Wal-Mart: Morality and Economics
Jason Kuznicki on Sep 14th 2006
Yes, yes, I can certainly find reason to criticize Wal-Mart: Its use of eminent domain for private profit is simply state-sanctioned theft. Government delivery of property from one private entity to another is absolutely wrong and should be forbidden. (Or rather, it is forbidden, in the Constitution no less, but we nowadays ignore those parts that we find inconvenient.)
Not everything the chain does is evil, however. Consider the following numbers from George Will’s column today:
Wal-Mart, the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy, has almost as many employees (1.3 million [I've seen 1.6 million -- JTK]) as the U.S. military has uniformed personnel. A McKinsey company study concluded that Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the nation’s productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s, which probably made Wal-Mart about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation. By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates. Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion).
People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart — it has one-fifth of the nation’s grocery business — save at least 17 percent.
In a suburb of Chicago, more than 25,000 people applied for the 325 jobs at a new Wal-Mart.
Now, I read this stuff and I think — “Wow, that’s pretty much how the free market should work. Good for them.” Retail companies trade in consumer satisfaction. They fail if they don’t supply it; they succeed if they do. The meaning of Wal-Mart’s success is therefore self-evident. (And I suspect that the chain could have done nearly all of it without eminent domain.)
I further suspect that Wal-Mart’s “best” customers — that is, the ones most deeply satisfied at the chain’s existence — are those who hate the place the most reflexively of all. It feels good, I suspect, to have such an enemy, because it feels good to take on something valuable and important. It feels good to look down on so many people, in city after city, wherever one goes. It feels good to be smug, and to know with absolute certainty that you’ve not been taken in. And it sure feels good to be cynical.
Consider The NonSequitur, a blog which prides itself on the logical analysis of political media. Contributor jcasey writes,
Gee, in addition to the big savings, people also like to work, especially when there are no other jobs available. But just because people are applying for jobs at Wal Mart does not make them good jobs. It does not make them jobs with reasonable benefits. It does not make them pay a living wage (where one can shop anywhere else but Wal Mart).
This, though, is not logical at all. I imagine a child who finds a dollar bill in the street: Immediatly he bursts into tears, devastated that it was not a hundred. Life is so unfair that way.
Are people applying for “bad” jobs at Wal-Mart? Perhaps. But then, ask yourself: What kind of jobs were they hoping to leave? These can only have been worse jobs — or maybe they had no jobs at all. The applicants would never have turned up in such large numbers if they did not hope, collectively, to find something better than what they already had.
In other words, these applicants must know something about Wal-Mart that jcasey does not know — or that he refuses to acknowledge. What they understood, I think, is that wealth is not conjured into being. The world owes you nothing in particular, but tends only to compensate you for what you contribute. As Stephen Crane wrote,
A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
Wal-Mart is a corporation, not a fountain of limitless cash that we can approach with a pail and a shovel. We can shame Wal-Mart all we like, but it will not enrich the chain’s employees.
Why not? Let’s look at the numbers: Jcasey, have you ever considered Wal-Mart’s financials? In layman’s terms, that 3.23% profit margin puts Wal-Mart only a couple of steps above nonprofit status. Compare this to Home Depot at 7.03% or Sears Holdings at 2.22% [corrected], and it’s easy to see that Wal-Mart isn’t exactly taking its employees for a ride. Neither the company’s meager stock performance nor its modest 1.4% dividend are anything to brag about either.
Let’s imagine, though, a perfectly altruistic Wal-Mart, a Wal-Mart that took every bit of its net income and returned it directly to the employees. We shall forget, for the moment, that this would also drop Wal-Mart’s stock price to zero (no dividend and no possibility of growth means no reason to invest). We shall also forget that our new firm — call it Charity-Mart — will entirely lack the ability to meet unforseen contingencies. We shall even put out of our minds the imminent dissolution of the firm, which would surely be the result of this disastrous policy. Hey, whatever. Imagine no possessions and all that… So here are the numbers, if we returned absolutely everything Wal-Mart made to the employees:
10.267 billion net income / 1.6 million employees = A one-time cash payoff of… $6,626.25.
Which they will have to spend wisely, since they will momentarily be out of a job. (Note that between “one-time cash payoff” and “job at Wal-Mart,” the latter is obviously the sounder economic choice, and that if the unemployed could simply purchase a job at Wal-Mart, this would be a wonderfully cheap price for it. One that they could pay, no less, on credit out of their future salaries.)
The point of all this is not to accuse Wal-Mart’s detractors of favoring corporate suicide. I am quite confident that they can now recognize this as a mistake. The real point here is to show that Wal-Mart isn’t the rapacious giant it’s so often made out to be. It’s huge, but it’s incredibly lean. Meanwhile, Will’s statistics endure: Wal-Mart is doing an awful lot of good with that $6626.25 per employee per year. Not only is it providing jobs — wanted jobs — for each of its employees, but it’s also lowering prices for the rest of us.
There’s a moral here: Poverty is not a strange deformation of human life. Sadly, it is the default state of our existence. Poverty is not the result of Something Bad that Some Corporation Must Have Done. No. In a sense, poverty is life itself. It’s what we get to work with. The rest is up to us, and it’s a rare firm that succeeds so well as Wal-Mart at providing so much value for so many — and so cheaply, too.
Wealth, insofar as it exists at all, is ultimately the result of a damn lot of hard work. It’s the result of aggregating those $6,626.25 per employee per year, and of making them do all that they possibly can to provide for the customers, the employees, and the shareholders alike.
Blaming Wal-Mart for this process — blaming it, mind you, not thanking it — is the very definition of a non sequitur. It’s like blaming the guy who carted water across the desert, because he didn’t bring champagne instead. It’s asking for wealth without having the means or even the inclination to create it. It’s an idle wish, not an economic program.
If Wal-Mart can bring about an incremental change for the better, no matter how small that change may be, then it should be thanked. The creation of wealth is difficult, and it is almost never accomplished except slowly, through many tiny changes. A 17% savings on your groceries may not sound like a lot to jcasey — and, to be honest, it wouldn’t be a lot to me, either. But repeat it a hundred millionfold, year after year, and there you’ve got something remarkable.
Filed in The Boardroom
Dear Jason,
You fail to get the point–and perhaps that’s my fault. Will was arguing that applications to Wal Mart mean something for which he hasn’t presented any evidence–that they’re good jobs with good benefits. No one can rightly begrudge Wal Mart its legitimate and legal success. But they offer too many crappy jobs; and they leach off state welfare agencies (and they certainly know that), bust unions, among other things. These facts of course can be disputed, but it doesn’t follow from the existence of job applicants that the jobs applied for are desirable other things being equal. That’s the point. And the shallow picture of the opposition to Wal Mart’s success in Will’s column is shameful.
P.S. Considering what I make, a 17% percent savings is a big deal.
All the best,
jc
Excellent post. There’s not a thing here that I disagree with. It’s a relief to me to see these atrocious bills overturned that seek to punish Wallmart for not providing benefits and a “living wage.” I’ve gotten into big fights with the rest of my family over matters like this, and now it feels like I should just avoid the subject altogether because I get nowhere. I just might end up emailing a few people the link to this post. Your arguments, as always, are very clear and concise; maybe this will persuade a few people to come over to the side of reason.
You can’t argue with exploiting supply-side economics, ever.
I think that you’ve missed the point completely. Critics of Wal-Mart do not attack it solely because it is a large corporation that is marginally profitable, nor do they assume that corporations must be altruistic. What critics of Wal-Mart mostly contend is that Wal-Mart has near monopoly status in the market, destroying competition and smaller businesses wherever its large foot-print treads. Wal-Mart has the ability to suffer regional losses in revenue, offset by large profits in other areas of the country (and world) in order to carnivorously devour local competitors. Wal-Mart is also the largest single trading partner with China, distributing slave-wage made products to the rest of the world at a considerable mark-up.
This leads me to my second point. You argue that complaining about the work conditions and low pay that Wal-Mart offers its employees is analagous to a child unsatisfied with the amount of free money he/she found in the street. This is what philosophers would call a “weak analogy,” which is a type of informal logical fallacy, or a “non sequitur” (from Latin, meaning “does not follow”). First, an employee of a company is not upset because the employer isn’t being generous enough. The employee is upset because of a lack of fair compensation for services rendered. Second, if I granted you the strength of your analogy, would it still hold if the employees were instead Chinese sweat-shop laborers? Should they, also, quit whining and just accept poverty as a fact of life? Many of these Chinese companies are creating jobs and economic growth for their country, in fact at a much faster rate than U. S. industry is performing. When does profit and growth outweigh human rights and a “living wage”?
You cannot oversimplify this debate. It is real, and it affects everyone, everywhere. No serious critc of Wal-Mart, or any other corporations that engage in questionable activities, attacks them for simply being greedy or rich. They instead seek to hold these organizations accountable for their actions, especially when businesses like Wal-Mart hold so much power over the lives of everyday workers and citizens of countries around the world. The naive utilitarian calculus that you seem to be using avoids sticky problems like worker’s rights or inherent power imbalances, that both affect political processes and individual human dignity.
[...] Libertarian Jason Kuznicki defends Wal-Mart at Postiive Liberty. The left-of-the-aisle assumption that an unskilled worker is being cheated unless they get a middle class level wage befuddles me at best. [...]
Jem and Jcasey –
I think we may in a sense be talking past one another. To you, the question is, “Does Wal-Mart offer good jobs with good benefits?” And I have to admit that this is a legitimate question. But it’s not the one that I was asking, and not the one that Will set out to ask, either.
For Will, as for me, the question was: “Does Wal-Mart offer a marginal improvement over the other jobs in the labor market for these individuals?” Here, the answer is clearly “yes.” Otherwise so many would not have applied. Are they “good” jobs, in the sense that you or I might want them? Almost certainly not. I am fairly sure that I make more than the average Wal-Mart employee, and that my benefits are better besides. But this is comparing apples and oranges — or, if you like, complaining about the lack of champagne in the desert.
Jem writes — I think for both of you — as follows:
These are all weighty questions.
An employee of a company will naturally have a higher opinion of the value of his labor than does his employer. I readily admit as much. But what, then, is the real arbiter of that laborer’s time value? The employer would no doubt want to have the labor as cheaply as possible. And the employee would certainly want to sell his labor as dearly as he could.
I submit that the arbiter between them can only be the market, and that the question of whether Wal-Mart is offering “crappy jobs” can only be answered in reference to the market’s decisions. Clearly, Wal-Mart jobs are better than something, otherwise they would never get so many applicants. That was Will’s point, and it is mine as well: The market tells us that Wal-Mart represents an incremental improvement. It doesn’t say that Wal-Mart is a happy place to work, or that the workers are all compensated as well as university professors or government officials. It only says that this is a step up — that and nothing more.
Now, should these employees “quit whining and accept poverty as a fact of life?” Absolutely not, and I fear that I, too, have been misunderstood here.
Wealth and poverty are like education and ignorance — only one of the pair is given to us by nature, but the other is clearly preferable. Let these workers keep applying elsewhere if they don’t like their jobs; one of two things will very likely happen: They will either find a better job, or Wal-Mart will decide to pay the workers more, the better to retain them.
As to Wal-Mart destroying small businesses — Yes, I think it’s clear that it does. But honestly, I would rather go to a big store with a small price tag than vice versa. So this, to me, is a good thing.
And as to Wal-Mart and China — I absolutely agree. Trade with China is indeed morally problematic. Yet how many times have you, personally, refused to buy an item that was made in China? I tried it for a while, and I found it was nearly impossible to live without them. What are we to do?
As long as they keep busting unions I’m all for ‘em
Dear Jason,
We are in a sense talking past one another, and in a sense not. Will’s argument is directed at the attitude of liberals toward successful business–or what he takes their attitude to be. But even if that’s their attitude–condescending and out of touch–this has no bearing on the arguments they advance against Wal Mart’s business practices. For liberals, that’s the question. That seems to be the discussion *you* want to have–that’s great, because that’s the discussion that needs to be had. Will, as he so often does, is interested in shortcutting his way to the conclusion that liberals are anti-corporate by questioning their motives (which are irrelevent) and pointing out the number of people who apply for jobs in an econmically depressed area. The large number of people applying for those jobs therefore does not show (without added evidence not mentioned by Will) that those are good or desirable jobs.
thanks for the enjoyable discussion
jc
Thank you as well, jc.
I’d only add that Wal-Mart is not the unstoppable corporate juggernaut that it is sometimes made out to be. For example, the chain failed miserably in Germany, where it alienated workers and consumers alike with its all-too-American ways. (There’s an article about this in the current Atlantic Times, though it’s subscription only on the web.) Wal-Mart recently ended its operations in that country after taking some very serious losses.
What all of this says to me is that there is nothing inevitable or unstoppable in the way that Wal-Mart competes. It’s just doing better, for the moment, at providing Americans what they want. And we ought to appreciate it for doing so, rather than looking down at it as so many people do, particularly if they are wealthy and liberal.
Also, let me ask you something, jc: How would you go about providing “good” jobs in an economically depressed area, while also providing goods and/or services at competitive prices, and while also keeping the investors happy enough to fund your business? This, I think, is the biggest question of all. It admits of no easy answers, and if Wal-Mart doesn’t have the best answer, then I think the chances are good that someone will soon come along to do better.
Dear Jason,
As I think is probably clear by now, I’m only making a logical point. Will’s argument is weak. As for the substantive issues about Wal Mart, I know enough to say that–as you have pointed out–it’s a complicated question. One best left for the many experts who have weighed in on it. Shallow caricatures (such as Will’s) do little to advance the discourse. They do as little as the “corporations evil” wing. The only difference is the one is a nationally syndicated columnist and TV personality, the other a college kid with a t-shirt. Again. I appreciate your serious discussion of these issues and I’ll drop by often in the future.
The free-market solution:
“I submit that the arbiter between them can only be the market, and that the question of whether Wal-Mart is offering “crappy jobs” can only be answered in reference to the market’s decisions.”
The market is not the sole arbiter between business and labor. Nor does the “market” make decisions. People make decisions based on market trends and projected financial gains or losses. But, as we have seen in recent decades, the decisions made by people in business have favored lower wages, fewer benefits, and less job security for the rank-and-file employees, offset by massive increases in executive pay. These are decisions not made by the market. If they were, we would see a decline in pay from the top to the bottom of the business pyramid. Rather, these decisions are made by individuals who put personal profit over people, intentionally lowering the standard of living for many so that a few can enjoy a more charmed life. The typical response to this argument by neo-liberal free-marketers is: “if you don’t like it, then leave.” The question is, where can one find another job? If 25,000 people showed up on Wal-Mart’s doorstep, a company already in the news for years for mistreating employees, what is the correct conclusion to draw from this? It is not that Wal-Mart should be applauded for bringing crappy jobs to the unmotivated masses. Rather this situation should make us consider the broader economic trends in this country where poor or unskilled people can only survive by working for companies like Wal-Mart, or McDonald’s, because few other jobs exist. That is a product of the “market.” the solution is to control the market, and not let the market control us, especially when the market lacks any human qualities. It doesn’t have to be “survival of the fittest.”
Jem –
It seems strange to me that you write as follows:
These are decisions not made by the market. If they were, we would see a decline in pay from the top to the bottom of the business pyramid.
Am I to understand that, in your terminology, “market” decisions are limited to those decisions that you happen to agree with — while the decisions you don’t care for must surely be made by, well, something else?
You are right to point out — of course — that only individuals make employment decisions. But they do this in the context of a market, which sets the parameters within which they must choose. To attract labor at all, Wal-Mart must offer pay and benefits that will bring the workers in. Clearly they are doing so, even if you, personally, would not care to work for such wages.
But for some people, the job market simply won’t include a $50,000 per year job, with good benefits, short hours, and lots of vacation. And trying to force the market to provide such a job to these people will invariably entail losses somewhere else, no matter how pleasant it might be for everyone to have a nice job like that one.
Moreover, in considering the question of workers’ wages, executive pay is even more of a red herring than corporate profits: Divide up the salaries of corporate executives, share them equally among the workers, and you will find considerably less than the $6,626.25 I derived from net income.
Cutting executive pay cannot possibly give the workers the kind of salaries you think that they ought to have. Meanwhile, a company that cannot attract highly skilled executive talent will soon find itself unable to compete, unable to satisfy its customers, and unable to pay its low-skilled workers.
this situation should make us consider the broader economic trends in this country where poor or unskilled people can only survive by working for companies like Wal-Mart, or McDonald’s, because few other jobs exist
Would you have them performing brain surgery then? What work, exactly, would you propose for the unskilled? And how would you find the means to pay them for this work? (And why would you want to incentivize being unskilled anyway? If I could make $50,000 per year at an unskilled job, I might never have bothered with college at all… But I fail to see how this would have been a good thing.)
I would just add that “the market” is the exchange of goods and services between all real buyers and sellers. The market could refer to the entire economy of a country or a particular product or industry, etc. So the market is individual people making decisions as to what to buy from or sell to, each other, or not, based on their individual circumstances as they see it.
I think there is a real law of human nature that says that people will tend to spend the least effort to reach their goals. To use Jason’s example, as buyer I will tend to try and buy what I want with the least amount of money and as a seller to try and get the highest price I can. I say “tend” because there are always exceptions to the rule, and we can all think of examples in our dealings with people.
For outside individuals to control the market as Jem suggests is to control either the buyers or sellers and their lives and property against their will; and that’s an example of a dictatorship.
Jason,
Great post. I agree with everything you say. And you say it so well. But the 4.52% for Sears Holding Company is return on assets, not profit margin. Their profit margin was 2.22%.
An easy mistake to make. (I’m a CPA, so I have a lot of practice reading those kind of things).
And one tiny mistake like that doesn’t diminish ANY of the good points your post makes!
Would someone tell me why my comments were deleted from the blog?
Art –
Your comments were not deleted. They were held in moderation, as all comments from first-time posters are held. This helps prevent spam. From now on, your comments will only be held if they contain profanity or certain spammy keywords. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Jason,
Have you ever worked for Wal-Mart or a similar type employment? Many in my family have, as have. All who make such positive comments should take a year or two in a Wal-Mart and get the exerience. There are many large corporations that try to take care of the their employees. Wal-mart has made it more difficult for such employers, often competitors, because Wal-Mart has been willing to offer poor benefits and leach off of state welfare programs rather than put some of those profits back into its employees. Is that really the kind of solid corporate thinking we want that contributes to the community, state, and nation?
I might add, we are not wealthy or liberal, but I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart given how many of us have experienced it as an employer from the otherside. And Wal-Mart failed in Germany not simply because of its American style, but because Germans take benefits and care of employees more seriously than Americans tend to as my partner, who is German, has come to discover in his work here.
Jason, I think the “Leeching off of welfare programs” is something that needs to be addressed a bit more thoughroughly than you’ve done above.
I’ve also heard allegations of Walmart violating fair-competition laws because it was easier and more cost effective for them to pay the fines than too actually comply with the law.
When you combine that with the Eminent Domain issues you link to above, I’m getting the picture of a company that uses it’s influence to encourage the government to pave its pathways and clean up its messes (at taxpayer expense, of course), while using its size and resources to circumvent rules that its smaller competitors can’t afford to ignore.
I’m all for the power of the free market, but this market doesn’t seem free so much as cheap in bulk.
Jason
Thanks for the explanation.
Alan, and others –
Jason, I think the “Leeching off of welfare programs” is something that needs to be addressed a bit more thoughroughly than you’ve done above.
I neglected to address this point on purpose, because I found it the weakest objection of them all, and also one that I could not formulate into any kind of consistent principle.
Our government has decided that those who make less than certain income levels will receive cash and other forms of aid. How should it be, then, that Wal-Mart is culpable here? The government made this decision, not Wal-Mart. If the government now regrets its decision, let it change the way it allocates welfare.
Or should the poor receive aid — unless they work for Wal-Mart? Surely, this idea more than any would validate Will’s claim that liberals have an irrational hatred for the firm. Those making similar wages and benefits elsewhere would get aid — but those working at Wal-Mart would not. And how would this be just?
Really, aside from a general reform of welfare, what is to be done? In other words, how is this a Wal-Mart problem, rather than a government welfare problem?
- Christopher -
Jason is not and has not said that Wal-Mart is a fabulous place to work, just that it is really is better than nothing. If Wallyworld can, and has, gotten away with paying people crap and offering crap benefits and yet has no shortage of employees, then it just makes sense for the company to do so. Sure, it sucks. I worked in retail myself for several years before getting out of school, moving out of my parents’ house and becoming skilled and earning decent money and really good benefits. The point is, one must earn all this. Jason’s right - if Wal-mart offered everyone a $50k salary job, what the hell would be the point of doing anything more difficult? The lower wages given at Wal-Mart, and may I say, grocery stores and other retail, are nothing if not incentive to go out there, get more skilled, got to college part time and then go get that better job.
I’m not saying there aren’t people out there who have made mistakes and feel *stuck* in such a job because they have no time for anything else, but that is the misfortune of life. This is the land of ‘opportunity’ not ‘guaranteed work’ or ‘easy money’. Life is hard, and I don’t believe collective taxpayers should bail out those who don’t wish to make their lives better. Those who do - I’m all for it.
Take away Wal*Mart’s subsidies.
Take away Wal*Mart’s unfair tax breaks.
Take away Wal*Mart’s eminent domain.
Take away the subsidised transportation system.
Take away subsidised international trade.
Take away China’s open corporatism and union-busting.
Without big government - Chinese or American - there isn’t much of a Wal*Mart left.
- Josh
To call Wal-Mart a (near) monopoly is to render senseless any reasonable definition of monopoly. In economics, monopoly power means the firm is charging higher prices and producing less output than it would under more competitive conditions. Hardly a description of Wal-Mart. And with that low profit-margin, it’s hardly raking in the predicted monopoly profits either. And right now, Target is kicking its butt in lots of places.
More fundamentally, to the extent that Wal-Mart drives out smaller businesses, that is NOT monopoly, that’s COMPETITION. What competition does is lead to winners and losers. It’s dynamic and ever-changing and not a static, equilibrium where everyone does the same thing for years and years. Wal-Mart’s success is a tribute to competition, not evidence of monopoly. Lower prices and more jobs is what competition produces, not monopoly.
Dear All,
One or two more observations if I might.
No one is seriously suggesting that Wal Mart offer 50,000 dollar a year jobs with benefits and great vacation time. So if you argue against that you argue against no one.
Nor is it serious to suggest that one must take Wal Mart’s job or take nothing. While this might be the case in stupid ugly reality, the argument of the Wal Mart opponent is that it *should not* be the case. That’s a different argument. Companies comparable to Wal Mart–they allege–don’t behave the way Wal Mart does and they still make a profit. Why can’t Wal Mart do this (they ask)?
Finally, in reference to a claim Jason made about “Will’s claim about irrational liberal hatred of Wal Mart.” As was the intent of the original post on http://thenonsequitur.com, Will does nothing to justify this claim. He takes it for granted in an effort to discredit (on the basis of what he perceives to be its motivations) any legitimate criticism of Wal Mart. The strategy is dishonest and fallacious. As has been demonstrated here on this site. Wal Mart’s corporate behavior, like the behavior of any similar corporation, deserves careful scrutiny. This happens not out of hatred, jealousy or arrogance, but out of reasonable concern that Wal Mart (and anyone with that kind of power) play fairly and by the law. If you think Wal Mart plays fair, then demonstrate it with refernce to the facts. And for pete’s sake avoid demonizing and caricaturing those who disagree with you. For more analysis of George Will’s original piece–go look at the http::/thenonsequitur.com.
Thanks all for the attention.
jc
jcasey,
Jason asked how YOU would go about providing good jobs in an economically depressed area, while also providing goods and/or services at competitive prices, and while also keeping the investors happy enough to fund your business. You never gave any answer. I think we would all like to hear your answer.
Dear Steven–
He asked me that above. Please don’t take this to be disrespectfully evasive of your question, but I reiterate that I’ve been making (since the original post on http://thenonsequitur.com) a “logical” rather than a “factual” point. This means that I’m not asserting or endorsing any of anti-Wal Mart positions *per se*. So I regretfully have little to add to *that* debate. I’m merely claiming that the Wal Mart critics do not advance the silly straw men that Will frequently suggested they do (in his original column and elsewhere). The objections of the anti-Wal Mart crowd warrant the same serious and fair consideration as the defense (her and elsewhere) of Wal Mart–the same, in other words, as any view in any discussion among civilized people. The advice I give my students is this: go find and defeat the strongest argument against your position. Defending Wal Mart against those who demand it deliver 50,000 grand a year to everyone, or that it not make a profit, or that it not protect the interests of its shareholders by negotiating favorable labor prices, or that it not seek to take advantage of tax credits would only be a hollow victory.
All the best,
jc
Shorter post:
‘Poverty is an immutable fact of life; ergo, nothing can be done. Sucks to be the poor. QED. Now come, Chadworth, we’ve got a squash match at 3.’
Your other point, that higher wages at Walmart are incompatible with a libertarian conception of property rights, is self-evident and uninteresting.
jpe –
Ah yes, I see you are right. Money really does grow on trees, and no one ever needs to do any work to obtain it. Seriously, how do you think wealth is created? By whining?
I wrote that poverty is what nature provides us — not that it is immutable.
As an example, it is remarkable that here we are, arguing about whether unskilled employees at Wal-Mart deserve better compensation, when already they get more than the vast majority of people living on this planet. If poverty truly were immutable, then they would never have gotten even this far. But they have, and the question then is why they have not advanced still further. I think I did a good job of answering it, with simple reference to Wal-Mart’s financial position.
Oh, and my “other” point is not that higher wages are incompatable with a libertarian conception of property rights. It’s simply that, as of now, no competitor in the labor market has yet found a way to pay more than Wal-Mart does for these employees’ labor. I would welcome it if one did, and I would cheer for them, not for Wal-Mart, as the exemplar of how capitalism ought to work. This new competitor would be improving the lot of the poor, and that would be a great thing as far as I’m concerned.
My husband has worked entirely for small businesses (several different ones) over the course of his career. Some did not pay a “living wage”. How many offered health benefits? Zero! We bought health insurance for him ourselves, out of our own pockets, because we did not believe in using Medicaid. Are these small businesses “leeching” off the public system? Exploiting their employees? Are they immoral for paying $8 an hour while the owner drives Cadillacs and has a custom built swimming pool? What makes them moral and Wal-Mart evil?
Lisa raises a very good point, one that actually reinforces George Will’s original claim: Where are the liberals who decry these mom-and-pop stores, these stores that can afford no better wages and benefits than the big (but discount) retailers? It seems that only an irrational condesension and hatred toward the lower classes — and toward those that serve them best — can explain the difference in attitude here.
Dear Jason and Lisa,
You can’t really mean “It seems that only irrational condescension. . . ” Rather than fish around for specious psychological explanations for the views of your opponent–which you persistently caricature–find their strongest arguments and defeat them. Maybe, just maybe, your opponent can be defeated without insults.
jcasey –
I might be inclined to agree with you, but this incongruity — picking on Wal-Mart, while leaving the small businesses alone — is not the only piece of evidence we have. Will went on to observe liberals’ condescending hostility toward McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and the entire state of Kansas.
Now, while I freely grant that there is always some amount of inductive uncertainty in our attempts to understand the mindset of others, I think the inference is altogether fair.
Dear Jason,
I find it depressing that you continue to embrace Will’s straw man argument and that you insist on psychologizing *explanations* for your opponent’s view rather than *arguments* against them (which was Will’s point to begin with–and it’s still wrong). I assume you have arguments for your positions. When they’re wrong, that’s the fault of the argument, not your uncritical acceptance of libertarian ideology (which I don’t believe). I may need to explain your pathology if I were your psychiatrist, but as your interlocutor in a civil discussion I only consider your arguments.
Besides, if the point is to show the condescension of “the liberal” argument against Wal Mart, then I’d say it’s a complete waste of time. Even if they’re condescending (which they’re not), it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Why not just argue that the liberal argument has this radical and self-defeating inconsistency–and leave it at that? Of course the burden is on you to show that it’s an inconsistency–but that shouldn’t be too difficult. You’ll have to look seriously at places where that objection is addressed, and treat the objectors as people with arguments and not silly prejudices that need to be explained.
Finally, the Coca-Cola matter is an interesting point (my colleague did a post on this on our site–take a look: http://thenonsequitur.com/?p=240). Will countered accusations against Coke *not* by denying their veracity, but by the irrelevant fact that lots of people like Coke. Lots of people drink Coke, but that doesn’t mean Coke isn’t guilty of the accusations against it. The same is true of his Wal Mart argument. Lots of people apply for Wal Mart jobs, but that fact–the number of people applying–does not on its own mean it’s a good job in the way Wal Mart’s critics have argued.
To defend Wal Mart against those accusations he would need arguments like the ones I’ve seen offered around here and elsewhere. So stick to the arguments. You have good ones. And avoid the insulting and irrelevant hypotheses about liberal psychological pathologies.
Thanks
jc
jacasey,
I said nothing about condescension. I didn’t insult you. And you didn’t answer my question.
Dear Lisa
Looking again at what you said, I think I mistakenly included you in my response (I meant to be responding to Jason). But to repeat, *I’m* not making any of these arguments against Wal Mart. Direct those questions to those who do. The question you ask, instance, is something they would have to answer. That said, I don’t think any of the Wal Mart critics could consistently hold that small business exploitation (or any non-Wal Mart “exploitation”) is “moral.”
Again–apologies. jc
Thank you for the great post and good discussion. I look forward to blogging on it at chicagoreader.com. I’m not comfortable with the argument that the presence of willing workers implies all is well, but that’s a secondary point here.
Harold –
Thank you for your interest and your comment. I do not mean to argue that all is well; in a free economy, one is always be free to be dissatisfied. And to look for better solutions. I look forward to seeing them.
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