Ignorance is Bliss.

[Bloodrun]

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“Ignorance is bliss.” What a truly wonderful statement! According to the dictionary, the statement literally means this: “The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed is extreme happiness.” Having seen the definition of the saying on paper now makes me realize why some people would rather have dental work done than put in the effort to educate themselves on certain topics. That is blatantly the case when it comes to Walmart setting up shop in Sauk Centre. Seemingly educated people have chosen to ignore research, ignore warning signs, and ignore the opportunity to get on a computer and do some research on their own. The reason why is ‘bliss’. Who wants to give that up by educating themselves and realizing that their utopia of a cost saving, job producing, tax supplying superstore is nothing more than a mirage? Over the last few weeks, there have been many opinions and questions asked in the letters to the editor section of this paper and out on the street that need to be addressed. I strongly suggest that anyone with access to the internet spend a couple of minutes on a search engine and start punching in some words related to Walmart. Wanting to start with as unbiased a search as possible, I punched in “Walmart effects economy” thinking that I would at least get a some positive research to bounce off of the negative research out there. That wasn’t the case. Conservatively, the negative websites out-weigh the positive 10-1. I say conservatively because of the 3 hours I spent reading some of the sites, I didn’t bump into a single positive web site on Walmart. For the record, I stayed away from the blatantly negative blog sites and message boards of disgruntled employees and focused on newspaper articles and research papers. Research, not opinions, was the focus. Two very informative websites that I ran across were Walmartwatchers.com and an article from the magazine Fast Company. Walmart watchers are a group that maintains that it is not against Walmart growing as a company, just against its business practices. They have many accounts of unethical business practices and disturbing sexual discrimination allegations that one needs to check out. The article from Fast Company can be found at www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html. It’s an unbelievable article that shows the crunch that Walmart puts on even those who do business with them, such as Vlasic pickles and Huffy. Vlasic sold more pickles with Walmart, but they lost millions in profits because of their heavy handed pricing approach. Fewer profits mean fewer jobs. Huffy had bicycle-manufacturing plants in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Missouri before it partnered with Walmart. Huffy now imports 98% of all their bicycles from other countries due to cost cutting measures they had to partake in because of Walmart. Looks like Walmart has been rolling back American jobs as well as prices. Trying to come up with positive information about how Walmart affects a community, I added the word “positive” to the internet search and finally found a few positive remarks. One of them was directly from Walmart.com, so not the most unbiased of sources. The other positive remark was from someone who was checking out their newly opened Walmart and said that the wide isles will be very convenient for senior citizens and others in walkers or wheel chairs. That’s nice. There was even someone who said that Walmart was great for the world because it was doing such a good job of helping struggling countries compete in the world market place by taking advantage of their cheap labor. They used Hong Kong as an example. So, Walmart uses cheap labor in Hong Kong while shutting down factories in the U.S. Very nice. Alright!! I found a USA Today article from 2003 that said Walmart had won an award. The National Organization of Women had just given Walmart its fifth National Merchant of Shame award due to poor labor practices. I’ll put that in the positive section of this letter to fill it out a little more. I understand that how Walmart affects the world and even the U.S. might be too grand a scale for some to care about so lets then take a look at how they affect the local economy. I have heard some community members say that we could use the jobs that Walmart would supply. A few weeks ago, someone submitted a letter to the editor that had a research paper stating that the net gain of jobs from a Walmart coming to town are not great. About 100 new jobs with 50 lost from surrounding businesses leaving a net gain of 50, if my memory serves me correct. I also found an article that showed that there were actually 1.5 jobs lost for every one job gained when a Walmart came to town. Another article from Penn State stated that counties with a Walmart in them actually had a higher increase in family poverty rates during the economic boom period in the late1990’s. How’s that possible with all the savings and jobs?? The Daily Bruin ran an article about a Walmart debate on the UCLA campus. Turns out concerned members of the Rosemead community voted to remove city council members after they voted to let a Super Walmart into the community. That’s very interesting. A California politician was also quoted as saying that Californian taxpayers pay about 98 million each year to subsidize Walmart’s health care. The Executive Intelligence Review had an article about how a Walmart opening in towns in Iowa of less than 5000 people were destroying those communities. Research reports from Iowa State University were quoted. They also noted the town of Nowata, Oklahoma, (population: 4000). Nowata is now gutted because Walmart came to town, crushed all the competition, and then closed up shop. What some people may not understand is that Walmart is not immune to the powers that cause businesses to fail. There were more than 370 empty Walmart buildings throughout the U.S. in 2004. To think that won’t happen here is ridiculous. Are we willing to bet our town that the surrounding communities of Long Prairie, Melrose, Osakis, Belgrade, Freeport and possibly Albany will be able to keep a SC Walmart economically viable? There are cities larger than all those combined who won’t let a Walmart in because they fear what will happen if it closes and leaves the town without a way of supporting itself. I’ve heard some comments about other business’ closing before Walmart even got here. That’s true, others have closed. Does that automatically mean that Walmart should be green lighted to come on in because business closings happen anyway? I don’t really understand the thinking there. Without looking at the financial records of every failed business that has come through Sauk Centre, it would be hard to pin point what went wrong with each of them. I remember one business on Main Street that almost exclusively sold remote controlled toy cars. I’m no business major, but maybe such a specialty shop would have been better off in a larger market place because they didn’t last long in Sauk Centre. Maybe some businesses failed because of mismanagement, who knows. And yes, some have failed because of competition. I’ve heard some mention that nobody made a peep when Coborns or even Alco came to town, effectively sealing the fate of Polipnicks and, more recently, Ben Franklin. That’s a valid point, but let’s crunch some numbers. Give or take, Coborns came to town and had the chance to effect four maybe five business’; Polipnick’s, Country Market, the Bakery, and possibly Wonder Bread. Alco came in and effected around the same amount of business, four or five. The main one being Ben Franklin. I understand that the numbers and specifics of this example can be argued. They are not important. Only the point is important. The point being we are not dealing with a normal Walmart. This is a Super Walmart. Going right off of Walmart.com, here is the list of goods and services that will be available and have their own departments: apparel, jewelry, lawn & garden, health & beauty, electronics, pharmacy, grocery, bakery, vision, tire & lube, gas, and one hour photo. I even stumbled upon one Super Walmart that had a restraunt and floral department in it, but didn’t add that to the list because it did not come directly from Walmart.com. I also read that Walmart will soon be going into banking and real estate services.... How many businesses do you think the Super Walmart will affect? I hope that it is now obvious why there is such concern about this. Yes, Walmart has yet to file the papers and all that jazz, so some wonder why get all wound up about it now. Well, when did Noah build the Ark?? BEFORE the rain. It’s sad to see that the lack of proactive governing that plagues our government on a national scale has trickled down to our city administration. But, hey, those tax dollars that Walmart would pay to the city are mighty appealing. Here’s my challenge to all Walmart supporters and city administration: find the research that shows that Walmart has a positive impact on the community and won’t destroy our town. Find that information and present it to us who fear a Sauk Centre Walmart like a 3 a.m. phone call. I would love to see it because it has eluded me. All I’ve heard so far from Walmart supporters have been opinions. Their arguments for Walmart coming to town always start with “I think...” or “I believe...” which is hardly scientific or unbiased. People can come up with anything to justify a position that supposedly benefits themselves or leads down the easy path. I once heard a five-minute speech from a pregnant woman justifying her smoking while with child. It was a passionate, highly uneducated speech of which she truly believed every word. If someone can justify endangering the life of their unborn, surly others can justify shopping at Walmart despite the obvious negative impact on our community. Show us the research. Show us the conclusion made from hundreds of man hours focused on finding the answer to the question “Is Walmart good for a community?” The needles are few and the haystack is mighty, but I’m sure there is some positive information out there. Somewhere. One of the most common articles I ran across while doing my research was the plight of communities across the nation to stop Walmart from advancing into their neighborhoods. Cities more than 28 times the size of Sauk Centre and seeming in a much better position to absorb a Walmart (Inglewood, CA, pop. 112,000) fought tooth and nail to prevent the retail giant from imposing it’s will on them and they won. What we must ask ourselves about these communities is why the passion, why the emotion, why the steadfast determination against Walmart and why don’t we have it? The answer is too many people know too little about what is at hand. We, as a community, have chosen to not educate ourselves, to take the easy path, to remain ignorant. We have chosen bliss.

