Outlets formally known as News, groveled over Paris Hilton’s epiphany, Dell PC’s were headed to the 3000 Sam’s Club Stores across North America. Dell, like Huffy, hopes to rekindle struggling sales but we both know how this script pans out…
