Walmart employee Thanksgiving donations at Canton store cause controversy

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The Church teaches preferential treatment of all poor. The encyclicals quoted earlier about the responsibilities of employers to their workers, and States to their citizens, apply equally across the globe. Unfortunately, nations that are not Christian are not likely to follow Christian thinking outside of whatever concepts also apply in their own religious/faith philosophy. And even in Christian nations, it is easy for non-Catholics, and even Catholics to discount what the Popes have taught.

How to ensure that the poor (whether working or not) are cared for is a problem with several possible solutions. I think the issue we have now is that everyone is hoping that someone else will implement a solution (private charity wants employers to pay more, employers hope the State helps more, the State figures private charity will step in, etc.) and so their are still big gaps that people can fall through.

Wishing everyone on this thread abundance at Thanksgiving and a blessed Advent!
 
estesbob said:
What does that mean? They are providing for the livelihood of people in Asia. The Church knows no boundaries. The livelihood of those in Asia is just as important as the livelihood of those in America. How is that “at the expense of others”?
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(You are acting out I understand that.) But when businesses go to under developed nations to lower the cost of production than turn around and sell their products at elevated prices. ie a garment purchased in china would cost quite a bit less than the same piece sold in walmart. They are on very slippery moral ground. When they go further and pay their workers so little that they must rely on charity or public assistance. 🤷 You can’t really claim their actions are in anyway altruistic.
ATB
 
Mickey_Finn said:
(You are acting out I understand that.) But when businesses go to under developed nations to lower the cost of production than turn around and sell their products at elevated prices. ie a garment purchased in china would cost quite a bit less than the same piece sold in walmart. They are on very slippery moral ground. When they go further and pay their workers so little that they must rely on charity or public assistance. 🤷 You can’t really claim their actions are in anyway altruistic.
ATB
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Interestingly, I read some economist or other who maintained that the east coast of China is essentially an economic extension of the U.S. west coast. But it is my impression that there are a lot of people between a Chinese manufactory and Walmart. Some of those are Americans, and some are not.

It’s not all peaches and cream either. I knew a guy who operated a shoe company here in the U.S. The shoes themselves were made in China, but they kept a factory open here too, because there were so many shoes from over there that had to be reworked before they could be sold. Interestingly, that company had a guy whose sole function was to go to Italy and study those truly amazing hand-made womens’ shoes they sell over there, then come back here and redesign them so they could be made by machine and still closely resemble the stylish Italian models. The engineering and design was all done here, and then they would send a couple of guys from here with the instructions and specs over to China to implement the necessary tooling and organizational structure to produce that line of shoes.
 
J_Peterson said:
If you need to receive food stamps despite having a job, then you are not being paid a fair wage (i.e. living wage). Companies have the responsibility to pay their worker a living wage. Are people really okay with the government essentially subsidizing Wall Mart?

Work was created for people. Thinking that people were created for work is an error.
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My husband is in the US Air Force and we qualify for food stamps, you’d be surprised how many jobs out there pay a fairly decent wage and yet the family would still qualify for a lot of government assistance. Right now we are both working (him still in the AF) and we qualify for childcare assistance.
 
The other matter is that instead of raising generations of people who can build shelves, we have inspired generations of people who can only stock shelves. One day, we will have most of our food exported. God help us.

Nations that produce are great. That is (or used to be) the difference between the USA and Somalia.
 
Mickey_Finn said:
(You are acting out I understand that.) But when businesses go to under developed nations to lower the cost of production than turn around and sell their products at elevated prices. ie a garment purchased in china would cost quite a bit less than the same piece sold in walmart. They are on very slippery moral ground. When they go further and pay their workers so little that they must rely on charity or public assistance. 🤷 You can’t really claim their actions are in anyway altruistic.
ATB
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I dont see anything in church teaching that says we cant morally have goods produced where they are cheaper. The problem is using the US definition of “just wage” and “living wage” when talking about the wages paid to third world workers. What is “just” for a worker in india is quite a bit less than what is “just” for a worker in the US.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Interestingly, I read some economist or other who maintained that the east coast of China is essentially an economic extension of the U.S. west coast. But it is my impression that there are a lot of people between a Chinese manufactory and Walmart. Some of those are Americans, and some are not.

