Why have so many centrist Democrats abandoned their free-market, free-trade principles to bash Wal-Mart? "The truth is that none of these Democrats can resist dumb economic populism," Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby wrote. But he argued that Democrats needs the votes of Wal-Mart’s customers, who, according to one study, save nearly $200 billion a year by shopping at Wal-Mart. "Democrats are harming the poor Americans they claim to speak for," Mallaby said.
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Naomi KleinWednesday August 30, 2006The Guardian
The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the US government’s calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: businesses do disaster better.
“It’s all going to be private enterprise before it’s over,” Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for tropical storm Ernesto, said in April. “They’ve got the expertise. They’ve got the resources.” But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it’s time to take a look at where the privatisation of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.
The first step was the government’s abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).
continued……….
My favorite wal mart article shows how the company forces vendors do things its way relentlessly.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic’s gallon jar of pickles.
Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97–a year’s supply of pickles for less than $3! “They were using it as a ’statement’ item,” says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the “mad scientist” of Vlasic’s gallon jar. “Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart’s about. You can buy a stinkin’ gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it’s the nation’s number-one brand
” year’s supply of pickles for less than $3″
In my house that ain’t a years supply!
Ben, you must be the one that actually buys the 5 gallon bucket of ketchup.
Wal-Mart does nothing to HELP the poor! They capitalize ON the poor.
No, but I DO buy hot sauce by the gallon!
For all its faults WalMart is often a better place both to work and to shop than the little store on Main Street was in many small towns. That is why WalMart has been so successful.
Walmart actually counts on the 1st of the month when people get there government money for sales, while at the sametime undermining the middle class.
Middle class?What’s that?
I have my own personal WalMart boycott going on. Doesn’t mean anything to WM, I realize, but it makes me feel better.
America was created on the notion of free enterprise and through the sweat and toil of the worker, the family farmer and the mom and pop small business. Wal-Mart, like big oil and big agri-business are symptoms of degenerate, late stage bandit capitalism. My family long ago stopped shopping at big chain stores like WalMart!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Ian Santiago is, of course, correct on this point.
Walmart’s ability to punish manufacturers who don’t toe its line really amounts to a de facto, centralized, non-competitive environment that looks more Stalinist than anything else. Barry Lynn makes this subtle point very nicely in this article, “Breaking the Chain,” from the July “Harper’s”:
http://www.harpers.org/BreakingTheChain.html
Yet more evidence to suggest that in his Walmart boosterism, Sebastian Mallaby is as big an idiot as he is a DC shill.
I think shoppers of Walmart can differentiate between preying on the poor; asking them to do better with their policies rather than run them out of business.
Walmart is a BILLION dollar industry, it’s not like we pick on them because they are poor. We don’t like that they send jobs to China, but we do like that it is one stop shopping. We don’t like that they don’t offer benefits, keeping the poor poor….it’s like a vicious circle..nobody can afford to buy elsewhere so they’re stuck.
Wal-Mart does sell for less, and they need to; their exporting of jobs to China means Americans have less to spend there, and everywhere ele!
Make that “everywhere else.”
I haven’t bought anything from Wal-Mart for years. I was already not liking the place when one morning I happened to hear a lot of the crew being made to sing some sort of Wal Mart loyalty song. It made me almost pyhsically ill! That was it for me shopping at Wal-Mart.
Wal-mart creates the class that has to shop at it’s stores by sending their former good paying jobs overseas. Capitalism without some sort of nationalistic loyalty is very ugly to this American!
And now, another side of WalMart that never makes the news, or gets ignored by those bent on nonstop attacks on the evil Walmart.
Walmart has a national policy of accepting motorhome traveling retirees. They are welcome to park overnight in the Walmart lot of their choice, no charge. Security is provided.
Also, Walmart is always open as a staging spot for Patriot Guard events, no matter what state. On Tuesday of this week in Hiawatha, the Walmart employees came out and were giving away water, coffee and donuts to the riders as we gathered before going to the church.
Ok.., reality break is over, let the bashing continue.
