Sebastian Malaby has an interesting op-ed in The Washington Post on how the anti-Wal-Mart movement is taking over the Democratic Party. He argues that this kind of “dumb economic populism” is ultimately going to hurt the Democratic Party with the low-income to middle-class voters that they need to win.
I tend to agree — despite the fact that I can’t stand Wal-Mart, the silliness of the Democratic anti-Wal-Mart campaign shows just how far the left the Democrats have gone. The issue of Wal-Mart has been described as one of the top issues in the country — a statement that’s rife with a sense of misplaced priorities.
Wal-Mart as a political football riles up only two groups of people: rich white liberals and union members. Both of those groups are already firmly in the Democratic camp. It has no resonance with the rest of the American electorate. In fact, Malaby is right that the Democrats’ attempts at cheap economic populism could hurt them with voters who depend upon Wal-Mart to meet their daily needs. As Malaby notes:
or a party that needs the votes of Wal-Mart’s customers, this is a questionable strategy. But there is more than politics at stake. According to a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Jerry Hausman and Ephraim Leibtag, neither of whom received funding from Wal-Mart, big-box stores led by Wal-Mart reduce families’ food bills by one-fourth. Because Wal-Mart’s price-cutting also has a big impact on the non-food stuff it peddles, it saves U.S. consumers upward of $200 billion a year, making it a larger booster of family welfare than the federal government’s $33 billion food-stamp program.
How can centrist Democrats respond to that? By beating up Wal-Mart and forcing it to focus on public relations rather than opening new stores, Democrats are harming the poor Americans they claim to speak for.
Granted, I’m not a fan of Wal-Mart, and I suspect very few people are proud Wal-Mart shoppers, but they do ensure that their suppliers are as efficient as possible — which keeps overhead low even if we don’t shop there. No other big box retailer provides the kind of benefits that activists demand Wal-Mart provide. The selective outrage over Wal-Mart seems quite suspicious.
In the end, Wal-Mart as a political issue will appeal only to a narrow segment of the electorate, one which the Democrats should already have sown up. Trying to exploit economic populism in a time of unprecedented global interconnectedness, when millions of Americans owe their jobs to world trade, is simply poor politics. The Clinton Administration was far more “progressive” than the so-called progressives in liberalizing world trade, helping to usher in a time of unprecedented prosperity in America. Unfortunately, the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party of today have jettisoned their own best ideas in favor cheap populist rhetoric.
UPDATE: Another Rovian Conspiracy notes an article showing that low-income and minority consumers have an incredibly positive view of Wal-Mart. That isn’t all that surprising to me — and it again shows why the Democratic attempts at playing the economic populism card are so politically foolish. Attacking Wal-Mart will alienate the low-income voters that the Democrats need to win elections. Then again, the Democrats seem to be more about Air America than Middle America these days.
UPDATE: A leftyblog called the “alternative hippopotamus” gives the anti-Wal-Mart perspective:
As you know, the left half of the blogosphere recently appointed me spokesperson. So, I’ll explain why there is much ado about Walmart. It has nothing to do with people being treated fairly, or workers being forced to go to ER’s instead of receiving health benefits. It has nothing to do with Walmart forcing out the family businesses. It has nothing to do with a time when “Made in the USA†didn’t mean a sweat shop in the Marianas islands.
No, we just don’t like people from Arkansas. That’s why.
Let’s examine these implicit charges.
First of all, what constitutes workers being “treated fairly”? That’s a rather nebulous charge. Retail is hard work. It’s not all that fun. Wal-Mart, for all its real and imagined sins, gives people who wouldn’t otherwise have any job a chance at gainful employment. I don’t have the figures, but I would imagine that Wal-Mart hires more minorities as a percentage of their workforce than anyone else. It is a lot easier for someone to find a better job when they’ve had something before.
I would be quite curious to see how long the typical Wal-Mart employee goes before finding better work. Contrary to the usual stories about the “working poor” most people don’t stay in those entry-level jobs forever.
Again, what other retailer gives health benefits to its retail employees? Why is Wal-Mart being singled out for special opprobrium? There’s a reason why no one gives health benefits to hourly retail employees: because they can’t afford to do so. As a question of public policy is it better to have people with no job and no health insurance or a job that gives them skills and experience that can get them to a point where they can have health benefits? The workers who would get laid off by Wal-Mart are going to still be going to the ER for illnesses — and they’re also likely to be on food stamps as well.
