Search results for wal mart

Christmas Across Cultures

• Befana, the Christmas Witch
• Christmas Cultures
• Santa’s Evil Side Kick
• Black Pete (NSFW; trigger warning for images of blackface)
• Protestantizing Christmas Gift Giving: The ChristKind
• Politics and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
• The Pagan Roots of Christianity
• Snegurochka: Santa’s Granddaughter
• Global Christmas

The Economics of Christmas

• International Comparison of Christmas Spending
• Christmas has an Economy
• The Christmas Tree Industry

Racializing Christmas

• White Privilege and the Snow White Santa (pictured)
• New York Times Gift Guide for People of Color
• Black Pete (NSFW; trigger warning for images of blackface)
• Holiday in the Hood
• The Hazards of Historical Amnesia

Christmas and Gender

• Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”: 1994 versus 2011
• 12 “Mums” Makes the Workload Light
• Christmas is Women’s Work
• Tis the Season for Reinforcing Gender Differences

Gift Guides and the Social Construction of Gender

• Gender, Technology, and Toys ‘R Us
• Gender in Toy Catalogs
• Body Messages in Christmas-Themed Ads
• Gift Giving with Gender Stereotypes
• More Gender Gift Giving and Advertising
• Another Gendered Gift Guide
• And more Gendered Gift Guides
• And more Gendered Gift Guides!
• Or, you could just buy her a clothesline

Sexifiying Christmas

• Sexy Women as Toys
• O-O-Oh Santa!

Christmas Marketing

• Support the Troops. Shop Walmart?
• Fun with the 2009 Target Catalog
• Guns for Christmas
• 1930s Ad Touting Razor Technology
• Gap Thinks Girls are Vapid

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The following two charts taken from a Center for Economic Policy and Research Center study by John Schmitt and Janelle Jones highlight the distressed nature of the U.S. labor market and the need for raising the minimum wage and strengthening union organizing.

Schmitt and Jones define low wage work as that work paying $10.00 an hour or less in 2011 dollars.  As the charts show, low wage workers are far more educated and older in 2011 than in 1979.

Education and experience are not sufficient to ensure a living wage.

Not surprisingly, growing numbers of low wage workers at Walmart and at chain fast food restaurants have begun engaging in direct action for higher wages and better working conditions.   They deserve our support.

—————————

Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.  You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front.

Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.

With the election over, the news is now focused, somewhat hysterically, on the threat of the fiscal cliff.

The fiscal cliff refers to the fact that at the end of this calendar year several temporary tax cuts are scheduled to expire (including those that lowered rates on income and capital gains as well as payroll taxes) and early in the next year spending cuts are scheduled for military and non-military federal programs.  See here for details on the taxes and programs.

Most analysts agree that if tax rates rise and federal spending is cut the result will be a significant contraction in aggregate demand, pushing the U.S. economy into recession in 2013.

The U.S. economy is already losing steam.  GDP growth in the second half of 2009, which marked the start of the recovery, averaged 2.7% on an annualized basis.  GDP growth in 2010 was a lower 2.4%.  GDP growth in 2011 averaged a still lower 2.0%.  And growth in the first half of this year declined again, to an annualized rate of 1.8%.

With banks unwilling to loan, businesses unwilling to invest or hire, and government spending already on the decline, there can be little doubt that a further fiscal tightening will indeed mean recession.

So, assuming we don’t want to go over the fiscal cliff, what are our choices?

Both Republicans and Democrats face this moment in agreement that our national deficits and debt are out of control and must be reduced regardless of the consequences for overall economic activity.  What they disagree on is how best to achieve the reduction.  Most Republicans argue that we should renew the existing tax cuts and protect the military budget.  Deficit reduction should come from slashing the non-military discretionary portion of the budget, which, as Ethan Pollack explains, includes:

…safety net programs like housing vouchers and nutrition assistance for women and infants; most of the funding for the enforcement of consumer protection, environmental protection, and financial regulation; and practically all of the federal government’s civilian public investments, such as infrastructure, education, training, and research and development.

The table below shows the various programs/budgets that make up the non-security discretionary budget and their relative size.  The chart that follows shows how spending on this part of the budget is already under attack by both Democrats and Republicans.

Unfortunately, the Democrat’s response to the fiscal cliff is only marginally better than that of the Republicans.  President Obama also wants to shrink the deficit and national debt, but in “a more balanced way.”  He wants both tax increases and spending cuts.  He is on record seeking $4 trillion in deficit reduction over a ten year period, with a ratio of $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in new revenue.