Wal-Mart does need to be a better employer. I don’t think we should force them to pay more in wages or to force them to pay health insurance, but Wal-Mart does need to start helping people move on in other careers. Basically Wal-Mart needs to start a tuition assistance program for all their employees so that people can take advantage of that opportunity to better themselves and move on.
Joe,
Wont Happen!! I am a former employee of the Orange Box home improvement store, and while I was there we were given tuition reimbursement, but it kept getting smaller and smaller each year. Now my former co-workers tell me that have gotten rid of the program completely.
The reason being, you guessed it, the BOTTOM LINE!!!
Monopoly = one seller.
Monopsony = one buyer.
Monopsony is what Wal Mart has accomplished. They drive the prices of their suppliers down so harshly that the suppliers are forced to outsource, they drive wages down of every store that competes with them, they devastate small town hardware grocery and clothing stores, they will close a store before they’ll let it unionize, their idea of health care is medicaid (which their employees qualify for because they make so little), their idea of “full time” is 29 hours a week, and they routinely work people off the clock and don’t pay over-time.
Other than that, it’s just wonderful.
Oh, and what they sell is a bunch of plastic Chinese crap.
But never fear folks, the City Council just approved an ELEVENTH Wal-Mart out in the farm fields of north-west Wichita.
‘Cause you can never have too many Wal Marts!
I actually had JR inside a walmart. I thought he was going to go postal on me:-)
Of course the goal of Wal-Mart is to be the only retailer in the world. LoL a future world where all restaurants are Taco-Bell and all retailers are Wal-Mart. Demolition man #3. They buy out some of the name suppliers so that they can have profits from both the name and the store brand that is made by the brand.
Now Wal-Mart does have a tuition program and does advocate its associates to farther their education to better their chances of advancement in the company. Though that is more a suggestion then an clam, nor is the program conditioned on remaining with the company.Does Wal-Mart truth see how their action are an effect on the country, not really in the sense their view is what is good for Wal-Mart is good for the country. All outlooks, prospective and opinion are first and foremost geared to the company. Cause and effect are solely looked at from what impact it has on the company.
Yes it is Wal-Marts aim to be the employer of the world, as such they see a symbolic relationship with the public. The flip side is that they are starting to look hard at the effects of having long time employees, benefits, retirement, wages. The longer an employee stay with the company the more they cost the company.So in a shortsighted view there has been a suggestion by a vice President that there maybe a need to try and force those with five years or more out. To make room for new and cheaper employees to save the company at the bottom line.
Writerdog! How about self-checkouts and robots.
http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/potential.jpg
Just for kicks!
JM?
“I thought he was gonna go postal on me.”
No not on you! But I did and DO cringe whenever I am near a Wal-Mart!
Wal-Mart is essentially a modern, tech-savvy version of Sears Roebuck a century ago. Sears, along with smaller cheaply-priced goods sellers such as Montgomery Ward, SH Kress and JJ Newberry were deliberately created to cater to the poor-immigrant consumers.
Sears was notorious for giving manufacturers fat contracts, which if they accepted, forced them to take on debt to expand, and then, after they did this and were dependent on Sears, the company forced them into a choice of lowering their prices, or watching their contracts be terminated. Wal-Mart does the same thing, with pressure being exerted to build or contract with cheap-labor-cost factories in China. Read “The Wal-Mart Effect”.
It’s no accident that Wal-Mart began in Arkansas, a dirt-poor state. And succeeded. Its expansion tracks the expansion of America’s working-class’s income reduction. Wichita has one of the highest Wal-Mart stores per 100,000 population ratios of American cities, because it’s poor and getting poorer. This isn’t to say that everyone who shops there is poor, by any means, but Wal-Mart itself says that its primary high-usage customer is a member of the working poor class.
So Wal-Mart on the one hand enables poor people to buy things they could not otherwise obtain. At the same time, it is contributing to America’s de-industrialization.
To give you an example of how poor Wichita is, when two Super Targets were opened in 2004, an Eagle article labeled them “upscale” stores. This isn’t how Target is perceived in most parts of the country.
An interesting fact about Wal-Mart, among many fascinating things, is that Wal-Mart China is entirely cooperative with unionization of its stores there, as that’s what the Chinese government wants. Of course, this does not incur U.S.-unionized-store wages and benefits, but it is interesting that the company is very pragmatic, and unionization-accepting– outside the U.S.