Wal-Mart employees thousands of underprivileged and minority workers. It gives them valuable job experience, it gives them a decent wage, and it gives them the dignity of employment. Being a stocker at Wal-Mart is not designed to be a lifetime position. However, it’s an important start.
No retail store can provide health insurance for all of its workers and still turn a profit. Millions of disadvantaged and minority people depend on Wal-Mart, not only for their own low prices, but for the efficiencies that Wal-Mart creates for other retailers. The reason why Wal-Mart works is that they realized that millions of people weren’t being served by existing retail outlets and were overcharging people due to inefficient supply chain management. Over the last two decades or so they’ve changed all that and have produced a retail environment that is much more efficient and gives low-income consumers more choices than ever before.
The small businesses that Wal-Mart “forced out” were businesses that weren’t as efficient, and simply couldn’t compete in an open marketplace. In terms of social good, Wal-Mart’s probably better in the long run. None of those Mom and Pop stores were going to offer health benefits either. None of those Mom and Pop stores can employ as many people as Wal-Mart does. None of them can charge the type of prices that Wal-Mart does, meaning that if they were the only options the effective budgets of millions of low-income people would be much less than they are.
As much as I like small businesses, and make it a point to shop locally when I can, if it weren’t Wal-Mart, it would have been Target, or Costco, or someone else. Economics is all about reaching efficiencies, and not all small businesses can survive. Furthermore, there’s no credible economic evidence that suggests that Wal-Mart has had a negative economic effect — quite the opposite in fact. Even small businesses benefit from a supply chain that’s more efficient than it was 20 years prior.
And I don’t even like Wal-Mart. I can’t stand shopping there. However, the arguments against Wal-Mart could easily be applied to any other retailer and are grounded in a profound economic ignorance. No one holds a gun to anyone’s head and demands that they shop at or work at Wal-Mart. People do of their own free volition and if they stopped Wal-Mart would go away in fairly short order. Wal-Mart is thriving not because they’re more evil, but because they’re more efficient and provide goods of decent quality at a price people can afford.
The people who make the most fuss about Wal-Mart tend to be rich white liberals. I suspect that the reason why the anti-Wal-Mart crowd hate Wal-Mart so much is because it refuses to acquiesce to the demands of the unions and the fact that they’re extremely successful at what they do. The fact is that no matter what the intent of these rich white kids filled with a sense of noblesse oblige wrapped in the veneer of “social justice” may be, the end result is that they want to take the ladder to success for millions of disadvantaged and minority workers and saw the bottom rungs off.
The fact that Republicans can reconcile habitual defense of Wal-Mart with their lip service advocacy of “small businesses” and their relentless whining about the expansion of social services shows how non-existent their convictions are. There is absolutely nothing Wal-Mart could do, short of throwing support to Democrats, that Republicans would concede is beyond the pale. So long as Wal-Mart is the trendsetter for the disempowerment of the working class and the globalization-fueled deindustrialization of America, Republicans will continue to defend them and makes asses of themselves doing so.
As expected, Jay Reding has no comment whatsoever in regards to being called on the irreconcilable contradictions between long-standing GOP orthodoxy (“save small businesses!”, “stop the growth of entitlement spending!”) and his knee-jerk defense of all things Wal-Mart, a company whose tireless expansion undermines those goals….along with the standard of living of the peasantry.
Jay Reding is also a busy law student. Jay Reding feels no obligation to explain himself. Jay Reding needs to stop referring to himself in the third person.
If Wal-Mart went away, hundreds of thousands of people who got their first experiences in the working world would be out of a job. For all the supposed economic sins of Wal-Mart, millions of underprivileged people depend on them for goods and jobs. Nobody else fills that niche nearly as well.
It’s completely unrealistic to argue that Wal-Mart should provide health benefits to its employees when no other retailer can afford to do so either. Unless you want millions of underprivileged and minority workers to lose their jobs, demanding that Wal-Mart meet extravagant demands that no other retailer employer does is just stupid.
