Corporate social irresponsilbity

Very disappointing to see you write something so ignorant. The opportunities you and I had for getting off minimum wage were much better than today. When I worked at EDS after getting out of college I could barely support myself in our capital city for much more than minimum wage. Student loans, car payment, apartment costs, utilities, healthcare. I lived with 2 other guys to save money and still didn’t have enough money to buy myself a second suit (full suits were mandatory). I got mocked for wearing the same thing every day.

Back when Republicans pushed the tax breaks to move jobs overseas plus tax cuts for the rich they kept saying “we’re moving this country to service industries - we don’t need factory or manufacturing jobs!” Well, this is our service industry… it’s in grocery stores, retail outlets, and packing warehouses. As more and more people are squeezed for funds their purchasing power gets diminished and the Wal’marts & Dollar Stores become the only option for shopping. The great lie that was fed to us was we didn’t need to produce our own goods. The only people that’s worked out for is the 1% who increasingly own more of everything.

Obama tried to get rid of the tax incentives for corporations moving jobs overseas and create the same tax incentive to bring jobs back home. Republicans filibustered it.

I disagree. Afaik, pretty much all moral (as distinct from ethical) descisions are, in the end, informed either by data or by prejudices.

You seem to be getting incredibly confused between
1)Using statistics to make a choice on a predetermined morality (i.e. knowing someone has a 5% chance of surviving but is in incredible pain, so choosing to ease their suffering and euthanise)
and
2)Whether or not putting people out of their suffering when there is no reasonable hope of survival is morally right.

Statistics inform the individual choice, they don’t affect the morality of it.

You can disagree all you like, you’re logically wrong and haven’t been able to back up your assertion to even the slightest degree thus far. Ethics and morality existed long before statistics, and you’ll struggle to find any mention (protip: you’ll find none) of anything related to statistics in any of the great classical treatises on Ethics and Morality.

Hey, who knew a classical and catholic education would finally find a use on QT3!

I’m not sure I agree with your division between ethics and morality. (2) is something which ethically…

Also, I’m not even nominally ©hristian, and this may be one point on which I vary from that…

You can totally make decisions on morality without data, but you can’t do it ethically. I win the conversation, pay tribute.

You can’t win on the Internet!

Back to the original topic (for the most part), I’d be interested in hearing what people think would be a good way to encourage corporate social responsibility. We all (except maybe Starlight) seem to agree that it’s bad when they’re irresponsible. What’s a good way to incentivize them to be more responsible?

And my local Best Buy’s workforce is mostly well into adulthood in my experience, so my anecdotal evidence completely contradicts yours, hence why anecdotal evidence is entirely meaningless in the context of a debate.

For example, in my personal experience, most of the conservatives that I’ve actually gotten to know to any substantial degree are bigoted and religious extremists. Fortunately, I’m intelligent enough to know that my own anecdotal experiences cannot be extrapolated to paint all (edit: or even the majority of) conservatives as such.

effablebob - Oh hey, your reading standards strike again!

Farscry - Yes, but you /can/ generalise when you’re dealing with politics rather than persons. And I’ve yet to see any Republican politics aimed at addressing these issues…and few from the Democrats either, to be fair.

While I understand the point you are trying to make, I’m getting the impression that you don’t actually have any anecdotal evidence in this case, and instead just made it up.

Did you actually go to your local best buy and see who was working there? Because I actually did.

Prove it.

I shop there every few weeks, and actually pay attention to employees most places I shop at.

Good on you for keeping the discussion classy and not levying a baseless accusation of dishonesty against me.

Edit: Huh, whaddaya know, actual statistics (by the Economic Policy Institute) agree with my anecdotal evidence. You must shop in an atypical region.

I don’t regularly shop at Best Buy or Wall-mart (for obvious reasons), but my last trip to Wall-mart, average age of an employee would be well into 50s.

…Even if he does, it remains anecdote, and worthless when talking about a statistical issue! Don’t encourage him!

I like to “window shop” at Best Buy; around here it’s one of the few places to browse gadgets, games, and such. I don’t tend to make purchases there all that often.

Yes, I am a bitter, lonely, disgruntled man, and going out to look at shit in stores is one of the few ways I get out and around real live people. :P

I do the same thing as we have a Best Buy not far from my house. I will add my two cents that the staff at that Best Buy is probably 95% under 25 years old.

Ya, I’ve noticed the same thing. A lot of retailers have older employees. Best buy just isn’t one of them, from what I’ve seen. Every best buy I’ve been to has always had a fairly young set of kids working there.

And honestly, it kind of makes sense, given what they are selling.

I shop there every few weeks, and actually pay attention to employees most places I shop at.

Good on you for keeping the discussion classy and not levying a baseless accusation of dishonesty against me.

Edit: Huh, whaddaya know, actual statistics (by the Economic Policy Institute) agree with my anecdotal evidence. You must shop in an atypical region.

Hmm… Did you mean to link to some other source? Because that’s an article from think progress about one in four American workers being in low wage jobs, rather than statistics about Best Buy employees.

Based on what? Most professional institutions over here operate on a code of ethics (think Solicitor, Doctor, Financial Adviser etc) and do so without statistics. Aristotle and Socrates defined early ethics, again without statistics and data.

Ethics as a concept has existed for thousands of years, statistics and data gathering has only existed for a few hundred.

you smell

Masters vs Slaves. that is all (corporate capitalism is about).

Morals are not ethics!!! vents steam from his ears. Sheesh.

Also, I think you underestimate your ancestors…statistics most certainly have been used since before ancient Greece. It’s just these days we can collect and tabulate them far more rapidly. But still -don’t underestimate the abaccus.