FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
July 20, 2007
Poor People, Presidential Candidates, and Wal-Mart
In the tiny town of Marks, Mississippi, they filled the potholes on Cotton Street just before presidential candidate John Edwards showed up this week to talk about poverty in one of the poorest communities in America. That detail was reported by the Boston Globe, as part of its story on Edwards’ three-day, seven-state tour of some of America’s most impoverished communities.
In the last 10 years, the working poor have all-but-disappeared from the conversation in America, but 37 million Americans live on $20,000 a year in income, or less. That’s $385 a week in income — $54.80 per day, to live on. (If your rent or mortgage is $1,600 a month or more, you’re spending more on shelter alone than 13 percent of America has to live on.)
It’s funny: The whole justification for the “global economy” is that it provides opportunity, that it lifts people living at the subsistence level — literally hand-to-mouth — out of poverty in places like China and India. But what about those in the U.S.A. who need the same kinds of opportunities?
Edwards is the only presidential candidate who has consistently talked about the less-well-off in America — although he has a significant intellectual conflict, which doesn’t have anything to do with $400 haircuts.
Most of the media coverage of Edwards’ tour has used the poor as a prop to talk about something else — some of the coverage has, in fact, done that while accusing Edwards of using the poor as a distraction from his own campaign troubles.
That’s what the Raleigh News & Observer, Edwards’ hometown newspaper, did. (The N&O also has a highly opinionated rundown on Edwards’ major anti-poverty proposals.) USAToday used Edwards’ efforts to highlight poverty to highlight the position of Barack Obama against poverty. The New York Times discussed whether Edwards’ poverty tour legitimately links him to the legacy of the Kennedy brothers.
One story, from Eric Pooley at Time magazine, tapped with genuine emotion the larger points that Edwards is trying to make. Here’s the opening two sentences:
After three days on the road with John Edwards in some of the poorest places in America, it's not only the depth of human need that hits you, but the layered and interlocking complexity of it — the way a complete lack of health care, for instance, can all by itself consign someone to ignorance and joblessness. But you're also struck by how so many of the people who have been dealt these difficult hands manage to play them with grace and fortitude.
But here’s my question for John Edwards: Since he’s concerned about the plight of the poor, why is he so relentlessly critical of Wal-Mart? Where does he think the poor shop? And the question cuts the other way, as well: Half the adults in America shop at Wal-Mart every week — why is John Edwards attacking a company that many of his would-be voters depend on?
Just wondering.
Posted by Charles Fishman at July 20, 2007 2:41 PM | Category: fish on friday |
7 Comments
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No one "depends on" Walmart. The really poor people you are talking about can't afford to shop there - they go to places like Family Dollar (cheaper than Walmart, if you can believe it). If you read "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich you will learn that Walmart employees are paid so badly they can't afford to shop in the store. Walmart's model is one of charging large markups from goods they buy incredibly cheaply. This demand for low price has forced many US manufacturers to source goods from China - sending the monay abroad rather than spending it on US workers. Add to this the way that Walmart has destroyed the main streets of many American towns ... really the list is endless.
Walmart is no longer the company fo the "little man" like it was when Sam Walton started it. Since his death W-mart has begun trying to control all aspects of peoples lives by becoming a financial institution among other things in addition to being a retail store. If you cut Walmart off from China they would have to go out of business because they depend on Chinese goods so much. To my knowledge they make no attempt to buy American unlike some other major retailers who try to when they can.
America is addicted to "cheap"
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.....
saving rate........
1965 8.5%
1975 10.5%
1985 11%
1995 5%
2005 -0.4%
the savings rate in January 06 was a negative 0.7%...
that is, the average!
American household spent 0.7% more than it made
May 2007 it was negative 1.4%....
American household spent 1.4% more than it made.........
Now.......... the kicker!
the gross domestic product is attributable to consumer spending?
A whopping 70% ...
Now we have the "catch 22"..........
If the American people start to save......
say 10% of their income.....
thats gonna be 10% less the consumer is gonna buy .....
which means Companies sell less...............
"UNLESS".... Wages go up!.......
but with the all time high in Corporate profits in the past few years and a good part going to CEO's and insiders.....
a 10% increase ain't gonna happen soon!
SO!.........retirement is out of the picture if the American people don't save they have to keep working!
NOW........the flip side!
we can thank Microsoft, Warren Buffet, General Motors, General Electric, Motorola, Wal-Mart, Target and Ford for pouring billions of dollars into China......................
China saves 50% of their income!
In search of better wages and a better life,300 million Chinese peasants will move to the cities in the next 15 years. This means China must build a new city the size of Philadelphia every 30 days. China is now constructing the most advanced rapid transit system in the World.