I suppose I could use your typical argumentative style and argue that you really just want black people to be unemployed and forced into the shackles of government benefit programs for your own middle-class Wonderbread sense of noblesse oblige…
Of course, the political aspect of all this doesn’t change – attacking Wal-Mart appeals to rich white kids, and nobody else. As a political issue, it’s an incredibly bad one, and the Democrats are going to hurt themselves if they continue to pursue it above issues that actually matter.
“If Wal-Mart went away, hundreds of thousands of people who got their first experiences in the working world would be out of a job.”
Silly argument. If Wal-Mart went away, another retailer (or better yet, series of retailers) would meet the public demand for retail goods. The public’s appetite for consuming junk, and the entry-level jobs that accommodate that appetite, would not cease to exist if Wal-Mart went away tomorrow and the Costco business model prevailed in the retail sector.
“For all the supposed economic sins of Wal-Mart, millions of underprivileged people depend on them for goods and jobs.”
Couldn’t the same thing be said about underworld narcotics trafficking? Does that make that business worthy of our support as well?
“Of course, the political aspect of all this doesn’t change – attacking Wal-Mart appeals to rich white kids, and nobody else. As a political issue, it’s an incredibly bad one, and the Democrats are going to hurt themselves if they continue to pursue it above issues that actually matter.”
The bottom line is this: It’s a world WITH Wal-Mart, not a world without it, that raises the level of public dependence on social services and diminishes the success rate of small businesses. If you’re gonna be an unpaid Wal-Mart shill, at least see if you can muster up the integrity to inform your allies in the “small business” community that they’re merely a means to end to accomplishing your party’s plutocratic agenda….and concede the fact the ascendancy of Wal-Mart necessitates the expansion of social services entitlement spending. You cannot have one without the other, and every slimy Republican demagogue deserves to be reminded of it whenever they defend Wal-Mart in one breath and bemoan social services spending the next.
Except the whole point is that the Wal-Mart business model isn’t all that much different than the Costco business model, or even the Target business model. Wal-Mart just got there first and got the biggest share of the market because of it.
Of course, that sort of ignores the fact that what Wal-Mart does is perfectly legal, while the drug trade is not. But hey, at least you’ve won todays Idiotic Simile of the Day Award (Motto: it’s like midgets wearing William Shatner masks!)
Except for the fact that there’s no hard evidence that’s true. On the first count, how many Wal-Mart workers would be on social services regardless of whether they worked for Wal-Mart or not? How many Wal-Mart workers are on fewer social services because they are gainfully employed? If Wal-Mart didn’t exist, how many additional people would be on social services?
The fact is that Wal-Mart takes sizable risks in hiring people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who would likely have trouble finding jobs elsewhere. Given that, it’s natural that more people in their workforce would be on some kind of social assistance. If they hired nothing but rich white kids, they wouldn’t have that problem, but thousands of poor people would be without any source of income.
The argument that someone else would come in and fill that niche may be true, but the fact is that nobody had before Wal-Mart did. Again, the effect of the liberal’s anti-Wal-Mart crusade would be thousands of unemployed minorities – but I guess liberals really don’t care about the disadvantaged enough to be concerned with the actual effects of their own policies – just as long as it makes them feel good about themselves…
Of course it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet the reanimated corpse of J.P. Morgan at the country club where we’ll light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills and discuss how to keep the proletariat down…
By “fact” I assume you mean “utter bullshit”…
Again, did those “Mom and Pop” stores offer their employees wages higher than the minimum wage? Did they offer them health benefits? Could they have employed the same number of people that Wal-Mart does?
See, there’s this place called “reality” in which ideas and policies have these things called “consequences” and when one of those consequences involves tens of thousands of poor people getting even poorer, losing their jobs, and no longer being able to stretch their incomes as far as they do that’s normally considered a bad thing.
Again, the idea that Wal-Mart makes more people go on social services is absolutely idiotic. Of course to some who can’t think beyond a bumper-sticker slogan it’s unthinkable that a company that hires disadvantaged workers would have a hirer rate of people receiving some form of assistance than a company that hires the same kind of lily-white rich kids that are making the fuss in the first place. Apparently it’s absolutely unconscionable that someone would actually hire disadvantaged people and give them a shot at a better life. What nerve!
Of course, the point still stands: attacking Wal-Mart hurts Democrats with all but rich white liberals. For all the talk about “plutocrats” the Democrats seem to be the party of Martha’s Vineyard rather than Middle America.