The additional revenue in his plan will come from allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, raising the tax rate on the top income tax bracket, and limiting the value of tax deductions.  While an important improvement, President Obama is also committed to significant cuts in non-military discretionary spending.  Although his cuts would not be as great as those advocated by the Republicans, reducing spending on most of the targeted programs makes little social or economic sense given current economic conditions.

So, how do we scale the fiscal cliff in a responsible way?

We need to start with the understanding that we do not face a serious national deficit or debt problem.  As Jamie Galbraith notes:

…is there a looming crisis of debt or deficits, such that sacrifices in general are necessary? No, there is not. Not in the short run — as almost everyone agrees. But also: not in the long run. What we have are computer projections, based on arbitrary — and in fact capricious — assumptions. But even the computer projections no longer show much of a crisis. CBO has adjusted its interest rate forecast, and even under its “alternative fiscal scenario” the debt/GDP ratio now stabilizes after a few years.

Actually, as the chart below shows, the deficit is already rapidly falling.  In fact, the decline in government spending over the last few years is likely one of the reasons why our economic growth is slowing so dramatically.

As Jed Graham points out:

From fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2012, the deficit shrank 3.1 percentage points, from 10.1% to 7.0% of GDP.  That’s just a bit faster than the 3.0 percentage point deficit improvement from 1995 to ’98, but at that point, the economy had everything going for it.

Other occasions when the federal deficit contracted by much more than 1 percentage point a year have coincided with recession. Some examples include 1937, 1960 and 1969.

In short, we do not face a serious problem of growing government deficits.  Rather the problem is one of too fast a reduction in the deficit in light of our slowing economy.

As to the challenge of the fiscal cliff — here we have to recognize, as Josh Bivens and Andrew Fieldhouse explain, that:

…the budget impact and the economic impact are not necessarily the same. Some policies that are expensive in budgetary terms have only modest economic impacts (for example, the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts aimed at high-income households are costly but do not have much economic impact). Conversely, other policies with small budgetary costs have big economic impacts (for example, extended unemployment insurance benefits).

In other words, we should indeed allow the temporary tax rate deductions for the wealthy to expire, on both income and capital gains taxes.  These deductions cost us dearly on the budget side without adding much on the economic side.  As shown here and here, the evidence is strong that the only thing produced by lowering taxes on the wealthy is greater income inequality.

Letting existing tax rates rise for individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000 a year, raising the top income tax bracket for both couples and singles that make more than $388,350, and limiting tax deductions will generate close to $1.5 trillion dollars over ten years as highlighted below in a Wall Street Journal graphic .

However, in contrast to President Obama’s proposal, we should also support the planned $500 billion in cuts to the military budget.  We don’t need the new weapons and studies are clear that spending on the military (as well as tax cuts) is a poor way to generate jobs.  For example, the table below shows the employment effects of spending $1 billion on the military versus spending the same amount on education, health care, clean energy, or tax cuts.

And, we should also oppose any cuts in our non-security discretionary budget. Instead, we should take at least half the savings from the higher tax revenues and military spending cuts — that would be a minimum of $1 trillion — and spend it on programs designed to boost our physical and social infrastructure.  Here I have in mind retrofitting buildings, improving our mass transit systems, increasing our development and use of safe and renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and expanding and strengthening our social services, including education, health care, libraries, and the like.

Our goal should be a strong and accountable public sector, good jobs for all, and healthy communities, not debt reduction.  The above policy begins to move us in the right direction.

—————————

Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.  You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front.

Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.

Market advocates have had their way for years now and one of the consequences has been the growing dominance of industry after industry by a select few powerful corporations.  In short, unchecked competition can and does produce its opposite: monopoly.

As John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna explain:

This [development] is anything but an academic concern. The economic defense of capitalism is premised on the ubiquity of competitive markets, providing for the rational allocation of scarce resources and justifying the existing distribution of incomes. The political defense of capitalism is that economic power is diffuse and cannot be aggregated in such a manner as to have undue influence over the democratic state. Both of these core claims for capitalism are demolished if monopoly, rather than competition, is the rule.

The chart below highlights the rise, especially since the 1980s, in both the number and percentage of U.S. manufacturing industries in which four firms account for more than 50% of sales.

Number and Percentage of U.S. Manufacturing Industries in which Largest Four Companies Accounted for at Least 50 Percent of Shipment Value in Their Industries, 1947-2007:

As the table below shows, the concentration of market power is not confined to manufacturing.

Percentage of Sales for Four Largest Firms in Selected U.S. Retail Industries:

As impressive as these concentration trends may be, they actually understate the market power exercised by leading U.S. firms because many of these firms are conglomerates and active in more than one industry.  The next chart provides some flavor for overall concentration trends by showing the growing share of total business revenue captured by the top two hundred U.S. corporations.  Notice the sharp rise since the 1990s.

