Tag: Wal-Mart

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Fifty Out 1.4 Million

Black Friday’s mass anti-​WalMart protests focused on how poorly WalMart treats its employees. Or so run the allegations. A typical sign said “Living Wage NOW.”

But it was a funny sort of labor-​relations protest. There were marchers. And there was media coverage. Lots.

What there wasn’t a lot of, though? Walk-​out WalMart employees. A few hundred showed up, nationwide, says OUR WalMart, the protesting organization; WalMart itself puts the walkout number at about 50.

That’s out of 1.4 million workers overall.

The whole spectacle seems so strange. It’s not the workers protesting wage and conditions, really, but those who don’t work there. The protestors demand higher wages for WalMart employees. But from what I can tell, actual employees feel rather lucky to have their jobs.

Could we be witnessing a new form of unionizing? Outside agitators working to get in? That is, could the protestors be trying to force up wages so that they could replace current WalMart workers?

For many of the most vocal WalMart critics, that seems unlikely. They hate WalMart. One gets the idea, from following their typical spiels, that what they are really up to is hurting the company.

And, if the folks at Reason magazine are right, raising prices. What many object to is the fact that WalMart has succeeded precisely because it has decreased prices to consumers.

In olden days, the common presumption was that cheaper prices were what we wanted from business: more goods for less, thus providing betterment to vastly increasing numbers of people.

On the professional left, such eternal verities no longer seem to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement

You’re the Top

Rob Walton is rich, $21 billion rich.

An email I received yesterday from the folks at Wal-​Mart Watch (WMW) implores me to click to a website to vote for Mr. Walton as “the worst of the 1 percent … the person who is doing the most with their wealth to exploit the rest of the country.”

Could this be true?

“The Waltons inherited that wealth,” WMW says, “much of it was created by paying many workers at poverty-​level wages, offering poor benefits, and lowering conditions in the supply chain by demanding ever-​lower prices.”

Count me out.

Even Sam Walton, founder of Wal-​Mart, had the right to give his wealth to whomever he wished, especially his children. Besides, as chairman of Wal-​Mart for 20 years now, Rob’s earned plenty on his own.

The email forgets to mention that Wal-​Mart provides more to the poor through lower prices than the federal government provides through food stamps.

And hey, didn’t workers at Wal-​Mart apply for — and freely accept — their jobs? How many “living-​wage” jobs has WMW created?

The sentence in bold type signals the real gripe, I bet: Rob Walton has transgressed by supporting causes that “advance a right wing agenda.” The Walton Family Foundation (of which he’s a board member) has donated to the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, school choice groups, and others.

Horrors! If Rob Walton is the worst of the 1 percent, the self-​appointed vanguard of the 99 percent ought to occupy a mirror.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Blackmail and Ballots

Councilman Rick Roelle in Apple Valley, California, says that Wal-​Mart “blackmailed the town.”

Blackmail is no small matter. So, what did Wal-​Mart do, specifically?

Wal-​Mart worked with citizens of Apple Valley, including supplying money, to gather enough petition signatures to place a measure on the local ballot for voters to decide whether Wal-​Mart could build a store.

“The initiative process was an opportunity that allowed voters to voice their support for the benefits that Wal-​Mart would bring their community,” a spokesperson for Wal-​Mart argued, “including jobs, affordable groceries, increased tax revenue, and infrastructure improvements.”

Who’s right?

Aside from the fact that there are many issues the majority has no right to decide, including whether a law-​abiding business can open its doors, why not let the people decide? At least a vote of the people is a clearer expression of the public will than a city council decision.

Some complain that even when a local petition qualifies the voters often don’t get a vote. Under state law, if 15 percent of the electorate signs a petition, the matter must be placed on a special election ballot … unless the city council enacts it, instead.

Special elections cost big money. Cash-​strapped city councils have voted to allow Wal-​Mart development, simply (they say) to save the expense of holding an election.

But such “caving in” doesn’t seem like blackmail in light of Menifee’s experience. The Wal-​Mart measure there won with 76 percent of the vote.

Unless, like some politicians, you think doing the electorate’s will is “blackmail.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Big Box, Big Apple

Whether to let a business open up should not hinge on opinion polls. But a recent survey of New Yorkers does underscore the absurdity of banning Wal-​Mart from the Big Apple.

If you’re used to seeing a Wal-​Mart every 30 miles, you may be surprised to learn that there’s not a single Wal-​Mart in New York’s five boroughs. Unions have marshaled political clout to keep the company out. Now, with the store again trying to gain a foothold in the area, “community” activist Pat Boone complains that “We need good paying jobs, not minimum wage jobs.” Wal-​Mart pays more than minimum wage. But ask yourself: Is no pay for no work really better than a reasonable entry-​level wage that sustains some folks’ homes and hearths?

And who is the “we” that this “community” activist speaks of? The unemployed workers who would flock to the job-​application lines if Wal-​Mart came to town? The 71 percent of New Yorkers who, according to Douglas Schoen’s survey of 1000 New Yorkers, would cram the store’s aisles?

Too often, political power caters to interest groups eager to force others to conform to their own way of thinking. Markets, by contrast, are all about offering a value and then letting people decide for themselves whether they want to pay for it.

So let Wal-​Mart open up, New York. Let honest, hard-​working people get the best deals for food and supplies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.