“Except the whole point is that the Wal-Mart business model isn’t all that much different than the Costco business model,”
Journalists who’ve actually studied the issue rather than resorting to knee-jerk Wal-Mart defense tactics have come to a different conclusion. But don’t take my word for it….
http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/is_costo_the_anti_wal_mart/
http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/walmart/2005/the%20Anti-Wal-Mart.html
http://www.teamster.org/04news/hn_040211_6.htm
“Of course, that sort of ignores the fact that what Wal-Mart does is perfectly legal, while the drug trade is not.”
Actually, the state of Maryland did vote to outlaw Wal-Mart’s parasitic business practices, but a politically connected “activist judge” overturned it. I guess “legality” is flexible depending on who your friends are. Apparently, the domestic robber barons who control Wal-Mart stock wield more political influence than the Medellin drug cartel. Who woulda guessed, huh?!?
“How many Wal-Mart workers are on fewer social services because they are gainfully employed? If Wal-Mart didn’t exist, how many additional people would be on social services?”
False equation. You make it sound like the retail sector of the economy has always been the predominant venue of working-class employment. The fact is that the people who currently go to work at Wal-Mart used to go to work at manufacturing jobs with good wages and benefits. Unfortunately for you, some of us actually remember the 20th century when lower-income people had better employment prospects than Wal-Mart.
“The argument that someone else would come in and fill that niche may be true, but the fact is that nobody had before Wal-Mart did.”
Well, there was a tiny little outfit called General Motors that I heard provided a few such quality jobs for low-skill/semi-skill workers back in the day before Wal-Mart became the nation’s #1 employer. Who knows? There may be some more such manufacturing companies that did the same pre-deindustrialization.
“Again, did those “Mom and Pop†stores offer their employees wages higher than the minimum wage? Did they offer them health benefits? Could they have employed the same number of people that Wal-Mart does?”
There were chain retailers before Wal-Mart. By and large, they’ve had to lower their standards to compete at Wal-Mart’s gutteral level. At least in my hometown, wages and benefits in the retail sector have fallen by about 60% (adjusted for inflation) since Wal-Mart became the major player in the late 1980s.
“and no longer being able to stretch their incomes as far as they do”
Again, that premise assumes the social (and corporate welfare) costs attached to Wal-Mart are zero and the “savings” they provide come with no strings for the rest of society. All the spin in the world isn’t gonna make that fairy tale come to life.
” it’s unthinkable that a company that hires disadvantaged workers would have a hirer rate of people receiving some form of assistance than a company that hires the same kind of lily-white rich kids that are making the fuss in the first place. Apparently it’s absolutely unconscionable that someone would actually hire disadvantaged people and give them a shot at a better life. What nerve!”
Funny. It seems to me that the “lilly-white” rich areas are the places where Wal-Marts are thriving while its disadvantages minority communities (can you say Inglewood, California) telling Wal-Mart to take a hike.
“For all the talk about “plutocrats†the Democrats seem to be the party of Martha’s Vineyard rather than Middle America.”
Okay, I’ll grant you Martha’s Vineyard (population 13,600) as a haven of upper-income liberals if you’ll concede the much more heavily-populated enclaves of GOP wealth such as Roswell, Georgia; Plano, Texas; Midland, Texas; Newport Beach, California; Dana Point, California; Littleton, Colorado; Wheaton, Illinois; Mission Hills, Kansas; Livonia, Michigan; North Oaks, Minnesota; Morristown, New Jersey; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Franklin, Tennessee; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Brookfield, Wisconsin. Gotta say, buddy….I think you got Martha’s Vineyard outnumbered.
It’s so unfair when the Republicans refer to themselves as the party of Lincoln. They’re also the party of Cadillac, Mercedes and Rolls Royce!
“If Wal-Mart went away, another retailer (or better yet, series of retailers) would meet the public demand for retail goods. The public’s appetite for consuming junk, and the entry-level jobs that accommodate that appetite, would not cease to exist if Wal-Mart went away tomorrow and the Costco business model prevailed in the retail sector.”
I submit that another large retailer would fill the void, one who has resources and the IT infrastructure that does what WalMart has done with IT. Would they be a better employer? Likely not. The small town retailer is following the passenger pigeon.