It’s not all peaches and cream either. I knew a guy who operated a shoe company here in the U.S. The shoes themselves were made in China, but they kept a factory open here too, because there were so many shoes from over there that had to be reworked before they could be sold. Interestingly, that company had a guy whose sole function was to go to Italy and study those truly amazing hand-made womens’ shoes they sell over there, then come back here and redesign them so they could be made by machine and still closely resemble the stylish Italian models. The engineering and design was all done here, and then they would send a couple of guys from here with the instructions and specs over to China to implement the necessary tooling and organizational structure to produce that line of shoes.
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I am always getting emails from Indian Accounting firms to handle all my bookkeeping and taxes for $5 and hour and no benefits. i have never responded but at what point does the govt make it so expensive to hire people that you take up the offer?
 
estesbob said:
I am always getting emails from Indian Accounting firms to handle all my bookkeeping and taxes for $5 and hour and no benefits. i have never responded but at what point does the govt make it so expensive to hire people that you take up the offer?
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Interesting. I worked for a property management firm as an account. One of GE’s affiliates was using a company in India for it’s financial statements. I had to enter the trial balance data into their system via internet.
 
estesbob said:
What does that mean? They are providing for the livelihood of people in Asia. The Church knows no boundaries. The livelihood of those in Asia is just as important as the livelihood of those in America. How is that “at the expense of others”?
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Okay, I’ll try to explain what I mean. When a US company hires poor workers in other countries and provides said workers with adequate compensation, work hours, and safe conditions, that is simply competition, which I have no problem with. The workers over there are provided for and the poor over here have decent quality merchandise they can afford. Win-Win.

When a US company goes over seas to avoid paying subsistence level wages, enforce grueling work hours, and don’t provide safe working conditions, (ie: some Bangladesh factories) in order to maximize profits all while selling over priced low quality products (and sometimes unsafe - lead filled toys) to the poor here in the US. That is “providing” for the poor in one country at the expense of another, because the only one benefitting is the company.
 
Dawnia said:
Okay, I’ll try to explain what I mean. When a US company hires poor workers in other countries and provides said workers with adequate compensation, work hours, and safe conditions, that is simply competition, which I have no problem with. The workers over there are provided for and the poor over here have decent quality merchandise they can afford. Win-Win.

When a US company goes over seas to avoid paying subsistence level wages, enforce grueling work hours, and don’t provide safe working conditions, (ie: some Bangladesh factories) in order to maximize profits all while selling over priced low quality products (and sometimes unsafe - lead filled toys) to the poor here in the US. That is “providing” for the poor in one country at the expense of another, because the only one benefitting is the company.
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How about when they provide wages and hours that are ordinary in the country?
 
estesbob said:
I am always getting emails from Indian Accounting firms to handle all my bookkeeping and taxes for $5 and hour and no benefits. i have never responded but at what point does the govt make it so expensive to hire people that you take up the offer?
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I could export at least some of my work as well. But I don’t. I don’t know who would really want to trust some overseas group in a service business that you could not discipline or sue. Nor would I want to give some overseas group information concerning my clients. Nobody would do it if he could hire people here and had the business to support the hires.

But there is always a limit to what a man can take.

Obamacare alone is a miserable business for an employer. You can’t figure anything out because the sources of information are unresponsive. All you know for sure is that employee health care is going to cost you a good deal more than it once did. In my business, I can see (from what little information is available) that I am going to have to make my employees contribute for the first time.

And you have to compare that with the cost of Obamacare for each individual employee. After all, should you really penalize your own employees by having a healthcare plan for the business, if that’s the situation? I can (fairly) readily see that some of mine would be better off with the Obamacare subsidies, but the non-subsidized are going to get knocked for a financial loop no matter what I do.

But I do suspect that a number of service businesses that really deal in paperwork are going to “offshore” at least a good part of their work. Obama & Co make it increasingly difficult to hire anyone here.
 
estesbob said:
How about when they provide wages and hours that are ordinary in the country?
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As long as the wages & hours aren’t abusive, then I don’t see a problem. The wages for full time work should provide a sufficient standard of living (for a single person) in the country the worker lives in relative to the work they do.
 
freeRadical said:
So that means the Church is against welfare?
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Not sure how you made that jump from companies not taking advantage of the poor to welfare. But, hey it’s all good.

The answer is - it depends.🤷 Welfare can be used to promote evil just as easily as it can be used to promote good.
 
Dawnia said:
As long as the wages & hours aren’t abusive, then I don’t see a problem. The wages for full time work should provide a sufficient standard of living (for a single person) in the country the worker lives in relative to the work they do.
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Agreed.The point I was trying to make is there is nothing immoral per se about shipping jobs overseas
 
estesbob said:
Agreed.The point I was trying to make is there is nothing immoral per se about shipping jobs overseas
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Except for shipping customer service and tech support jobs overseas. That is totally the work of the Devil. 😃 Or God’s way of getting us to pray more. The juries still out.
 
travissbeloved said:
My husband is in the US Air Force and we qualify for food stamps, you’d be surprised how many jobs out there pay a fairly decent wage and yet the family would still qualify for a lot of government assistance. Right now we are both working (him still in the AF) and we qualify for childcare assistance.
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Hi, and thank your Husband for his service! I would say that anyone who qualifies for SNAP is not making a fairly decent wage. If both are working, and they still qualify then I think we see the problem.

ATB
 
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