Thomas Sowell: Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Capitalism Magazine ^ | December 9, 2003 | Thomas Sowell

[presidio9]

Note to protectioninsts: Be sure to bring up Chinese "slave laborers" when responding to this article. What does Thomas Sowell know, right?

[Recovering_Democrat]

Thanks for posting this. Sowell is a breath of fresh air, isn't he? How I wish he'd take a more public stand...his writing is excellent, but gets to so few people.

[Flash Bazbeaux]

The whole "Wal-Mart is going to take over the world" hysteria is just designed to take our minds off of the monopoly power of the Steamship barons, the Railroad Tycoons, General Motors and their Evil Twin, US Steel. Not to mention that penguin-hater, Bill Gates.

[Burkeman1]

The question should be "Is the New York Times Good for America?"

[presidio9]

Sowell is the brightest critical thinker alive today.

[JLS]

Exactly.

I saw a headline on AOL over the weekend about whether or not Wal-Marts low prices were really bad. The answer is of course only for their competitors.

[CobaltBlue]

Don't forget Standard Oil. LOL!

I long for the good old days when we worried about Standard Oil instead of OPEC!

[WOSG]

Sowell is oxygen in the fetid swamp of political smugness.

Bravo Thomas Sowell!!!

[playball0]

Sowell ping

[WOSG]

Is the New York Times good for America?

oooh, that is great!!!

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Sowell bump!

[AreaMan]

Historians have lamented the plight of the hand-loom weavers after power looms began replacing them in England. But how could the poor have been able to afford to buy adequate new clothing unless the price was brought down to their income level by mass production machinery?

What is happening today is not that an efficient process is replacing an in-efficient one, it is that the already efficient process is being sent to a country where the labor and regulatory costs are a fraction of the U.S.'s.

Our Hand-Loom Weavers are being replaced by a Chinese/Indian/Philipino equivalent.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>>>>>Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.

Man I love that quote.

/s However, if you're a Chinese slave laborer, you'll never get the benefits of those trade-offs. They'll just import American jobs and they won't even give you one for Christmas because they're Godless Commie Heathens who thing Christmas is just another day to make slave laborers freeze in the salt mines.

That way they can sell Chinese salt at cheaper-than-fair prices and make sure that its their salt, not good, old-fashioned, hard-earned American salt that gives us all arteriosclerosis when we dump to much of it on our freedom fries.

And if you're a free traitor and you buy godless Chinese salt, you deserve arteriosclerosis. When the neighbor's husband loses his job with the salt-mining union and blows his brains all over the wall paper, it's YOUR fault, because you bought salt at Walmart. s/

Now you no longer need to read the replies you will no doubt receive to this posting.

[DugwayDuke]

Oh, it's not just the slave laborers. Didn't you hear that Bill and Hillary Clinton were hiding tens of thousands of Chinesse soldiers in trailer trucks behind the Walmarts in every major city? Just as soon as the effects of the computer crashes resulting from Y2K bring us to our knees, Bill and Hillary will unleash those Chiness soldiers on the US to enslave us under the control of the UN. I also understand the Walmart made a huge profit selling SPAM and bottled watter in 1999.

[Willie Green]

What does Thomas Sowell know, right?

He certainly avoids discussing whether We the People or Walmart is better represented in Congress.

[The Westerner]

I thought about Chinese slaves, as well. We are living well thanks to them.

On a deeper level though, regulation and taxation of business in the United States is what drove us into the use of slave labor. In the cold war, no one did business with Russia. Dealing with Communists was immoral. Today, faced with a declining standard of living thanks to government intervention in the economy, we have done away with that moral imperative.

[lelio]

You can't keep on doing things the old way and still get the benefits of the new way.

That's the truth. I'm surprised that Mr Sowell doesn't also echo Dilbert's boss and say "Work smarter, not harder" to those that lost their jobs to a communist country, or a socialist funded airplane company.

[TotusTuus]

And don't forget GE and Medtronic for the Medical industry!

[presidio9]

He certainly avoids discussing whether We the People or Walmart is better represented in Congress.

Can you name the senior Senator of Walmart?

[Joe Bonforte]

Our Hand-Loom Weavers are being replaced by a Chinese/Indian/Philipino equivalent.

Good. That way our educated, productive workers can do something more beneficial to the economy.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but it really is good for us to export those jobs. Both sides come out ahead, us and them, in the aggregate (though some individuals are obviously harmed). Read a treatise on Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage for more details.