Health/medical benefits are much like jobs. Some are better than others. Some might say bad breath is better than no breath but at some point the trip to the ER might be a better choice on a number of levels than the medical plan that takes 4 months to get you that MRI that you need.
Yes, I’m sure those sources are full of unbiased and accurate information…
No, a judge ruled that the legislature cannot use the law to bludgeon one company without violating the principle of due process under the law. But what’s the US Constitution to some people anyway?
Except it is no longer the 1950s. What doomed General Motors was technology, not Wal-Mart.
No, they haven’t. Retail has always been a crummy sector to work in, which is why most people start there than move to something better at the first opportunity. What chain retailer ever offered health benefits to their employees?
The demands placed on Wal-Mart are eminently unreasonable ones. No retailer can afford to give health benefits to ever stockboy — not without pricing goods well out of the reach of low-income consumers.
Oh wait, forgive me, I forgot that the Democrats only pretend to care about poor people. When it comes to enacting policies that would actually benefit the poor, the Democrats care more for their moneyed union interests.
Except for the fact that it so happens to be true. First of all, Wal-Mart doesn’t create more people on assistance. The people that Wal-Mart hires tend to have been on assistance before they started there, and a good portion of those people end up being off assistance once they’ve gotten stable jobs either with Wal-Mart or elsewhere.
But hey, why should a well-off white liberal give a damn about some poor black folks when the unions would benefit from keeping them in permanent poverty. It worked so well for the antebellum South, didn’t it?
Except Pew Research indicates the exact opposite – the poorer one is, the more one tends to value Wal-Mart. Minorities like Wal-Mart significantly more than do whites. The fact that places like Inglewood are trying to push Wal-Mart has nothing to do with benefiting their constituents and everything to do with pissant politics.
And when the Democratic Party has completely lost Middle America, I’m sure that blind Democratic partisans will still be trying to convince themselves of that. Meanwhile the Democratic Party drifts further and further from the mainstream of American life…
“Yes, I’m sure those sources are full of unbiased and accurate information…”
Two of the stories were posted on left-wing blog sites, but came from unbiased journalistic sources. The third of the bunch was in Fortune magazine. Not exactly a left-wing bastion. Then again, one would actually read the sources to recognize that rather than serve up knee-jerk criticism of them much like your knee-jerk defense of all things Wal-Mart.
“But what’s the US Constitution to some people anyway?”
Good question. The Bush administration urinates on it almost every week, and don’t let any courts stand in their way.
“No, they haven’t”
You’re right. I’m lying. You know my hometown better than I do. You know exactly what my mom’s income was in 1987 compared to today in the same shitty job. Here I thought it was us liberals who were supposed to be so “arrogant” while you summarily dismiss specific citations of declining working-class wages.
“What chain retailer ever offered health benefits to their employees?”
Wal-Mart wouldn’t be everybody’s favorite whipping boy if they weren’t the worse abuser of taxpayer-subsidized health care services. They offer health care to a smaller percentage of their workforce than do other retail chains.
“No retailer can afford to give health benefits to ever stockboy — not without pricing goods well out of the reach of low-income consumers”
Again, your solution is no health insurance for employers of low-wage workers…and no health insurance provided by government. This is why you people are about to get your asses handed to you in the November elections.
“But hey, why should a well-off white liberal give a damn about some poor black folks when the unions would benefit from keeping them in permanent poverty. It worked so well for the antebellum South, didn’t it?”
Congratulations. You have just pieced together in two sentences an incoherent mess of bloodthirsty right-wing drivel where not one segment made sense. That’s no easy feat.
“The fact that places like Inglewood are trying to push Wal-Mart has nothing to do with benefiting their constituents and everything to do with pissant politics.”
Uh, Jay, there was an ELECTION in the city of Inglewood where VOTERS in the community rejected Wal-Mart by a 2-1 margin. You’re not gonna get away with blaming that one on the invisible fist of the “liberal establishment”.
“And when the Democratic Party has completely lost Middle America, I’m sure that blind Democratic partisans will still be trying to convince themselves of that. Meanwhile the Democratic Party drifts further and further from the mainstream of American life…”
A strange statement coming from a guy whose party is running at a double-digit deficit in terms of public preference for the upcoming election midterms…..with several burgundy districts in Middle America leading the charge to boot your sorry, hypocritical asses out of Washington.
