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(2.14/21.05 issue) Sam's Big Club
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: James Surowiecki, Jim Surowiecki, Wal-Mart
In the Financial Page this week, Jim Surowiecki muses on the seemingly unstoppable power of Wal-Mart and the futility of companies like Gillette and Procter & Gamble's trying to gang up on the price-cutting behemoth:
It's certainly true that manufacturers have a lot less pull in the marketplace than they used to. But they haven't lost it to Wal-Mart and Target. They've lost it to you and me.... In a sense, Wal-Mart is the elected representative of tens of millions of hard-bargaining shoppers, and, like any representative, it serves only at their pleasure.
It seems only fair to point out that Wal-Mart routinely declines to serve the cost-conscious shoppers closest to it—its own employees, who are denied adequate health care, proper wages, and the opportunity to advance for those who happen to be women (the company's aggressively saccharine ads notwithstanding). Any attempts by those people—many of whom started working at Wal-Mart for precisely the reasons Surowiecki describes, as reported in my friend Liza Featherstone's must-read book Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart—to actually choose a representative for their interests (a.k.a. a union) are promptly squashed hard. Yes, workers are consumers too. But they can't consume much at minimum wages; Henry Ford figured this out in the '20s, when he decided he had to pay his workers enough money to buy his cars. Wal-Mart's done a brilliant job of imitating Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, handing out dollar bills to the panicked masses when the bank goes bad. Trouble is, we're all living in Pottersville. (The FBI's COMPIC investigation ruled Capra's movie communistic for seeking to "discredit bankers" and "deliberately malign the upper class.") When the likes of P&G look like meek David eyeing a slavering Goliath, you know we're in trouble.
Down and Out in Discount America [The Nation]
Wal-Mart: The Facts [NOW]
Our Committment to People [Wal-Mart]
Film Industry Surveillance FBI Files [Paperless Archives]
All Hail Pottersville! [Salon]
Categories: Surowiecki,, Wal-Mart,, Movies
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
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Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Reviews: theater writing (for Time Out Chicago)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
Wal-Mart just closed one of its two unionized stores, the store in Jonquiere, Quebec. WM insists that it’s because the store wasn’t making money, but a look at its pattern of anti-union activity and store closures says otherwise. There’s a great piece on this on the American Rights at Work website: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/unionbusters/walmart.cfm