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Give Sam Walton the Nobel Prize
Foreign Policy ^ | May/June 2013 | CHARLES KENNY

Posted on 05/03/2013 6:22:24 PM PDT by Hojczyk

There is much to dislike about Walmart: the union-busting employee rules, putting mom-and-pop grocery stores out of business, all that plastic garbage it sells us, the shady business scandals. It's the mortal enemy of locavores, the big bad box store that environmentalists and community organizers demonize. But for all its manifold offenses, Walmart may have done more for poor consumers in the United States, and around the world, than any other business in American history.

Walmart's low prices come in part from relying on efficient production in developing countries. Of course it isn't just Walmart's procurement agents who are buying cheap stuff from Asia; pretty much the whole world is, including retailers from Bangalore to Bangui. That's because manufacturers in China, India, and elsewhere have become particularly adept at producing low-cost versions of goods demanded by "bottom of the pyramid" consumers -- otherwise known as the world's poorest people.

Still, for all the "everyday low prices," whenever a new Walmart opens, local competitors really are often forced to shutter their doors. Imagine that happening on a global scale. Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik, for one, worries that Africa and Latin America are seeing their manufacturing sectors shrink, perhaps in part because East Asia has taken most of the global low-end manufacturing opportunities. And that may leave the rest of the developing world looking in vain for that first step up on the ladder to industrialization.

That's a problem, to be sure, but one that should, in theory, solve itself. As China gets richer, labor will inevitably get more expensive and factories will migrate. Some already have -- to places like Vietnam and Indonesia. And if retailers like Walmart continue to seek the cheapest, most efficient suppliers and manufacturers, those Asian production centers will eventually shift to Africa i

(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 05/03/2013 6:22:24 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk
"There is much to dislike about Walmart: the union-busting employee rules"

That's the BEST thing about Wal-Mart. Union bustin' makes me feel good !

2 posted on 05/03/2013 6:24:39 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Resist We Much)
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To: Hojczyk
Looks like the U.S. will join the third world thanks to OBAMA and the GOP...

Think of the mobile phone. There are about 6 billion subscribers worldwide — 86 out of every 100 people on the planet. And many of them are texting and calling on Chinese-made devices. China produced more than 1 billion mobile phones in 2012 alone. But it's not just telephones. China manufactures as many as four out of five of the world's bicycles, and it's the leading maker of penicillin, producing more than 50 percent of the global supply. A whole range of goods purchased by some of the planet's poorest people are now made at low cost in the Middle Kingdom.

The U.S. is fast becoming an unemployable work force.....thanks to colleges that teach nothing employers want....and we are going to import more unskilled workers

3 posted on 05/03/2013 6:30:18 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk

Just got malware from the site-thanks so much Hojczyk!


4 posted on 05/03/2013 6:30:21 PM PDT by mozarky2 (Ya never stand so tall as when ya stoop to stomp a statist!)
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To: Hojczyk

I don’t doubt the factories really WILL be in Africa, but who really believes the managers will be AFRICAN?

I think they’ll be Chinese; they aren’t really seen as colonists, and they have no compunction at all about paying off war-lords, etc.

In fact even now a lot of the entrepreneurs in Africa are Lebanese and Indian.


5 posted on 05/03/2013 6:33:16 PM PDT by gaijin
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To: Hojczyk; All

Beware! Malware at this site!
FU, Hojczyk!


6 posted on 05/03/2013 6:33:34 PM PDT by mozarky2 (Ya never stand so tall as when ya stoop to stomp a statist!)
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To: Hojczyk

***Give Sam Walton the Nobel Prize****

I’m in favor of that! He settled into a county that was firmly in the economic grip of THE CHICKEN MEN and you worked for their agricultural starvation wages or you didn’t work!

Then he took a chance and bought several bankrupt Ben Franklin stores, rebranded himself as WALMART and did well.

The CHICKEN MEN had to start importing Mexicans to do their starvation work as former workers quit and went with this new upstart who paid quite a bit more!

Now this county is overrun with half million dollar mini mansions owned by people working at his main offices.

Makes you realize how high these small mom and pop stores were really charging the poor folks for goods till Walmart came into town. The under-the-table deals between small town shop owners, to keep prices up (price fixing), would make you cry, and the city fathers went to extra leingths to keep competition out. So Walmart bought outside their city limits and still did good!

All the poor farmers loved Walmart!


7 posted on 05/03/2013 6:37:08 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Do we now register our pressure cookers?)
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To: Hojczyk
And if retailers like Walmart continue to seek the cheapest, most efficient suppliers and manufacturers, those Asian production centers will eventually shift to Africa in search of cheap labor.

Many on this site constantly tell us that the reason manufacturing has left the US is due to high corporate taxes and government regulation. Nope, it was, is, and will continue to be primarily due to cheap labor available in the poorest nations.

And the US has been making up for the job loses by mushrooming its many welfare programs to a cost of more than a trillion dollars per year. The savings from all that 'cheap' labor a few million US jobs were moved to.

8 posted on 05/03/2013 7:30:49 PM PDT by Will88
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Well howdy neighbor!


9 posted on 05/03/2013 8:15:41 PM PDT by To Hell With Poverty (Ephesians 6:12 becomes more real to me with each news cycle.)
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To: To Hell With Poverty

And how do yo do to you! West side Benton county here!


10 posted on 05/03/2013 8:21:27 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Do we now register our pressure cookers?)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

East side, yo! ;)


11 posted on 05/03/2013 8:32:46 PM PDT by To Hell With Poverty (Ephesians 6:12 becomes more real to me with each news cycle.)
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