Actually, they seem to be the same story (probably all taken from the same Costco press release). The difference between Wal-Mart and Costco is that Costco is shooting for the luxury market where Wal-Mart doesn’t really compete. The margins in Costco’s niche are a lot higher than Wal-Mart’s. Costco is great if you’re middle class, but they still don’t serve low-income shoppers like Wal-Mart.
And of course, if the Costco market is so much better than Wal-Mart’s the market will decide and one will be successful and the other will not.
Except for the part where none of that happens to be true. But that’s a non sequitor in this case.
Again, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”. One story doesn’t mean anything in proving the overall state of an economy. My point still stands, retail has always been a crappy field to work in, even before Wal-Mart. That’s why it’s an entry-level job. The amount of turnover will always be high, and the wages will always be relatively low. The fact is that you can take nearly any schlub off the street and put them into a retail job. A job that requires almost no skills will always pay less than a job that requires skill, education, or training.
Which again is because they’re by far the largest and they have the most diversity of employees of any other retailer. The difference between Wal-Mart’s health plan and that of another retailer isn’t very great at all (and Wal-Mart’s is in many cases better). Again, the people on public services who work at Wal-Mart almost invariably were on public services before they worked there, and have a significantly greater chance of being off public assistance the longer they work at Wal-Mart.
As I’ve explained several times before, my solution is allow workers to purchase their own health care plans on the open market regardless of their employment status. It makes no sense to couple health benefits with employment, nor does it make sense to enact a system like the systems that are failing across Europe and Canada.
Bloodthirsty? Christ, get a bloody grip!
Getting rid of Wal-Mart would throw tens of thousands of disadvantaged workers into poverty and rob them of their best chance at getting ahead in society — all as a sop to rich and corrupt union bosses. It would put them into a state of virtual slavery to the state – which is exactly where the Simon Legrees of the Democratic Party want them. The Democratic Party might as well be a plantation the way they treat their constituents.
The facts still don’t change. Minorities and the poor shop at Wal-Mart in greater numbers than anyone else. They work at Wal-Mart in greater numbers than anyone else. They like Wal-Mart better than anyone else.
If the Democratic Party wants to argue that they’re too stupid to know what’s good for them, that’s their prerogative. It just isn’t a particularly smart way to win elections.
“My point still stands, retail has always been a crappy field to work in, even before Wal-Mart. That’s why it’s an entry-level job. The amount of turnover will always be high, and the wages will always be relatively low.”
All true. The only thing you fail to mention is that retail is the fastest-growing sector of the American economy (in case you missed it, Wal-Mart is now America’s largest private employer), and if it were really true that retail is “entry-level jobs” and nothing better, why is it that 90% of employees I see in these stores are middle-aged women?
“The fact is that you can take nearly any schlub off the street and put them into a retail job. A job that requires almost no skills will always pay less than a job that requires skill, education, or training.”
Yet they are jobs that require doing….and in larger numbers than ever before. With an economy more dependent on the services of industries that feel as though they have a God-given entitlement to pay poverty wages and benefits, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to sense trouble on the horizon.
“As I’ve explained several times before, my solution is allow workers to purchase their own health care plans on the open market regardless of their employment status.”
Uh, doesn’t every uninsured American already have that “option”? For me to suggest your plan is too cost-prohibitive to work would make me guilty of the understatement of the millennium in only the seventh year of the millennium.
“The facts still don’t change. Minorities and the poor shop at Wal-Mart in greater numbers than anyone else. They work at Wal-Mart in greater numbers than anyone else. They like Wal-Mart better than anyone else. If the Democratic Party wants to argue that they’re too stupid to know what’s good for them, that’s their prerogative. It just isn’t a particularly smart way to win elections.”
At this point, most Wal-Mart shoppers are like cigarette smokers. Wal-Mart shoppers are addicted to the “low prices” just as smokers are addicted to nicotine, but that doesn’t necessarily mean addicts in either group fail to recognize the dysfunctional consequences of their own actions. Most Wal-Mart shoppers I know don’t miss an opportunity to condemn the corporation’s shady business practices. They certainly will not take offense when Democratic politicians give Wal-Mart a well-deserved tongue-lashing for its predatory tactics. The only people who do seem to take offense at Wal-Mart criticism are free-market ideologues who give themselves an orgasm every time they fantasize about how Wal-Mart is engineering a return back to the Gilded Age business model. Not too many such people would ever vote for Democrats anyway.
