through most of history and prehistory, the economic growth rate has been much, much, smaller
True, and I think not many people want a return to those times (some do, though, mostly on environmentalist grounds).
increases in national wealth tend not to translate into proportional increases in purchasing power for [the poor] … My point is that they aren’t 5% better off each year, even though the economic growth rate is about maybe 7.5-ish-percent with maybe 2.5% inflation.
That’s the whole growing-inequality debate, a separate highly complicated topic.
outweigh the cost to local jobs
Economically speaking, a job is a cost. If you can produce the same value with fewer jobs, that’s a good thing called an increase in productivity.
Agreed. When I said the “cost to local jobs” I was being informal, but referring to the (supposed) increase in unemployment as Walmart displaces local, less efficient small businesses.
Paying people to do a job which can be eliminated is like paying people to dig holes and fill them back in. I’d rather just give them the money than pay them to do useless work, but I’ll take the second option over them being unemployed.
As an interesting side note, I think this might put me on the opposite side of the standard anti-Walmart argument. The meme argues that, Walmart not paying its workers a living wage and making it difficult to unionize forces the government to step in and provide aid, and that this is in effect subsidizing Walmart.
However, because Walmart sells mainly to the poor, I am in favor of subsidizing them in any way that passes through to the poor and doesn’t get skimmed off the top. Maybe that would mean I’d even be against a law forcing them to pay $10/hr or some such, if the benefits to the employees didn’t outweigh the net drawbacks to the customers.
Mainly I just find it depressing that all current political narratives seem to ignore these complexities, and boil down to “Walmart bad” or “markets good” or whatever. Maybe some more intelligent conversations happen behind closed doors, where no one can hear politicians make sane concessions to the other side.
Mainly I just find it depressing that all current political narratives seem to ignore these complexities, and boil down to “Walmart bad” or “markets good” or whatever. Maybe some more intelligent conversations happen behind closed doors, where no one can hear politicians make sane concessions to the other side.
Very few politicians of either side argue that Walmart is bad. At least outside of the local level.
True, and I think not many people want a return to those times (some do, though, mostly on environmentalist grounds).
That’s the whole growing-inequality debate, a separate highly complicated topic.
Economically speaking, a job is a cost. If you can produce the same value with fewer jobs, that’s a good thing called an increase in productivity.
Agreed. When I said the “cost to local jobs” I was being informal, but referring to the (supposed) increase in unemployment as Walmart displaces local, less efficient small businesses.
Paying people to do a job which can be eliminated is like paying people to dig holes and fill them back in. I’d rather just give them the money than pay them to do useless work, but I’ll take the second option over them being unemployed.
As an interesting side note, I think this might put me on the opposite side of the standard anti-Walmart argument. The meme argues that, Walmart not paying its workers a living wage and making it difficult to unionize forces the government to step in and provide aid, and that this is in effect subsidizing Walmart.
However, because Walmart sells mainly to the poor, I am in favor of subsidizing them in any way that passes through to the poor and doesn’t get skimmed off the top. Maybe that would mean I’d even be against a law forcing them to pay $10/hr or some such, if the benefits to the employees didn’t outweigh the net drawbacks to the customers.
Mainly I just find it depressing that all current political narratives seem to ignore these complexities, and boil down to “Walmart bad” or “markets good” or whatever. Maybe some more intelligent conversations happen behind closed doors, where no one can hear politicians make sane concessions to the other side.
Very few politicians of either side argue that Walmart is bad. At least outside of the local level.