Meeta Anand - Meeta Anand has had the good fortune of having attended some of the world's leading academic institutions (Oxford and Harvard), and the greater fortune of actually graduating from some of them. Meeta's debating abilities have been alternately described as more withering than when the bad guys open the ark at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie and yet more subtle than a groundball between Bill Buckner's legs. When not revising her biography, she is a corporate lawyer in New York City.
Cyrus Habib - Cyrus Habib is a Rhodes Scholar, Truman Scholar and Soros Fellow. Habib worked for Senators Cantwell, Clinton, and Kerry, the private equity firm Pelican Partners, the law firm Perkins Coie, and most recently Google.
He has been published in a number of publications, including the Washington Post.
Rachel Homer - Rachel Homer is a senior Political Science major, because that's an original major to choose at Yale. After a semester babysitting the Yale Political Union - as President - she had no trouble coordinating interest groups while working on the Democratic Platform this summer. The summer before she worked in the Ugandan Parliament in Kampala, which is like the beltway, but with more cows and fewer lobbyists. She plans to have a lucrative career working in Democratic politics; if that fails, she's settle for just working in Democratic politics.
Carmen Lee - Carmen Lee has yet to fill the void in her life after leaving the Speakership of the Yale Political Union this semester. When not saving Africa one micro-loan at a time, she can usually be located by the sound of her voice. Student organizations that have begged her to shut up include the Yale Debate Association, Saint Anthony Hall, and the Independent Party.
Jack O'Conor - It is unclear how exactly Jack O'Conor--a purported physics and computer science major--found his way into the Yale Political Union, or what he expects to accomplish by refusing to leave. His answer to everything is to privatize the roads, so no one has yet bothered to tell him the topic of the motion.
Joseph Pascal - Joseph Pascal is co-founder and president of the Hudson Union Society.
Pascal is from Long Island and received his M.B.A. at Oxford.
Michael Pomeranz - Michael Pomeranz is a senior in Yale College from Chicago, IL. He is a major in Religious Studies (recently promoted from lieutenant), a position sure to render him unable to pay for a Senate seat back home at the going rates. He hopes the Society will vote for his side of the resolution early and often. If careers in law, politics, government, or education policy don't work out, he plans to tour the nation, calling for repentance, as the recent steroid revelations clearly are God's punishment for the sin of the Designated Hitter.
Daniel Raglan - Daniel P. Raglan's practice is concentrated in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and acquisition finance.
In addition, Raglan regularly advises companies on public disclosure, securities law and corporate governance issues. His clients include major corporations, financial institutions, private partnerships and REITs.
David Robinson - David Robinson is a member of the Oxford Union Debating Team. After two years in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, Robinson found that his primary skill was bar-room conversation. Eager to put this talent to use, he became a Washington journalist.
Like Oxford, Washington seemed to specialize in comedic debates; unlike Oxford, these comedies were inadvertent. After this brief foray, Robinson returned to Princeton.
Wal-Mart is in many ways a symbol of capitalism, its efficiency the envy of corporations the world over. Its economies of scale have made everyday goods more affordable for millions of Americans - a point that might be brushed aside by the more affluent but that is essential to the lives of working class families across the country.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart employs questionable labor practices while offering low wages to its workers. Its ruthless business practices squeeze suppliers within an inch of their lives, and the opening of a Wal-Mart store in your neighborhood may force local merchants out of business to be replaced by a 'big box' warehouse with little invested in the community.
Watch the Hudson Union Society take on the Yale Political Union in this exciting debate!
She argues that Wal-Mart is a drain on tax revenues and public dollars because the wages of the average service employee are low enough to qualify them for a number of public assistance programs. This is a valid point, but not necessarily in the context of whether or not Wal-Mart is good or bad for America.
This argument is a broader criticism of the disconnect between minimum wage laws and public assistance programs. Any company can pay their full-time employees minimum wage, placing them below the poverty line. Thus, as long as a company can attract enough supply of labor, they can legally pay minimum wage, and rely on public assistance programs to make ends meet for the employer.
This argument has no weight on a Wal-Mart debate. Should Wal-Mart, as an exception, have to comply to higher wage standards than the government's minimum wage law, while other companies still pay their employees minimum wage?
I appreciate many of the other arguments she makes, but the wage/tax argument lacks specificity and shouldn't play a role in a discussion of Wal-Mart's effects on America.
I am from one of the poor communities the people in this video conceptualize, Salyersville Kentucky USA. We don't have a Walmart, but I believe most surrounding counties do. Walmart in my eyes symbolizes a culture shift in the community. Modern poor Americans eat at Mcdonalds, smoke cigarettes, and shop at Walmart. Most of them unaware that Mcdonalds is not only fattening, but is linked to bowel and colon cancers. They do not care about the environmental degradation that a functioning Walmart implies, to which I will outline; Permanent loss of habitat through hillside destruction, the fuel consumption by employees and consumers, the manufacturing of cars and the necessity to operate them by said people, the manufacturing of plastic goods, outsourcing and the implications involved in shipping goods across the globe.
The local economy is based on coal. Coal extracted via strip mining--and especially Mountain Top Removal--forever change the landscape and pose serious environmental risks on the communities around them.(kftc.org) Coal miners then shop at Walmart. In this way, money generated in the region is funneled away. This is why the regions that generate more coal, have higher poverty rates.
FancherJ: I agree that Walmart shouldn't have to live up to higher standards than other companies, but as the largest retailer in America making extraordinary profits, they are definitely more able to provide a higher standard of living to their associates which represent the face of their corporation to their customers. It might slow down their growth, but I would say that it would be worth that cost for the non-economic benefits. That is not to disagree with you on the institutional disconnect and problems in America, but Walmart isn't powerless to help out their own.
Walmart is bad for America given the reasons debated. There was almost nothing convincing on the pro-Walmart side of the debate, while the other side had an abundance of information to back up the claim that "Walmart is bad for America". I personally will not shop at Walmart because I realize the harm that it has done to the American economy and culture. The individual has the power to choose where they buy, and I would encourage anyone who does not like Walmart to NOT shop there.
What this video has taught me is that, college students -- particularly the Ivy League types on view here -- can be REALLY annoying assholes.
That said, I visited eastern Texas earlier this year and, in every small town I visited, the businesses in each old downtown center square were boarded up and the only economic activity was at the WAL-MART out on the by-pass. WAL-MART is a blight on the world. I hope the world wakes up and sees them for what they are: Rapacious carpetbaggers who have decimated the retail landscape of America with their questionable business practices.
