This House Believes That Wal-Mart is Good for America Yale Political Union vs. Hudson Union Society - Annual Debate

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. Wal-Mart has also made environmentalism more than a luxury cause. For instance, its promotion of fluorescent lights, coupled with its buying power over lightbulb producers, means that environmentally friendly fluorescent lights finally stand a chance to be purchased by most of America. It has also given consumers a wider variety of products to choose from than local stores could.

On the other hand, Wal-Mart relies on cheaply produced imports from developing countries, often selling products created in working conditions that we would never tolerate here in America. At home, 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.

Come watch the Hudson Union Society take on the Yale Political Union in this exciting debate! here.

Proposition:

Daniel Raglan - As a British citizen and Oxford alum, Daniel Raglan is uniquely qualified to know what is good for America. As a practising corporate lawyer on Wall Street, he has yet to find his local Wal-Mart. Nonetheless, he is proud to support the motion.

David Robinson - four years of Princeton were not enough. Though he briefly ventured forth from the wilds of New Jersey to seek his fortune in Oxford and later Washington he was ultimately unable to resist the siren song of the Garden State. His primary achievement as a campus administrator is the installation of a wall to wall, floor to ceiling whiteboard, whose 200 square feet of cartoons and graffiti are at least as valuable as the research diagrams and equations for which it was supposedly designed.

Cyrus Habib - Rumor has it that Cyrus Habib, on the brink of acquiring his third university degree, is about to abandon the life of a professional student once and for all. With degrees from Columbia and Oxford, and soon Yale Law School as well, Cyrus is about to demonstrate his impeccable sense of timing by joining the working world in time to suffer the slings and arrows of the global financial crisis. He will be returning to Seattle to join the law firm Perkins Coie, for whom he has already worked on behalf of such clients as Obama for America and the Kerry-Edwards campaign. He has served on the Hudson Union Society's Board of Advisors since 2006, but fears that his propensity for losing Society debates might be placing his insider status at risk.

Meeta Anand -  Meeta 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.

Opposition:

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.

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.

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.

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