In article 0oRNc.177875$IQ4.133533@attbi_s02, "Warren"
wrote:

wrote:
I don't want to buy Nike sneaks since I don't want to subsidize low
wage labor for factory workers and high wages for athletes, but I
can't remember if its better for people to have a low paying job any
job and if Nike has improved conditions any.

And when enough people stop buying Nike products, Americans in the
Beaverton, Oregon area start to loose their jobs.

Actually Beaverton has quite a broad economic base, & not one Nike shoe is
made there. If they were, there'd be no reason to boycott.

When people boycott Home Depot and WalMart and all those other stores,
those people working in those stores "one paycheck away from being
homeless"

Walmart never generated a single job without first doing away with two
other jobs. Walmart does not pay a living wage to anyone, but they do put
an end to independent businesses & downtown cores where far healthier
economies formerly existed. Walmart rarely even pays taxes, so there's
nothing to assist the homeless Walmart's existence generates.

(as someone else described them) become unemployed. The store
you shifted your business to may be operating on a tighter margin, and
won't be hiring extra people.

No one has a tighter margin than the Walmart. A better argument would be
that no large chain has unbloodied hands, if we couldn't buy a nail from
companies that have done evil, we simply couldn't buy a nail.

Seldom are things as simple as that first level of cause and effect. And
too often people don't think beyond that first level.

That's for damned sure -- as I showed Home Depot's founder as a matter of
policy side-stepping OSHA regulations resulting in customer & worker
deaths, but giving millions of dollars for assistance to learning disabled
children; being boycotted by Democrats, but also by neo-nazis cuz the
founder's a Jew. Everything is complicated. Stands can even so be made
even so.

A boycott of Home Depot to the level that it even attracts the attention
of the CEO is going to hurt many, many working Americans long before it
has any effect on the CEO, or his political beliefs. I hardly think
that's the desired affect.

Like WalMart & Lowes, when Home Depot comes into a town, they do so only
after winning tax concessions -- they can avoid paying the town its local
taxes for five years. At the end of the five years, they close the store &
move it further out in the county, so the town loses five years of taxes,
loses many independent businesses that WERE paying their taxes, & is left
with an empty strip-mall completley unrentable for any other use. It's a
mistake to think big chains bring jobs. They transfer a broad job base to
a single job base, paying fewer workers very poorly. Where chains put
small businesses out of business, there is always a net loss of job
opportunities & a net loss of taxes & services those taxes would've paid
for.

Don't buy from Home Depot if the stuff they have is junk.

Home Depot has a better grade of lumber than Lowes because Home Depot is
intentionally less careful about the source of their lumber. I'll settle
for a couple extra chinks in a board if I can be better assured Lowes
isn't also encouraging the clear-cutting of old-growth, & paying off a
right-wing government to let them get more of it. Sometimes the choicest
cut for the lowest price is NOT the better choice if it was carved off
someone's child.

Don't buy from
Home Depot if they're too expensive. But if you're not buying from Home
Depot because the CEO is a Republican, you're not accomplishing
anything.

Effectiveness of boycotts varies, but your statement in general is
incorrect. If enough of the public is alarmed that the founder & CEO is
buying legislation to permit clearcutting of the national forests, &
stopping the funding of OSHA so that workers & customers continue to be
injured & killed (two things Home Depot has gotten from Bush), if enough
people won't shop there because of that, there will be changes to get the
customers to return.

-paggers

Think things through before boycotting. What are you *trying* to
accomplish, and how does this fit in with what you *could* accomplish if
you're successful, and what *will* happen if you're only partially
"successful". Also consider that calling for boycotts has become so
prevalent that these calls are now falling on deaf ears. Calling for a
boycott is now like calling wolf. If a successful boycott really has a
chance of getting the desired results before causing too much collateral
damage, then do it right. Organize. Spend some money promoting it. Be
professional. Don't think that "send this e-mail to all your friends" is
going to be a useful tool to promote your boycott.

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com