I’d say it is way past time for an anti trust move against Wal-Mart. Threaten them with busting them up.
Absent that? In a “right to work” state like Kansas, Wal-Mart is unassailable. If I went to work there and tried to organize a union they could fire me on the spot.
It will be interesting to watch Wal-Mart in areas where laws are more worker friendly. I understand they recently sold off all their stores in Germany due to such concerns.
Is my life without Wal-Mart a little less convenient. Yes I admit it is.
But since when is convenience the organizing principle for a society? Screw Wal-mart!
Didn’t Walmart at one time have a policy to buy American when able…what happened to that?
Also, yeah those Walmart employees should just be happy their leg irons were released once a day so they can go to the bathroom! What a stand up company!
mom even after Sam secretly flew to China to set up the deals. Wal_mart continued the America solgan. They stopped when it was pointed out that more and more things were coming from outside the U.S.
I was like to see the Stats about Wal-Mart per 100,000 people. Right now we only have 5. You can count 6 if you include Derby. One is about to be built up North and was is planned for Oliver and Kellogg. That does seem highly concentrated. But down in Florida, they seem to be on every street corner.
About Target being for a little upscale people. Yeah! It isn’t high end, but people who are upper middle class and women go there. That is why Super Target doesn’t have a sporting good section and they have more clothes and household items then Wal-Mart.
When I was in Atlanta there was a new upscale development center that I went to with a lot of fancy shops, kind of like what the WaterWalk will be without the water features. Plop in the middle was a 600ft Condo skyscraper being built that was selling for $600K a unit. Guess what was right next to it. Yep! A Super Target.
Target has radically changed its base and market strategy from what it was just a decade ago. It knows it cannot compete very well with Wal-Mart customers, so it changed course. They might not be high end, but in many parts of this country and including big cities, Target is pronounced with a French flair.
Remember Levis, Fruit of the Loom and other companies that used to manufacture in America before they were told by Wal-Mart to move those jobs to China or sell their goods elsewhere? Wal-mart doesn’t follow the “free market” whatever that is supposed to mean. They dictate the prices, and they receive government subsidies.
I’m sure conservatives love Wal-Mart since they discriminate against women, use illegal immigrant labor and sell goods made with child labor. It’s a free market paradise, especially since they donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.
If Wal-Mart is so bad then why do you shop there?
If Wal-Mart is so bad then why do so many people work there?
If Wal-Mart is so bad then why do so many of the people working there stay for many, many years?
How is Wal-Mart different than Target?
The real bottom line is that if Wal-Mart was so bad people would not shop there and people would not work there. It takes customers for a business to survive. If the Unions and Democrats think Wal-Mart is so bad then why don’t their members boycott? Instead the Union members and Democrats pull up at their local Wal-Mart in their foreign cars and help keep Wal-Mart in business.
Either walk the walk or stop the lip service.
Well, since democrats represent the economically disadvantaged (artists formerly known as “the po’ workin’ folks)
and it is the po’ workin’ folks that shop at Walmart,
Why would you think democrats hate Walmart? Just because they give millions to the repukes?
Heheh. Ya really ought to read Maslow. It is hard to be that self actualized when you are worried about food, shelter, safety, etc.
The repukes love Walmart but they dont shop there. The poor have little choice these days.
Yep. Up is down and black is white is this brave new republican world.
Soma anyone?
“democrats represent the economically disadvantaged (artists formerly known as “the po’ workin’ folks)”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yeah, they’re really a different breed of hog feeding at the public trough. Unbelieveable how gullible some people are.
sotheysaid so what you are saying is that you support monopolies. Isn’t that against free market thinking the cornerstone of all things conservative.You ask the big questions,why do we work,shop and other wise support them? Certainly by reading the comments you see little support from the progressive side. People shop there because in their mind they have too. Same with employment, from listening to conservative commentators we are told to take what we can get and be happy with it.Where do the unions have that much clout anymore? Union workers have been hit hard with labor arbitrage from outsourcing. Who is driving that policy companies, like walmart?
Labor is only trying to protect the past, which isn’t going to fly in our new global economy.
