More on Wal-Mart

I came across these well before the revival of this internal dialogue I call a blog, so thought I'd now share...

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know, long but good...

...the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart....

Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions.

And this if from a TPMCafe post, Wal-Mart and Public Subsidies, giving a little context to much of the Wal-Mart debate going on...

What we have here is a massive decision by the federal government to subsidize low-wage work rather than to force employers to pay more or provide basic benefits... The entire thrust of social policy over the last two decades, albeit a quiet one, has been to encourage the creation of low-wage jobs by subsidizing them. We made a bipartisan political choice not to impose that responsibility on companies, and to use public subsidies instead.

But having made that choice, we can unmake it, or reconsider it. And we should. And if focusing on Wal-Mart, the world's biggest company and the country's biggest employer, helps show the consequences of that choice, that's all to the good.

It's unfortunate that these issues are so complicated, though of course it makes perfect sense that major national shifts in employment, corporate and welfare policy didn't happen overnight. But it also makes it much easier for people to spin reality into a beautiful illusion that is everyday low prices -- ignoring both the historical context and the current and future local and global impact. Because I don't doubt that if people really understood that while Wal-Mart does seem to remain painfully loyal to its mission to provide low costs, it does so at the expense of millions of its own workers and tens of millions around the world.