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[Akira]

tl;dr version pl0x.

[Frlf]

Apparently, he wants us to destroy Wall Mart.

[J-Max]

I thought this was going to be another YCM thing again. Don't owrry Bloody my friend i'm fighting for ya.

[Akira]

Destroying Wal-Mart seems feasible.

 

But still.. you could at least arrange it into paragraphs =/

 

Makes my head hurt to try and read this..

[Sbamber]

tl;dr

 

And what about WalMart?

[Imperial Blaze]

Shorten it please......tl;dr

[Lazer Yoshi]

Ignorance is Bliss was also some wierd Mario Cartoon on Youtube. I really didn't like it.

[Frlf]

tl;dr

 

And what about WalMart?

 

This.

They have many accounts of unethical business practices and disturbing sexual discrimination allegations that one needs to check out. The article from Fast Company can be found at http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html.

[Raelen]

tl;dr

 

And what about WalMart?

 

tl;dr

"too long; didn't read."

 

1. The inability to accept, understand or pay attention to information when not separated by a header.

2. The ability to arbitrarily read 400 small posts but not a long one.

3. A sign of ADD or lack of reading capability.

4. A very cheap response and an indication of lack of wit.

5. 90% of the time: A lie.

6. A desperate attempt at a comeback used by people who just can't think of one.

7. Usually used by people who've been torn apart verbally but want one last attempt at looking witty.

8. Total failure at #7.

7. A sign that, not only is someone too lazy and stupid to read but, clearly, too lazy and stupid to even type out four words indicating such.

9. Collect every "tl,dr" post online, and you'll have a good estimate of the number of lazy idiots on Earth, who currently have Internet access.

10. Should really be:

"Too Lazy, Don't Read."

or,

".....I got nut'n!"

 

 

And buy the way, the whole saying is, "Ignorance is bliss, when tis folly to be wise."

People often forget that last part.

[Bloodrun]

I thought this was going to be another YCM thing again. Don't owrry Bloody my friend i'm fighting for ya.

 

Don't bother, those nimble minded persons, won't do anything.

 

And Frlf Wal-Mart just happened to be in the copy pasted speech.

 

Also, tl;dr. I know, and understand your problem, and I am here to say, were all rootin' for you to fail at your education.

 

EDIT: Solo, I chose to use Ignorance is Bliss, because people cannot understand more then two subjects within a sentence, of course the Speech didn't help with that either. But this is what seperates the boys from men, and the idiots from successors.

[Frlf]

Waiiiiiit.

 

So, this is copy pasted? D:

And what is there to discuss then, if this isn't about Wal-Mart?

[Guest JoshIcy]

Ignorance is Bliss, where foley is wise.

 

Lolz... Learn it.

[Bloodrun]

Ignorance is Bliss' date=' where foley is wise.

 

Lolz... Learn it.

[/quote']

 

 

EDIT: Solo' date=' I chose to use Ignorance is Bliss, because people cannot understand more then two subjects within a sentence, of course the Speech didn't help with that either. But this is what seperates the boys from men, and the idiots from successors.

[/quote']

 

;)