Comments on: Walmart Welfare

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 16:26:16 +0000

> After all, under the current system,
> many of Wal-Mart’s competitors are
> spending money on employee health
> plans that Wal-Mart isn’t. Under
> universal health coverage, the
> competitors wouldn’t have that
> expense, and Wal-Mart would lose that advantage.
Well, there is also the need to keep employees below the top 3% quaking in fear their entire lives ala The Gilded Age, but we aren’t allowed to talk about that in the modern US political economy ;-(
Cranky

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:31:39 +0000

Isn’t the question of whether universal health care would help Wal-Mart more complicated? After all, under the current system, many of Wal-Mart’s competitors are spending money on employee health plans that Wal-Mart isn’t. Under universal health coverage, the competitors wouldn’t have that expense, and Wal-Mart would lose that advantage.

By: Joe S.

Joe S. — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:23:43 +0000

Wal-Mart, IIRC, does support a higher minimum wage.

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:15:01 +0000

> but may (I think this is more
> complicated) hurt them as workers.
Up until 1990 I would have agreed with you that Wal-mart was an ambigious situation. They did clearly contribute to the final destruction of small-town and small-city socioeconomic cohesion, but that was dying anyway. And they did bring services and prices to semi-rural US that were not available before (as you can see by traveling in rural Arkansas).
Up to 1990, that is, when the stock in the typical Wal-Mart store was a reasonable balance of 60-70% “made in USA” and 30-40% “made elsewhere”. Specialization, comparative advantage, friendly global trade, and all that.
After 1990 however Wal-Mart changed. It developed very powerful supply-chain management processes, then used them to beat its suppliers bloodly. Literally bloody in many cases. The suppliers might have had some fat to cut, but by 1995 they were forced to start seeking the lowest level. Which meant offshoring perfectly good US jobs so that they could manufacture crap that just met the absolute minimum Wal-Mart specification while paying their (or really, their outsourcers’) workers dimes per day in appalling conditions (please don’t tell me this isn’t true as I have seen it happen personally).
Today 90% or more of Wal-Mart’s stock is made outside the US. I just don’t see how this is good for our nation in the long run or even the short run. The US no longer has the advantage of superior manufacturing base, more oil, more natural resources, better educated population, etc that it had in the 1940-1980 time frame. It just doesn’t. We could have kept ourselves going on a self-sustaining basis for a long time, but Wal-Mart forced us to hollow out that dearly bought economic advantage and ship it to China and India. Again, I just don’t see how this can possibly end up well for us in, say, 2020.
Cranky