Wal-Mart, The President in Elkhart, and Socialism

I teach economics, and in almost every class, the issue of Wal-Mart comes up.  So, as President Obama today travels to Elkhart County, Indiana, I want to take this opportunity to talk about the issue of Wal-Mart, and the county in which I grew up, and why this is offers us a case study on the effort to socialize America. 

 

Did you know that there is a very coordinated PR campaign to bash Wal-Mart, and they rely on folks who don’t know about this PR campaign to spread their agenda?  In effect, these people are using folks who don’t know about this “stealth campaign” to bash Wal-Mart.

 

So, I’m not here to tell anyone that they should automatically fall in love with Wal-Mart, only to make you all aware that when you speak negatively about Wal-Mart, you may be the unwitting pawn of someone who is pulling your chain. 

 

I would encourage you to google the term “War on Wal-Mart”.  There are a number of articles you’ll find.  Just one is “The New War Over Wal-Mart” from June, 2006 in the Atlantic Monthly.  The link is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/wal-mart

 

Here are a couple of quotes from that article:

 

“One of the major forces opposing Wal-Mart is organized labor. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has long wanted to organize Wal-Mart’s stores.  Last year, it succeeded at a Canadian Wal-Mart, which the company immediately shut down. “If Wal-Mart doesn’t change its ways, we’ll turn it into Big Tobacco,” Chris Kofinis, communications director for the UFCW-funded Wake Up Wal-Mart, told me recently.”

 

“The company’s other main antagonist, Wal-Mart Watch, is also backed by labor, though at first glance its motivations are opaque. Wal-Mart Watch is heavily financed by the Service Employees International Union, whose president, Andy Stern, says he has no intention of organizing Wal-Mart. Not long after the Maryland law passed, I asked Stern, who helped push it, what he was up to. He smiled. “

 

Stern has something much grander in mind even than unionizing Wal-Mart. “Ford wasn’t created to be a health-care provider; it was created to produce cars,” Stern says. “My goal is to get Wal-Mart’s leadership out there in traffic and holler, ‘We can no longer compete in the global economy when health care is factored into the cost of our products.’ If Wal-Mart’s CEO, Lee Scott, were to come out and say, ‘We need a national health-care system that works for everyone,’ then it’s a whole new ball game.”

 

“After the 2004 election, SEIU joined with environmentalists, women’s groups, and community activists to form Wal-Mart Watch, hiring seasoned Democratic operatives and jumping into the public debate. The new group focused much of its efforts on the company’s health-care programs, with considerable success.”

 

Please note that Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), doesn’t need to have a goal of unionizing Wal-Mart because he wants to use the “War on Wal-Mart” in his argument to push of nationalized health care. He teamed up with Democrat Party “community activists” and created a PR campaign to do what he wants done.

 

As all of you know, I used to be a lobbyist. The lobbying practices of the SEIU are textbook PR tactics (by the way, I also teach PR for a different school).  In 1991, I worked for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), an organization that represents small businesses as a sales representative. I worked as a sales representative for them.  Back in the early 1990s, NFIB was very much against Wal Mart because they feared that Wal Mart would lead to the closer of small “main street” businesses.

 

While SEIU is pushing for nationalized health care, NFIB agrees with Wal-Mart that this is a bad idea.  The following is from the NFIB policy guideline that addresses their policy, and mentions Wal-Mart specifically.  I encourage you all to read the full report at  www.nfib.com/object/PolicyGuide4.html  Here’s the quote concerning Wal-Mart and NFIB’s general policy on the subject of “competitiveness”:

 

The consumer’s “good” is the final objective; small business is only a means to that end. Government’s role is therefore limited to setting and enforcing the rules of competition and ensuring that small firms have the opportunity to compete. Its role is not to support small business directly.  Three examples illustrate the policy. The first is treatment of the retail giant, Wal-Mart, and its small Main Street competitors.

 

Wal-Mart initially targeted small towns and rural areas. Main Street retailers were the primary competition. As Wal-Mart grew, the number of Main Street retailers declined in the immediately surrounding areas. Yet, the response from policy-makers, business owners, and the small-business support community was not to create barriers to Wal-Mart’s growth, but to help small retailers compete against the company or to find  unoccupied niches. Policy focused on competition, not competitors

 

Notice that while SEIU’s policy is to use Wal-Mart for a PR campaign to provide nationalized health care – and socialism in general – NFIB wants to encourage competition.  SEIU really doesn’t care what happens to Wal-Mart and the people who work there.  Their goal is to reform the fabric of our nation.

 

My home town of Goshen Indiana, population of 25,000, has two Wal-Marts.   It is located in Elkhart County, where President Obama will be today.   The Goshen Chamber of Commerce worked hard to revitalize the downtown mainstreet to apply this principle when Wal-Mart opened these two stores in the early 1990s.  Because of this, unemployment in the county for most of the 1990s was less than 3%, declining from a high of 7% during the 1991 recession. Now, the biggest manufacturers in Elkhart County, of which Goshen is the county seat, are RV and auto industry related businesses.  Their problems are what are causing the majority of the unemployment problems there.  Unemployment today is about 15%.  It’s the highest in the nation, and today, President Obama will go to Elkhart Indiana, 14 miles from my home town of Goshen.  By the way, as recently as April, 2008, the unemployment rate was 5%.  See http://www.nidataplus.com/lfeel1.htm

 

My home town has lots of problems, and the economic issues it faces are far beyond the scope of my post.  But, having two Wal-Marts at either end of the town aren’t part of the problem.  In fact, I believe, they are one of the positive elements going for my home town.

 

Today, the President will go to Elkhart to push for his “stimulus package.”  Those who recognize his agenda as being for socialism, and are against that, might want to go sign a petition against it at http://www.nostimulus.com/

 

 

 

So, as we think about economics, let us recognize that there are forces at work that are attempting to implement political philosophy as part of their economic agenda.  If you agree with such philosophy, that’s great, not a problem.  SEIU has an agenda.  So does NFIB.

 

Everyone pushes an agenda - Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals.  Know what you believe and why you believe it.   If you want to bash Wal-Mart and you favor the socialization of America, that’s your choice.  It’s a free country (still!) and so that’s your right.  But please be sure to let people know that that’s your agenda.

 

For everyone else, I hope my post will help you avoid “thoughtless thinking”.

 

 

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