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Paperback
Publisher: AEI Press
ISBN13: 9780844742441
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Wal-Mart is under attack--from labor unions, urban planners, globalization critics, and community activists. The company's detractors argue that Wal-Mart reduces living standards, hurts retail trade, causes unemployment, and relegates Third World workers to poverty. In the Wal-Mart Revolution, Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox examine Wal-Mart's true role in the economy. The authors look briefly at the history of retailing in America and the contributions made by James Penney and Frank Woolworth. Looking specifically at Wal-Mart, they review conditions before and after Wal-Mart entered a local market and look more broadly at Wal-Mart's impact on wages, productivity growth and inflation. Vedder and Cox show that the retailer has been a force for good.
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| Review from LocalPlan.org |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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The Wal-Mart Revolution surprised me. I expected almost any book on Wal-Mart's meteoric rise to power to focus on the many negative aspects of the company's existence and the disruptions it has caused across society. I must also admit that I started reading the book with preconceived notions about Wal-Mart and its practices, many of which have since dissolved or at least shifted. The authors (Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox) present compelling evidence that perhaps Wal-Mart isn't the source of evil we've been lead to believe it is. As they put it, "Wal-Mart is perhaps no saint, but it is not a major sinner either".
To be fair, Vedder and Cox don't write the book as staunch Wal-Mart advocates, although they do tend to come off as more than slightly defensive of the retailing giant. In the early chapters they lay out some of the most popular arguments launched against Wal-Mart by its opponents. The remainder of the book explores each of those arguments in detail and evaluates key statistical and economic evidence relating to those arguments. They also take time to examine attacks from Wal-Mart's most outspoken critics and point out were those attack fall short factually.
The most interesting part of the book isn't about the current retailing situation and Wal-Mart's future. It's about retailing's past. In order to provide the necessary context for their research, Vedder and Cox dive into the history of the retailing trade in the United States only to reveal that Wal-Mart is not the first innovative retailer to attract popular criticism. In fact, many other entities have come and gone that were accused of the same wrongs leveled against it today. The authors highlight the retailing innovations that allowed Sam Walton to create a chain that corporations around the world strive to mimic.
Like any book produced about a passionate debate, there is a discernable amount of skew present. Not to the point of obvious fact twisting, but Vedder and Cox certainly don't hide their favorable opinions about Wal-Mart. I found the book to be interesting and extremely informative simply because it approaches the issue from a different angle. It exposes the true motivations behind special interests groups that fight Wal-Mart. It shows the strength that Wal-Mart maintains in its market, while at the same time providing a glimpse of its vulnerability. It shows some of the negative externalities of interventionist political decisions working to keep Wal-Mart out of communities. It examines Wal-Mart from both a domestic and international perspective and creates comparisons to the other well known big-box retailers. Although The Wal-Mart Revolution may not shift the readers outlook on big-box stores, it does provide insight into the retailing trade and the actions that have lead to the conditions we see today.
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| Boring and Easily Summarized |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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The authors begin by using other peoples' data to estimate at least $55 '05 benefit per consumer, double that if Wal-Mart practices adopted by competitors is included. (My own experience, buying both grocery and non-food items at Wal-Mart, suggests a much higher figure - about $600.)
As for negatively impacting producers, the authors use arcane and skimpily covered methods to estimate that the net benefit is still about $110/year. Again, I suspect the negative impact on American workers is much greater than the authors contend.
Regardless, "The Wal-Mart Revolution" then adds on charitable giving - as though the Mom and Pop stores it often replaces never made charitable gifts.
Many blame Wal-Mart for hiring workers at relatively low pay and offering skimpy benefits. Wal-Mart is not the source of the problem, however. The real problem is our government allowing such extensive outsourcing that employees are left with no choice but to accept such positions. If Wal-Mart didn't do it, others would - and to a large extent they do.
Look at the packaging on boxes being brought into department stores and specialty shops - far too often they show the same "Made in China" printing that is found on Wal-Mart merchandise. Lately we have even learned that much of our food is also produced by China.
Bottom Line: Don't blame Wal-Mart for offering the best deal while protecting itself from others. Blame the American government and short-sighted economists that think losing millions of jobs to outsourcing is a good thing.
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| fast, excellent packaging: perfect!!! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I received the book fairly quickly. I was new and looked great1
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| Wal-Mart Revolution |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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If you favor truth and empirical observation regarding Wal-Mart rather than the hyperbolic PR of green advoacates and union web sites this is required reading. It is excellently documented and the authors have no particular axe to grind since they are not affliated with Wal-Mart in any way.
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| Uhh..It's Called Reality, Folks. |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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Is this book a joke? What planet are these authors living on?
It is an undeniable fact that Wal-Mart's "success" is achieved through predatory pricing, union busting, and forcing workers to work off the clock. One example of many: In March 2005, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $11 million to settle allegations that it had failed to pay overtime to janitors, many of whom worked seven nights a week. [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 11/7/05, Forbes, 10/10/05]
Not only that, but Wal-Mart is the indirect beneficiary of billions of taxpayer dollars. In many states, like California, the average Wal-Mart "associate" makes only $17, 114. How do these associates survive on such a salary? By collecting welfare benefits from the state in the form of low-income housing assistance, food stamps, low-income energy assistance and Medicaid.
As far as Wal-Mart suddenly going "organic" to satisfy consumer demand, as the book suggests, the company gets its organic products from places like China. Why? The whole concept of organic is not simply buying foods free of pesticides. It also involves supporting LOCAL farmers and insuring sustainable wages for local farming communities. THIS is how localities would be benefited by companies like Wal-Mart. China has a horrible human rights record and is able to supply cheap goods to Wal-Mart by banning independent labor unions and "employing" millions of workers as virtual slaves. How are workers kept in this bondage? By an authoritarian state apparatus that "free market" adherents like Vedder have somehow made peace with.
This is the real world, folks! The free market does not exist-- except in the fevered imaginations of capitalist hacks.
Leftists are not opposed to "success", as a reviewer suggests below. What we're opposed to are parasites that live off the backs of working people. Leftists support all types of companies--very successful ones, I might add, that place people before profits. Companies like Whole Foods, Working Assets, Ben and Jerry's, Seventh Generation, Gateway Inc., Office Max, etc.
Free market ideologues will scoff at this assertion, claiming that it's just a bunch of Marxist drivel, that Wal-Mart provides jobs for thousands of people that they otherwise wouldn't have, offers low prices for poor people, blah blah...
However, what these people doesn't understand is that labor is not just a commodity to be treated like any other commodity. It is much more than that.
For more information on this subject, check out "Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences" by Steve Keen. Also, check out "No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart: The Suprising Deceptions of Individual Choice" by Tom Slee.
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