Revenue of Top 200 U.S. Corporations as Percentage of Total Business Revenue, U.S. Economy, 1950–2008:

These are general trends.  Here, thanks to Zocalo (which draws on the work of Barry Lynn), we get a picture of the market dominance of just one corporation–Procter and Gamble.  This corporation controls:

• More than 75 percent of men’s razors
• About 60 percent of laundry detergent
• Nearly 60 percent of dishwasher detergent
• More than 50 percent of feminine pads
• About 50 percent of toothbrushes
• Nearly 50 percent of batteries
• Nearly 45 percent of paper towels, just through the Bounty brand
• Nearly 40 percent of toothpaste
• Nearly 40 percent of over-the-counter heartburn medicines
• Nearly 40 percent of diapers.
• About 33 percent of shampoo, coffee, and toilet paper

A recent Huffington Post blog post, which includes the following infographic from the French blog Convergence Alimentaire, makes clear that Procter and Gamble, as big as it is, is just one member of a small but powerful group of multinationals that dominate many consumer markets.   The blog post states: “A ginormous number of brands are controlled by just 10 multinationals… Now we can see just how many products are owned by Kraft, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mars, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, P&G and Nestlé. ”   See here for a bigger version of the infographic.

And, it is not just the consumer goods industry that’s highly concentrated.  As the Huffington Post also noted: “Ninety percent of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983…. Likewise, 37 banks merged to become JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup in a little over two decades, as seen in this 2010 graphic from Mother Jones.”

Not surprisingly, there are complex interactions and struggles between these dominant companies.  Unfortunately, most end up strengthening monopoly power at the public expense.  For example, as Zocalo reports, Wal-Mart, Target, and other major retailers have adopted a new control strategy in which:

…these retailers name a single supplier to serve as a category captain. This supplier is expected to manage all the shelving and marketing decisions for an entire family of products, such as dental care.

The retailer then requires all the other producers of this class of products — these days, usually no more than one or two other firms — to cooperate with the captain. The consciously intended result of this tight cartelization is a growing specialization of production and pricing among the few big suppliers who are still in business…

It’s not that Wal-Mart and category copycats like Target cede all control over shelving and hence production decisions to these captains. The trading firms use the process mainly to gain more insight into the operations of the manufacturers and hence more leverage over them, their suppliers, and even their other clients… Wal-Mart, for instance, has told Coca-Cola what artificial sweetener to use in a diet soda, it has told Disney what scenes to cut from a DVD, it has told Levi’s what grade of cotton to use in its jeans, and it has told lawn mower makers what grade of steel to buy.

And don’t think that such consolidation within the Wal-Mart system makes it easier for new small manufacturers and retailers to rise up and compete. The exact opposite tends to be true. . . . This [system] boils down to presenting the owners of midsized and smaller companies, like Oakley or Tom’s of Maine, with the “option” of selling their business to the monopolist in exchange for a “reasonable” sum determined by the monopolist.

This was the message delivered to many of the companies that in recent decades managed to develop big businesses seemingly outside the reach of the Procter & Gambles, Krafts, and Gillettes of the world. Consider the following:

• Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont ice cream company that reshaped the industry, was swallowed by Unilever in 2000.
• Cascadian Farm, one of the most successful organic food companies, sold out to General Mills and was promptly transformed into what its founder calls a “PR farm.”
• Stonyfield Farm and Brown Cow, organic dairy companies from New Hampshire and California, respectively, separately sold con-trol to the French food giant Groupe Danone in February 2003 and were blended into a single operation.
• Glaceau, the company behind the brightly colored Vitamin Water and one of the last independent success stories, sold out to Coca-Cola in 2007.

The practical result is a hierarchy of power in which a few immense trading companies — in control of and to some degree in cahoots with a few dominant supply conglomerates — govern almost all the industrial activities on which we depend, and they back their efforts with what amounts to police power. This tiny confederation of private corporate governments determines who wins and who loses in this country, at least within our consumer economy.

Of course the growing concentration nationally is matched by a growing concentration of power globally, with large transnational corporations from different nations battling each other and, in many cases, uniting through mergers and acquisitions.  We cannot hope to understand and overcome our current problems and the structural pressures limiting our responses to them without first acknowledging the extent of corporate dominance over our economic lives.

—————————

Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.  You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front.

Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.

The good economic news, which got plenty of attention, is that the U.S. economy added over 170,000 new jobs in October.  The largely unreported negative news is that average real hourly wages in the private sector declined that month, and have been in decline for most of the past year.

