What Is Walmart Karen?
The Karen meme
Karen is associated with the kind of person who demands to speak to the manager in order to belittle service industry workers, is anti-vaccination, and carries out racist micro-aggressions. The stereotype of Karen is that they weaponise their relative privilege against people of colour, for example, when making police complaints against black people for minor even fictitious violations. The meme became popular a few years ago as a way for people of colour to show their class-based and racially charged hostility.
The Karen meme has a male version called Ken that has been around for a while. When wealthy couple Mark andPatricia McCloskey were pictured pointing guns at protesters, they were dubbed "Karen and Ken". Aggressively refusing to wear a face covering to help protect others from the virus has been seen as a new iteration of the stereotype of the entitled Karen who harasses service industry workers.
The Name Karen
Karen is stereotyped as having a blonde bob haircut, asking to speak to retail and restaurant managers to voice complaints, and being anti-vax soccer mom, as a result of being featured in the meme. The name Karen is thought of as a generic name for a middle-aged white woman of a certain generation. Karen was the fourth most popular name for newborn girls in the 1960s, peaking at #3 in 1965, according to Social Security data.
The Mises Daily: An Economic Perspective on Wal-Mart
Wal-mart is accused of paying overseas workers too little, not paying benefits to part-time workers, and not giving enough back to the community. All the accusations against Wal-Mart can be applied to any large corporation in America. Kathie Lee Gifford was almost run out of the country for giving jobs to Third World workers.
Wal-mart pays relatively low wages compared to most jobs and people get loathing from that. Wal-mart is not unlike any other retailer in that it provides jobs and not careers. Executives, college graduates, and skilled laborers are employed by General Electric or General GM, so they don't have to worry about wage-related scrutiny.
You have the perfect recipe for resentment and disdain because the labor union organizers can't unionize Wal-Mart. Wal-mart is a target for contempt because of its "bigness." Americans like to attack bigness.
Americans don't like bigness like clout and domination. Small suppliers will be out of business in a free market. McDonald's has to keep prices low and economies of scale do this, while Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans can keep prices high, but they are the only people who can afford to do business on a small scale.
People who produce house paint and wallpaper have to compete with other suppliers for business. General GM has to keep prices low, while Rolls-Royce doesn't. People complain when a corner drug store is taken over by Wal-Mart.
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