Malwart::
It’s no secret that I despise Walmart for a lot of reasons…and remember what Mama said, “Walmarts is ‘da Devil, Bobby BOO-shay”.
The following comment was a called in response on a radio program where the topic was Wal Mart’s expansion into rural small market areas, and I agree with most of what this caller says.
“The last caller of this segment perfectly illustrated the FUNDAMENTAL DISCONNECT among consumers between short-term savings vs. long-term best interests; between microeconomic strategies of buying cheap versus macroeconomic strategy of “buying American.” Once upon a time, WalMart proudly displayed “Made in the USA on most of its products. But in a pricing race to the bottom that was ungoverned in terms of domestic versus overseas sourcing for those products, the toxic brew of outsourcing combined with Walmart’s out-sized market and source-pricing leveraging and an ability to successfully lobby the halls of political power for ever-more import deregulation, ever-more constrained worker rights to unionize and fairly bargain collectively and conservatives as natural ideological allies.
The result? A hollowed-out manufacturing base, where once-good-paying factory jobs that supported American families with decent paychecks and security are now largely but a memory. And it is killing this country even as Malwart grows like a cancer, putting more and more local retailers out of business EVERYWHERE it goes. Don’t believe me? LOOK AROUND–and read Robert Reich’s book, “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s future.”
THIS COUNTRY SIMPLY MUST REALIZE that wealth is NOT created by high-paid executives: It is rather, simply the surplus value of labor harvested from the workers employed at their enterprises. And when those workers no longer have jobs, they CANNOT support those businesses. Henry Ford recognized this fundamental truth in paying his workers enough so that they could become his customers. Walmart is instead raping this country of its wealth…with the complicity of bargain-hunting consumers driven to shop there as their paychecks vanish, and their politicians dither without agreeing on an industrial policy that sets the nation’s welfare above that of private deep pockets; and the long-term future above the outcome of the next election.”