A twofer! The first part of this meme is false, he didn’t say Walmart would close stores. The 2nd part is misleading & brings up a red herring about wage theft. Nearly all of the wage theft lawsuits are decades old and have little bearing on Walmart’s current balance sheet.
▪️The first part of the meme’s claim comes from a Dec 6 interview with CNBC. McMIllion said retail theft was ‘higher than what it has historically been” and “If that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close.”
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/12/06/walmart-ceo-on-rise-in-retail-theft-prices-could-go-higher-and-stores-will-close.html
▪️This spawned headlines and memes that Walmart was considering closing stores, but in context McMillon was clearly speaking generally. Walmart’s spokesman later confirmed this & said McMillion “was speaking about retail in general and not specifically about Walmart.”
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33399EU
▪️The $1.5B in wage theft claim comes from the Violation Tracker from Good Jobs First, a left wing advocacy group. It compiles lawsuits against companies. There are 44 lawsuits for Walmart listed under “wage and hour violations,” you can check it out here:
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/?parent=walmart&order=primary_offense&sort=desc&page=3
▪️The vast majority of the $1.5B comes from 3 lawsuits:
🔹$640M from 2008, settling 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, most of which happened years prior.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28372433
🔹$242M from a 2016 settlement over meal and rest break violations. However, this claim dated back to a 2006 judgment of $78M, which was appealed over a decade and included post-judgement interest.
https://wjactv.com/news/local/thousands-get-early-christmas-present-from-walmart-class-action-lawsuit
🔹$152M in a 2009 class action lawsuit over violating California’s meal and rest break laws. These violations dated back to a 2001 lawsuit.
https://legalpad.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/09/in-walmart-class-action-huge-judgment-followed-by-stillquitebig-settlement.html
🔹The two other largest settlements, violating California and Nevada labor laws, totaled $86M and $85M. They were from 2009 and 2010, and also dated back to years prior. The vast majority of the smaller settlements were also before 2010.
▪️Clearly, Walmart had problems running afoul of labor laws in the early to mid 2000s. But in recent years, there’s been very few big lawsuits, and settlements aren’t even a rounding error in comparison to their $572B in revenue.
▪️But retail theft is a significant current problem, affecting not just Walmart. Retailers lost nearly $100B to organized crime in 2021. Dismissing this by pointing to an irrelevant stat on wage theft is dishonest. (Ironically this source repeats the false claim about Walmart closing stores)
https://thehill.com/homenews/3767004-walmart-ceo-stores-could-close-with-uptick-in-shoplifting/
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
