"...Of all Scott's commitments, the one that does merit belief is his out-of-the-blue declaration of support for a higher minimum wage. For Wal-Mart is bumping up against a serious problem at least partly of its own making: Because it pitches its products to a disproportionately low-income clientele, its revenue rises and falls with the fortunes of the lower end of the American working class.
And those fortunes these days are anything but bright. The coming crunch in heating oil prices, the decimation of American manufacturing, the steady decline of median family incomes over the past several years, the failure to raise the federal minimum wage since 1997 and the fact that Wal-Mart is setting the pay standards for millions of American workers -- all these are combining to limit the ability of Wal-Mart shoppers to buy as much as they used to. While sales at the Neiman Marcus end of retailing have been doing just fine, the working-class money crunch is taking a real toll in Wal-Mart-land.
Wal-Mart, could, of course, raise its workers' wages, but Scott has dismissed that out of hand. So now it's the feds' responsibility to rescue Wal-Mart from the consequences of the low-wage, low-consumption economy that Wal-Mart, with such fanatical devotion, has created. For, in Wal-Mart's America, it's not clear that even Wal-Mart can thrive...."
washingtonpost.com
It's like OPEC and the price of oil. If it's too high, economies suffer and people demand declines. OPEC can't charge $1000/bbl and Walmart can't (even if it would like to) pay $.01/hour. |