Each year for the next 20 years, China will consume as much structural steel as would be needed to construct every building in Manhattan.
According to Professor Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School of Business, "In the not too distant future, the economy of China will be nearly twice as large as that of the US, an equal to the combined economies of all of North America, Europe and Japan".
Already China is the world's largest maker of toys,clothing and consumer electronics and is swiftly moving up the ladder in car production, computer manufacturing, biotechnology and telecommunications,thanks to low-cost workers and high-tech factories.
Author Ted C. Fishman writes in China, Inc., "The Country is closing in on a 30-year run during which its economy has doubled nearly three times over. The surge has no equal in modern history. Neither Japan's nor South Korea's postwar booms come anywhere close."
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and they say..........this growth trend is unstoppable!
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In 1776 a few fat farmers got together and with the penmanship of a poet wrote down on a piece of paper....
the American dream!
Now..............young people in America..........
think $10 an hour....a ipod, computer games and flipping burgers is...................
that American dream!
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hidden cost to all taxpayers........
"Considering that there are over 30,000 ships at sea this morning," writes James Carlton, director of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program, in an e-mail, "the total number of organisms and species in this global 'bioflow' on the morning your readers read your piece could be staggering - billions of individuals, and thousands of species."
Indeed, scientists have long considered ballast water the primary way invasive aquatic organisms are introduced. From the zebra mussel's arrival in the Great Lakes, to an American jellyfish severely disrupting Black Sea fisheries, the potential costs of accidental introduction of a species to new homes can be tremendous. Aquatic invasives cost the US $9 billion yearly, according to estimates by David Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Zebra and quagga mussels (a cousin to the zebra) alone cost the $1 billion annually.
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having someone 6,000 miles away make something for you to buy will someday export your job there so your neighbor can buy what you make cheaper too!
made in America.................priceless!
cheap is not a good thing!
Read "Nickle and Dimed: On Not Getting By in American" and you'll understand why John Edwards doesn't like Wal-Mart. The book takes a shocking look at the working poor in the US.
WAL-MART is not CHEAP! as they buy cheap goods...there food(Fresh?) is all grown outside U.S.A,in mexico, or other south american countries, there clothing only last as long as you don't wash it. Stuff with brand names like Wrangler,Fruit of the Loom, and hamilton beach are all made in China NOW! and don't last...
example, a whole container of fuirt of the loom t-shirts cost less than the actual contain it come in from oversees the cardboard boxes and plastic wrapping costs mor than the actual finished t-shirts, what wrong with our economy/ BUSH AND HIS WHITE HOUSE/CONGRESS AND THEIER BACKSTABBING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE! TARIFFS ON GOODS THAT CAN AND SHOULD BE MADE IN THE U.S.A. MUST FACE TARIFFS OF 50% OF ORDERS!!!TO SLOW DOWN IMPORTING GOODS THAT CAN BE MADE HERE!!!
Wow, all the business folks go bearish as soon as true competition comes up?
The problem of poverty isn't one of paying more (attention and money) into the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid--which in a market economy just encourages ignorance and destructive behavior--but creating a vacuum at the top.
The way to create a vacuum at the top is to remove fixed prices for culture and other intangibles and allow the creation of a premium mass culture.
Many of our upper management are too smart--and too well-rounded--to be running things like Wal-Mart and Enron anyway. They do it, however, because there's nowhere else they can grow, excel or challenge themselves while still remaining a valued member of society, have a family and house, etc.
Removing arbitrary fixed prices for content ($10 movies, $14 books, free TV, $.99 songs), would allow our popular culture to grow beyond its current 18-34 demographic AND create an incredibly appealing growth opportunity to those in the corporate world ready for a better life.
(Not to mention a shortcut for those on the bottom of the pyramid that makes sports and entertainment look like flipping burgers).
Valuing intangibles would make relaxation, creativity and taking one's time--as well as a host of other desirable conditions for harried execs--much more profitable than crunching numbers.
Which would have the byproduct of creating a new demand for labor at all levels--it would basically be creating a bubble on top of the traditional economic pyramid.
And the giant sucking sound would be rapid and permanent growth in free, democratic societies.
It would also allow developed nations to compete favorably with developing ones in terms of trade parity and GDP growth.
And it would inspire spiritual, economic and cultural seekers like no aid program, Gulf war, or foreign policy ever.
The answer is not motivation--pushing, giving--but inspiration--doing what we really want to do.
Let the manufacturing jobs go--do you want one?
you want poverty?
the cost of living has gone up 9.5% this year alone in south FL, (miami) where I live with my parents.
The wages, however, haven't gone up in 5 years.
Wages haven't moved very much in south FL.
Employers here have the luxury of hiring an endless stream of immigrants who are happy to work for low wages.