Brown Sludge

SmackBack - David Nicklaus

December 11th, 2005

Sometimes… I’m ashamed to be a conservative.

In his current column in the St. Louis Post Dispatch – editor and economist David Nicklaus makes this startling defense of the entire Big Box ethic – and then carries the debate onto his blog so as to remove all doubt about the true nature of his viewpoint.

In his column he quotes from a study that he’s found by Jason Furman and Jerry Hausman :

Poor people spend a greater-than-average portion of their income on food, and as a group they’re more likely to shop at Wal-Mart. The conclusion is hard to escape, Hausman says: “Wal-Mart has done as much as anyone, perhaps even more than the federal government, to help poor people during the last 25 years.”

That an educated economist is actually sermonizing that WalMart has somehow become a community philanthropist is so Orwellian that it keeps me up at night.

I wonder if some of the “poor people” that used to be businessmen and businesswomen in communities that were decimated by the Big Box ethic feel overwhelming gratitude toward the Big Boxes when they shop there?

Later - in his blog - Mr. Nicklaus goes on to add insult to injury with the following observations :

Believe it or not, my mail is running about 50/50: Half love Wal-Mart, half think it’s the evil empire. Here are just a few of the comments:

– One anonymous reader asked whether Jason Furman (note: PDF viewer required) and Jerry Hausman received any funding from Wal-Mart for their research. Good question. They did not. Furman specifically notes that he has “never received any payment from Wal-Mart of any kind.”

This hardly makes them impartial. A better question would have been “How many shares of Big Box do you own?”

– One caller said she had worked at J.C. Penney, Target and Wal-Mart and had the best health-insurance plan when she was at Wal-Mart.

We’re down to apocryphal “My aunt’s second cousin on my mothers side said…”

– Tom says he resents paying for Medicaid and food stamps for employees of “these rich people,” meaning the Walton family. So, should we structure our welfare benefits based on where the recipient works? It seems to me such a policy would hurt the working poor a lot more than it would hurt the Waltons. And it’s not like Target, Sears or any other mass retailer pays significantly higher wages.

This is leftist crap – and Mr. Nicklaus points this out. The left hates Big Box stores because their wealthy. They hate all wealth – but just because the unions and the left hate Big Box – that doesn’t make them poster children for the RIGHT.

– George is upset about all the imported goods that Wal-Mart sells, and about the closings of American plants that used to make similar goods. But it’s very hard to find American-made clothing, for example, even at upscale stores. If you want to bemoan the loss of American manufacturing jobs, fine, but you have to look elsewhere for causality. Technological change, the strength of the dollar, the entry of China into the WTO, those are causes. Wal-Mart is just a very shrewd middleman who’s figured out how to make a global supply chain work to consumers’ advantage.

While the hard working “Made In America” crowd – which inarguably is the heart of the conservative base – is being sold out to prop up foreign governments (most of whom hate the U.S.) – Mr. Nicklaus continues to Whistle Through The Graveyard.

– Marcie asks if I’ve ever been to a small town where Wal-Mart has driven small stores out of business. Well, I grew up in small-town Iowa and still visit there regularly. Most of the stores that went out of business were doomed anyway. Residents resented their high prices, and often drove 30 or 50 miles to a bigger city to do their shopping. In short, while we romanticize the town square and many people mourn its passing, small-town residents love their Wal-Marts, and they’d be fighting mad if someone tried to take them away. Studies have shown that total jobs increase when Wal-Mart comes to town, and certainly places that have one are a lot more prosperous than the places that don’t.

Here, the cruelty of Mr. Nicklaus’ position becomes inescapable. While they are shuttering the businesses of the friends and neighbors of the very small town he grew up in - he glibly states they were all dead anyway – and then goes on to insinuate that now that they’ve figuratively murdered the entire small business population of that rural community – that the residence are grateful that the Big Box lets them shop there.

Unreal.

Do you really think it’s healthy that there is only ONE MONOPOLISTIC source of jobs and revenue in a community? Really?

The right frequently paints the left as being soft on crime - and soft on the war in Iraq. And every time those fools on the left open their mouth and badmouth the troops and cry to let some hardened murderer out of prison - or scream for a woman’s ‘right’ to murder her babies - conservatives shake their head and (rightfully) point and say “See… we TOLD you these people were who we said they were.”

The left frequently paints the right as soulless money-grubbers who care more about money than they do about human beings or the environment, and every time some right wing pundit throws their body in front of an ill behaved corporation who is preying on people and communities - the left gets their opportunity to shake their head and say “See… we TOLD you these people were who we said they were.”.

One final point here… and one that I’m genuinely curious to know the answer to:

Mr. Nicklaus works in the newspaper industry - an industry where Big Corporate America is know to FREQUENTLY buy and shutter entire newspapers - and entire newspaper departments. Nobody has been “brown sludged” like the newspaper industry has. Yet… strangely… he seems to defend these people and these practices. I don’t get that - and I need that explained to me.

It brings to mind a quote made by Pastor Martin Niemoeller upon his release from Theresienstadt after WWII. He was asked, “How did the world let this happen?”

He replied:

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”

Think about it.

Entry Filed under: Big Box Monster, SmackBack