And it always has been – but that doesn’t mean that retail jobs aren’t still entry level jobs. Retail “grows” year after year because the overall labor pool grows year after year and most people get their start in some form of retail job.
Again, what you see has no bearing on the facts. “Anecdote” and “data” are two different things. I’d imagine that a good number of middle-aged low-income women work at Wal-Mart because they have children and need a job with flexible hours and decent benefits. Wal-Mart would be the best bet for someone in that situation. There are very few other employers who would give a job to a single urban mother with no work experience – as I’ve stated before, Wal-Mart is frequently the first step into the working world for people such as that – which is precisely why more Wal-Mart workers are on some form of public assistance than firms. If you hire only middle-class whites, you wouldn’t see the same numbers.
Except Wal-Mart pays about the same as every retailer. Their averages are right in line with the sector, and so are their benefits.
Retail isn’t a career sector, it’s an entry-level position. Expecting Wal-Mart (or anyone else for that matter) to pay career wages for entry-level work is not realistic in the slightest.
No, they don’t. There isn’t a viable private insurance market yet, which is why the costs are so inflated. You don’t generally have a choice as to insurers, and when you don’t have a choice insurers can jam whatever costs they want down your throat. Other fields where there’s more competition (life insurance, car insurance, etc.) have lower premium costs and better service.
Oh please, run with that, Democratic Party! Call Wal-Mart shoppers addicts. I’d just love to see the lily-white WASP Howard Dean explain to a group of inner-city residents that they’re addicted to shopping at Wal-Mart and need the help of Big Daddy Government to break their addiction (losing their jobs in the process no less).
That has to be one of the most singularly idiotic thing I’ve ever heard — which is no mean feat. No wonder the Democratic Party are terminally out of touch with the American electorate these days…
““Anecdote†and “data†are two different things.”
This coming from you? The guys who wants us to believe that nearly all Wal-Mart employees are 15-year-old newcomers to the job market who need a stepstool to put a box of Cheez-Its on the third shelf? Shit.
“I’d imagine that a good number of middle-aged low-income women work at Wal-Mart because they have children and need a job with flexible hours and decent benefits.”
Ah, yes. They pick the worst-paying job in the country because they want to. Again, I can’t imagine why you guys are running at a double-digit deficit in the 2006 midterm election polls!
“There are very few other employers who would give a job to a single urban mother with no work experience – as I’ve stated before, Wal-Mart is frequently the first step into the working world for people such as that”
So basically we’re trading in “welfare mamas” for mamas still living in poverty, only with the government checks being filtered through middlemen (Wal-Mart, daycare providers) rather than going directly to the receiver. Sounds more like a shell game for the business community than any meaningful “reform”. If Wal-Mart is really the only alternative to welfare, bring back welfare please.
“Retail isn’t a career sector, it’s an entry-level position.”
Are you denying that the majority of retail employees are middle-aged women. Perhaps over lunch break, I’ll see if I can find hard figures on the median ages and years in the workforce of retail sector employees. I can assure you the median age at Wal-Mart isn’t 16 as you suggest. As always, you’ve managed to disgustingly out-of-touch with the real-world the working class lives and toils in.
“I’d just love to see the lily-white WASP Howard Dean explain to a group of inner-city residents that they’re addicted to shopping at Wal-Mart and need the help of Big Daddy Government to break their addiction (losing their jobs in the process no less).”
Government has a role in remedying business practices that assault the collective good, particularly when the financial burden falls on government to subsidize those practices, as it does with Wal-Mart. The public understands that, and even though they may not be able to resist Wal-Mart’s “low prices”, they fundamentally recognize the dysfunction Wal-Mart foists upon them. The only people who don’t are those like you who see political benefit from the disempowerment of the working class which Wal-Mart has kicked into overdrive.
“No wonder the Democratic Party are terminally out of touch with the American electorate these days…”
But Jay, it’s the Republicans who are running at double-digit deficits in nearly every midterm election poll. Will your calendar ever advance beyond 2002?
