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1. Scott M. | December 6, 2012 at 8:06 am

   There was an article in today’s RT concerning Starbucks’ plan to add 1500 new stores in the next 5 years.

   You can read more about that here:

   http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-starbucks-growth-idUSBRE8B503020121206

   Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) plans to increase the number of its cafes in the Americas by more than 20 percent by opening more than 3,000 new shops there in the next five years as it looks to rely on tea and juice as much as coffee, it said on Wednesday.

   The world’s largest coffee chain is also finished with acquisitions for now, after buying juice seller Evolution Fresh for $30 million and Bay Bread LLC’s La Boulange Bakery for $100 million over the last 13 months. Starbucks also plans to close its $620 million purchase of tea store chain Teavana Holdings Inc (TEA.N) by year-end.……

   Compare and contrast this news with what Starbucks has been doing in the UK.

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/dec/03/starbucks-slash-lunch-breaks

   Starbucks is cutting paid lunch breaks, sick leave and maternity benefits for thousands of British workers, sparking fresh anger over its business practices.

   On the day the House of Commons’ public accounts committee branded the US coffee chain’s tax avoidance practices “immoral”, baristas arriving for work were told to sign revised employment terms, which include the removal of paid 30-minute lunch breaks and paid sick leave for the first day of illness. Some will also see pay increases frozen.

   The changes affecting about 7,000 coffee shop staff emerged as the company tried to quell public and political outrage at its use of secretive company structures that has seen it pay just £8.6m in UK tax over the past 13 years on sales of £3.1bn.…..

   Doesn’t it seem ironic that a chain which is doing good enough to open so many new stores is also cutting back on employee benefits? It’s those employees that make the operation of the stores possible and yet they have no say in the management of the stores, etc. Remember this people. This is how capitalism works. Drive down employee benefits and wages in order to increase profits even when you already have a successful profit making company.

   Is it any wonder I call myself a communist?
2. Michael | December 6, 2012 at 9:00 am

   #1 – “Is it any wonder I call myself a communist?”

   Hey, Scott, how about providing us with an example where Communism has suceeded and prospered?
3. Sandi Saunders | December 6, 2012 at 9:21 am

   Scott will have as many examples of Communism being a successful thriving nation as 89Hoo will have of the free market being the successful thriving economy of one. Or of Libertarians having a successful thriving nation. Or of Conservatives having a successful thriving nation.

   All successful thriving nations have a mixture or amalgamation of economy and governance.
4. Scott M. | December 6, 2012 at 9:33 am

   Remember Michael I’m talking about economic communism, not political Communism (which they have in China for example).

   Try this posting I put up yesterday:
   http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/2012/12/wednesday-open-thread-226/#comment-151805

   If you follow the links through the links you get other articles like:

   http://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

   At the top of that article you find the Publix grocery store chain is employee owned (through an ESOP – not my preferred method) which has 152,000 employees.

   And of course, there is the Mondragon Corporation.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation