Prosthetic Conscience

For Wal-Mart, a Christmas That’s Made to Order

From For Wal-Mart, a Christmas That’s Made to Order - NYTimes.com

“In my mind, there is no doubt that this is Wal-Mart time,” H. Lee Scott Jr., the company’s president and chief executive, said recently at a meeting of analysts and investors in Wal-Mart’s hometown, Bentonville, Ark. Referring to the discount chain’s founder, he added, “This is the kind of environment that Sam Walton built this company for.”

Of course, through aggressive union-busting, operating particular stores at a temporary loss to drive competition out of business, and use of their position as an oligopsony buyer to force manufacturers/producers to cut prices, Wal-Mart has been one of the major forces in lowering real wages in the US since their founding. The transformation of the US into a low-wage country where most workers can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart, or believe they can, is a positive feedback loop for Wal-Mart’s success. I say “or believe they can”, because of course, Wal-Mart does not have lower prices than its competitors overall on a comprehensive basket of common goods; it has lower prices on a selection of goods for which shoppers are especially aware of the prices, and often slightly higher prices on everything else.

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