Walmart: 50 Years of Facilitating America’s Industrial Decline

[Hexen]

Published on Monday, July 2, 2012 by Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org) Walmart: 50 Years of Facilitating America’s Industrial Decline


- Common Dreams staff

Retail giant Walmart, the second-largest corporation on the planet, has not gotten the scrutiny it deserves for "facilitating America’s industrial decline," says a report released Monday from Demos (http://www.demos.org).
The report, "NOT Made in America: Top 10 Ways Walmart Destroys US Manufacturing Jobs (http://www.demos.org/publication/not-made-america-top-10-ways-walmart-destroys-us-manufacturing-jobs)" comes as Walmart celebrates its 50th anniversary this week and is on the heels of a weekend protest in which 4,000 Walmart workers and supporters marched in Los Angeles (http://labornotes.org/2012/07/walmart-workers-march-la-saying-%E2%80%98no-thanks%E2%80%99-new-stores)under the banner “Walmart = Poverty” while similar marches (http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13461/unhappy_50th_un-birthday_walmart/) took place in New York, Chicago and other cities.
Demos' report highlights ten ways in which Walmart has played a role decline of American industry:

1. Buying billions of goods that weren’t made in America.
2. Pushing U.S. companies to move their factories overseas.
3. Making it easier for other U.S. retailers to buy from foreign factories.
4. Forcing layoffs among its U.S. suppliers.
5. Promoting domestic sweatshops.
6. Squeezing U.S. manufacturers out of business.
7. Discouraging American innovation.
8. Driving competitors to squeeze manufacturing.
9. Lobbying for policies that make it easier to move U.S. jobs overseas.
10. Making growing inequality the accepted norm
As Local economy advocate Stacy Mitchell writes (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/02-7), "Walmart's history is the story of what has gone wrong in the American economy. Wages have stagnated. The middle class has shrunk. The ranks of the working poor have swelled. Whatever we may have saved shopping at Walmart, we've more than paid for it in diminished opportunities and declining income."
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/evilwalmart_0.jpgMovie poster detail from the documentary, 'Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price'.

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http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/someofus_walmart_0.jpg




Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/02-5

[Blanquist]

Liberal nationalist bullshit

[ckaihatsu]

Yeah, dismiss all you want, but if this is a documentary then that means that evil-smiley-face multi-armed giant dude is *real* -- !


= )

[Lynx]

I bought my laptop at Wallmart and I'm very pleased.

[ckaihatsu]

I bought my laptop at Wallmart and I'm very pleased.


I'd pick up a gun and enlist at Walmart to fight the enemy for your right to buy and be pleased with their products.


>x /


= )

[aquaruis15000]

How is this any better than the Detroit auto-manufacturer "Imported from America" campaign? So you'd be happier if workers were exploited in one geographical location than another? Is this really what we've been reduced to? Deciding how best to manage our own exploitation, and who we want our exploiters to be? Communism was supposed to be a liberating project. Where did we go wrong?:(

[Princess Luna]

1. Buying billions of goods that weren’t made in America.\
So?
2. Pushing U.S. companies to move their factories overseas.
So?
3. Making it easier for other U.S. retailers to buy from foreign factories.
So?
4. Forcing layoffs among its U.S. suppliers.
5. Promoting domestic sweatshops.
6. Squeezing U.S. manufacturers out of business.
Valid criticisms, but ones that are by no means unique to Wal-Mart
7. Discouraging American innovation.
Actually I think the concept of Wal-Mart is quite innovative , the idea you can buy almost everything at one place and fuck the 'small town buisinesses' liberals seem to suddenly care so much about when Wal-Mart is brought up
8. Driving competitors to squeeze manufacturing.
See the response to 4&5
9. Lobbying for policies that make it easier to move U.S. jobs overseas.
So?
10. Making growing inequality the accepted norm
How?

[aquaruis15000]

I'm still trying to figure out what this "buy American" stuff has to do with socialism.

[Lynx]

I'm still trying to figure out what this "buy American" stuff has to do with socialism.
I don't think it has anything to do with socialism. Buying locally can promote the local economy and jobs but will hurt competitors. If China were to lose its export markets, it would have to stimulate internal demand or face a revolution.

[Robocommie]

Socialists care about the American working class, but also the Chinese working class.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

This is a myth, "De-industrialisation" is a myth that is not based on some "bad CEOS" of whatever "bad" corporation the idealist Liberals want to make out. IF the US Industrial Production would ever have stopped growing, there would be a huge crisis, in fact, when the industrial production stopped growing in 2008, there was a big crisis. So de-indutrialisation in fact is just a slower growth in industrial production compared to other economic sectors. Companies like Wal-Mart buying goods in China and US Corporations preferring to invest into the growth of their industry in other countries, has to do with falling profitability in the US, The Falling Rate of Profit (http://www.revleft.com/vb/failure-capitalist-production-t172018/index.html?t=172018).

[aquaruis15000]

But what does that mean in practical terms for the workers movement. Marx talked of ever increasing numbers of workers, brought together and socialized by the workings of capitalism. Instead, workers are more isolated now than ever, scattered around by shift and workplace. There are very few mass factory floors around anymore.

[electrostal]

That's why China has 250 mil. factory workers.;)
Anyway, the issue is the significance of further de-industrialization of America. That probably wouldn't be a good thing.

[ckaihatsu]

This is a myth, "De-industrialisation" is a myth that is not based on some "bad CEOS" of whatever "bad" corporation the idealist Liberals want to make out.


This particular focus on *only* Walmart is *really* bad politics -- to the point where it could just as well be a business maneuver by a consortium of Walmart's competitors.










Retail giant Walmart, the second-largest corporation on the planet, has not gotten the scrutiny it deserves for "facilitating America’s industrial decline," says a report released Monday from Demos.

The report, "NOT Made in America: Top 10 Ways Walmart Destroys US Manufacturing Jobs" comes as Walmart celebrates its 50th anniversary this week and is on the heels of a weekend protest in which 4,000 Walmart workers and supporters marched in Los Angeles under the banner “Walmart = Poverty” while similar marches took place in New York, Chicago and other cities.




As Local economy advocate Stacy Mitchell writes, "Walmart's history is the story of what has gone wrong in the American economy. Wages have stagnated. The middle class has shrunk. The ranks of the working poor have swelled. Whatever we may have saved shopping at Walmart, we've more than paid for it in diminished opportunities and declining income."