One thing I would like to know; Wal-mart sells Levi’s? I didn’t know that. Those Dominican Republic made jeans are the best on the market. Looks like I’ll be picking up my jeans at Wal-Mart.
Joe Williams is a Wal-Mart shopper.
THAT will surprise no one.
Earth to Joe Williams you are labor.Please Joe tell us lowly serfs how we are going to prosper in the new world order.
Upgrading our skills. Moving on to new industries. Government also needs to enact a Wage Insurance Program to help people transition from being outsourced to another field without having to completely drop everything they had and built up.
We shouldn’t be protectionist that’s for sure. Employers also need to help people transition. Boeing was a good example, when they provided 2 years of tutition assistance after you were layed off.
Ousourcing is going to continue. Global competition is going to continue. There are many people in the world that are hungry and willing to work. Let things happen so that the entire world can benefit and allow them to develop a middle class.
Wages have been rising quickly in China and India because of this. China actually lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in the last couple of years due to moderization and automation.
Manufacturing will go to the robots. What we need is a different base to look towards. Alternative energy production will be the big key for blue collar workers.
You have to remember that in 1990 hardly anybody had a personal computer, hardly anybody was on the Internet, and hardely companies were involved in that field. 10 years later, millions upon millions of people were employeed by the Internet, millions got connected and millions obtain a personal computer. i.e. what we are doing know posting on this blog.
Who would have thought! What will the next 10 years bring? What will be the next huge employment sector?
Joe Williams,
So “alternative energy production” will be the big growth sector for blue collar workers? “Enegy production” as in “The Matrix?” Or as in “Soylent Green?”
Wal-Mart got rid of all it’s stores in Germany. The Germans didn’t want to go to some tacky piece of crap store than sold cheap, foreign crap.
Wal-mart attempted to destroy competition by holding their prices below wholesale. They planned to force competition out so they could raise their prices up later. The German government had regulations to prevent such predatory prices so Wal-Mart had to give in. Here is America it’s called a free market and Libertarians believe such tactics don’t exist because monopolies are impossible.
Germany also has strong unions so Wal-mart wasn’t able to intimidate and fire people for organizing. Here in America if you get an injury on the job at Wal-mart you get downgraded and your pay goes down. If you don’t accept the lower pay you get fired, such practices are impossible with a strong union that protects workers from such exploitation.
I’ve heard that tale that Wal-Mart was supposed to sell strictly American goods. Moving to the states and going into my first Wal-mart I saw that was a big lie (the first Wal-mart I went to was in Bentonville). No doubt Wal-mart has plenty of other lies to tell, and I haven’t shopped there since.
WalMart is like the “Borg” from Star Trek; evil, hideous and relentless.
Viva La Revlucion Blanco!!
It is more than a year old now so probably almost everyone has seen it.
If you haven’t, there is an intersting treatment on Wal Mart and the other big box chains at JibJab.com called Big Box Mart. It would be hilarious if it were not so close to reality.
http://www.afa.net/walmartadage.htm
It appears that Walmart is trying to mend fences with liberals.
Let’s see, they have alienated some on the issue of the fair wage issue, some on foreign outsourcing, some on unfair competition issues, some on health insurance issue, some on union issues, and now some on the gay marriage issue. Interesting business strategy.
Wall Street Journal:
Bush Appoints Wal-Mart Lawyer to Head Labor’s Wage and Hour Division
President Bush’s recess appointment today of lawyer Paul DeCamp, to be administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the Department of Labor drew quick fire from some Democrats, particularly those seeking to make Wal-Mart a campaign issue. Bush nominated him for the post, but the Senate hasn’t acted on the confirmation. At the law firm of Gibson Dunn, DeCamp has represented employers and defended Wal-Mart in a big employment-discrimination case.continues….
Did anybody catch the fact that this is a RECESS appointment?What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?To me it confirms the fact that our gov’t is now run by business.
Yep! That’s why I’m proud to be from a city where you will not find a single blasted Wal-Mart!
Naiomi, it has never been and god help us if it ever is the governments job to protect all Americans from disastors. Check your United States history Naiomi you are all wet on this one.