I never said that. I said that retail is an entry level job, which is quite provably true. I would imagine that Wal-Mart’s demographics generally skew older than the retail average, but not for the reasons you think. Quite a few people with other jobs moonlight at Wal-Mart for the employee discount. Also, Wal-Mart makes it a point to hire a large number of seniors who are using the job to supplement their disposable income.
Except for the fact that Wal-Mart jobs aren’t generally the lowest-wage jobs in the market.
Secondly, generic ballot preference doesn’t mean anything, but that’s a discussion for another time.
Your first point is incoherent. Wal-Mart isn’t “filtering” anyone’s government check, unless you’re accusing Wal-Mart of committing welfare fraud. Secondly, only a liberal would prefer being on welfare rather than having a steady job — which explains why they tend to be terminally ignorant about how people become successful in this country.
No, they’re not.
Using data from Maryland as an example (which is generally close to the rest of the country) 26% of retail workers are 14-24. The overall average is 17%. 59.4% are between 25-54. The overall average is around 70%. Of those in their primary working years, 54% were male.
Again, you seem to be unable to grasp the point here. Wal-Mart workers already tend to be on public assistance before they started working there. Wal-Mart isn’t making people poor, they’re hiring more poor people.
Wal-Mart could easily “fix” those problems by only hiring rich white kids — then they’d have nobody on public assistance and thousands of poor people would have no jobs. If liberals would actually think about the consequences of their policies, they’d understand how mealy-mouthed they really are.
Of course, the proletariat is too filled with false consciousness to see the cash nexus that keeps them in chains. Somehow, I think I’ve heard that line of garbage before.
Of course, midterm generic ballot polls and actually winning elections are two different things, and even while the Democrats are likely to pick up some seats, that doesn’t at all mean that they’re still not out of touch with Middle America.
But by all means, keeping telling low-income and minority voters how deluded they are for liking Wal-Mart and how much they really agree with you but aren’t smart enough to know it yet. That kind of arrogance goes over just so well…
From The Democratic Strategist:
$23,700. That is the household income level at which a white person became more likely to vote for a Republican over a Democrat in congressional races in 2004. That’s $5,000 above the poverty line for a family of four, less than half the median income of the typical voting household of all races, and an emphatic repudiation of all things Democratic among the white middle class. Obtaining a sustainable Democratic majority in either house will be impossible unless there is a significant change in this economic tipping point.
To solve this problem, Democrats must first realize that they have a problem – no, actually a crisis – with the middle class. Democrats – the self-described party of the middle class – have not won the middle class vote in at least a decade. Among all voters with $30,000 to $75,000 in household income, Bush bested Kerry by six-points and congressional Republicans won by four-points. Democrats continued to win nine of ten black voters of all income levels, but Hispanic margins have decreased as their economic situation has improved. And as noted above, we got slaughtered among the white middle class.
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/0609/kima.php
Scholarly studies show Wal-Mart’s price reductions to be sizable. Economist Emek Basker of the University of Missouri found long-term reductions of 7 percent to 13 percent on items such as toothpaste, shampoo and detergent. Other companies are forced to reduce their prices. On food, Wal-Mart produces consumer savings that average 20 percent, estimate Jerry Hausman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ephraim Leibtag of the Department of Agriculture.
All told, these cuts have significantly raised living standards. How much is unclear. A study by the economic-consulting firm Global Insight found that from 1985 to 2004, Wal-Mart’s expansion lowered the consumer price index by a cumulative 3.1 percent from what it would have been. That produced savings of $263 billion in 2004, equal to $2,329 for each U.S. household. Because Wal-Mart financed this study, its results have been criticized as too high. But even if price savings are only half as much ($132 billion and $1,165 per household), they’d dwarf the benefits of all but the biggest government programs.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/08/would_a_nationalized_walmart_b.html
You’re forgetting that many of the people who shop at Wal-Mart view it unfavorably, meaning attacking Wal-Mart is not politically all that risky, while accepting money from Wal-Mart is very risky for anyone who wants support from anyone in the American working class.
People don’t like to shop at Wal-Mart–they only do it because they work at jobs that don’t pay them what they are worth (like Wal-Mart). Everyone who can afford to not shop at Wal-Mart leaves ASAP and goes someplace else.