Ah, Capitalism

Wal-Mart has redone its compensation plan. The change accomplishes two major things. First, it allows Wal-Mart to pay its CEO more and more, even if sales suck. Second, it takes away profit-sharing for most Wal-Mart employees.

Wal-Mart, or more accurately, Sam Walton, defended Wal-Mart's low pay of its employees by pointing to profit-sharing: If the company did well,the employees got a taste as well. As Walton saw it, it gave the employees a stake in how well Wal-Mart was doing, above and beyond their base pay. That's why he referred to his employees as "associates".

But Sam Walton has been dead for almost twenty years. His brother, Bud, who co-founded the chain with Sam, died a few years after Sam's death. Sam and Bud may have thought that they were running a family business, but those days are long gone. Wal-Mart is just another corporation, where the executives do everything they can to push down the pay of their workers, while those same executives take home more and more.

Wal-Mart may not be the Font of All Evil, but they are certainly close by and downstream.