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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (87201)	11/19/2004 11:04:44 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793926

Welcome to truth about Wal-Mart By JERRY HEASTER The Kansas City Star Wal-Mart's latest trial by media, as usual, misses the mark by ignoring the most relevant point any story concerning Wal-Mart should make. The title of the “Frontline” documentary on PBS asks “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” but ignores those to whom the question should be addressed. Instead of delving into the psyches of consumers who drive Wal-Mart's success, they push the notion that shopping there is immoral, irrational and unpatriotic. What Wal-Mart's critics don't appreciate is that it's as much a cultural phenomenon as a retailing colossus. Wal-Mart's revenues last year amounted to about a quarter of a trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, the Sears-Kmart merger will create a company with annual sales of $55 billion, thereby making it the third-largest retailer, after Home Depot. The magnitude of Wal-Mart's patronage makes it sui generis in the history of human commerce. Even so, media attacks are based on the premise that Wal-Mart's success results from some perverse consumer irrationality. The implied message is that the hundreds of millions who shop at Wal-Mart each month are acting against their own best interests. This apparently is why the stories are uniformly devoid of adequate perspectives from customers and employees. Instead they focus on those with an ax to grind, who validate the negative perceptions of the reporters. Thus the thrust of the “Frontline” analysis was typical: an abundance of people willing to claim the worst about Wal-Mart, but minimal attention paid to Wal-Mart's core constituency. It's as if the journalists fear they'll become tainted if they interact with the great unwashed who throng to Wal-Marts. Just once it would be nice if an interviewer asked those blaming Wal-Mart for their woes whether they or their families patronized the company some seem to see as the devil incarnate. Instead you get economic observations often as zany as they are pointless. When discussing the imports Wal-Mart generates, the interlocutor muses that such business practices transform us into a “Third World country.” Perhaps he forgot about those who flee the Third World and risk all — sometimes even death — to get to America, the land of plenty. As for those imports, the examples usually are goods that U.S. producers have no business making anyway. Nor should the trade imbalance be taken as a sign that U.S. manufacturing is becoming hollow or that exports are waning. They aren't, and they hit nearly $100 billion in September. Our trade deficit grows because we're the world's richest, most powerful economy and thus are consuming relatively more than our trading partners. The explosion of U.S. consumption explains not only our prosperity, but also Wal-Mart's success. To accept the premise that Wal-Mart is somehow not good for America is to accept the premise that people harm themselves by seeking the best value in the marketplace at the best price. Wal-Mart has been a boon to lower- and middle-income Americans not only by competing with such fervor on price, but also pressuring competitors to do likewise. To highly paid media elites, however, such considerations are a matter of indifference, which is why their stories about flyover country are irrelevant.