It is hard to remember that the economy has been in expansion since June 2009.

Jeffrey Sparshott, in a Wall Street Journal blog post, offered the following chart of the trend in hourly earnings in private industry, with each point showing the change from a year earlier.

Citing a Labor Department report, Sparshott noted that:

…hours worked were flat [in October] for the fourth straight month. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings for all employees on private payrolls fell by 1 cent to $23.58 in October. Over the past 12 months, earnings have risen a scant 1.6%. That’s not enough to keep up with inflation. The consumer price index was up 2% in September from a year earlier.

It’s even worse for blue-collar workers. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees edged down by 1 cent to $19.79, only a 1.1% increase over the past year.

The blog post quoted the HSBC’s chief U.S. economist who said:

This is the smallest increase in wages on record for the data going back to 1964. The persistently high level of unemployment over the past few years is clearly restraining wage gains and suppressing any inflationary pressures that might have possibly emanated from the labor market.

It also quoted the chief U.S. economist at J.P. Morgan Chase who said:

This pace of labor income growth may be quite acceptable for corporate profits, but it does pose headwinds for consumer spending growth.

Consumer spending did rise last quarter, helping to boost third quarter U.S. GDP, but this was largely because of a decline in the personal savings rate, which fell from 4.0% in the second quarter to 3.7% in the third.

We clearly don’t have a foundation for a sustained economic recovery, certainly not one that brings benefits to the majority of workers.  Instead of talk about austerity we need a real debate about the best way to strength worker bargaining power.

—————————

Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.  You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front.

Well, crap. It turns out I might be a terrorist. I wasn’t aware of this, but then Dave A. sent in a video from Houston’s Make the Call anti-terrorism initiative, and it isn’t looking good.

The evidence:

• I sometimes walk off and leave bags unattended in public spaces.
• I gather information about routines in public spaces, often sending operatives out to stand by entrances and exits. They covertly take notes, and I specifically tell them not to draw attention to themselves. Occasionally they even take photos of the layouts of public places or ask employees detailed questions about the inner workings of the organization. I have cleverly disguised these surveillance activities as sociology assignments.
• I sometimes carry small electronic gadgets that might not be immediately recognizable to every single person sitting at a cafe.
• I get cold easily and often wear sweaters or bulky hoodies in summer, even in Vegas.
• I can be kind of hyper and nervous-acting, which probably makes me “sketchy”.
• I always forget the security code at my friend Robin’s housing complex, so I usually just sneak in behind someone else.
• I have been known to park in prohibited areas.

Watch the video and see for yourself:

This method of fighting terrorism is extremely unrealistic. The behaviors listed in the video are things people do all the time, in a variety of contexts. If every citizen of Houston reported every incident they see that is mentioned in this video, the Houston PD would be overwhelmed and unable to function because of the number of calls they’d have to investigate. I’d have to call the police every time I saw a woman wearing Ugg boots in Vegas, because it’s never cold enough here to justify them.

The video tells viewers not to ignore their “instincts.” But do we have an instinct for detecting “sketchy” people or behavior? Given what we know about stereotyping and selective perception, the reality is that people will view behavior through their pre-existing beliefs. Their interpretations of behavior as unusual or inappropriate will be influenced by how comfortable they otherwise are with the person engaging in it, which is impacted by race/ethnicity, class, and many other social categories. A guy leaving a backpack unattended is scary if that guy has a mohawk or, you know, looks scary and stuff, but when I do it, no one bats an eye. This video basically legitimizes turning anyone who makes you at all uncomfortable in public in to the police, on the argument that you are simply following your “instinct.” When you ask every citizen to become an intelligence agent, reporting every incident they perceive as odd, the result is the increasing stigmatization and semi-criminalization of those who can’t or won’t conform to pretty narrow standards of physical appearance, dress, and behavior.

UPDATE: There’s an interesting discussion in the comments about how you balance the need to avoid paranoia with the fact that, for instance, some rapes on college campuses would be prevented if people didn’t leave dorm doors ajar or let people in without knowing who they are, and that’s a conversation worth having. However, I’m also interested in the issue of feasibility here: If all the citizens of Houston literally did what this video suggests, law enforcement would grind to a halt and response times would slow for everyone.

As for why I sometimes leave bags unattended in public…Because there’s nothing of value in it and I left it on an outside table while I go inside to order, or because I’m gathering a lot of books at the library and I get sick of lugging my bag while I do this and leave it on a table while I go into the stacks, or because I realize I forgot to grab something on another aisle at the grocery store and I run around the corner to grab it without thinking to grab my bag. My point isn’t that any of the things I do are laudable or even smart, but rather that people do these things, sometimes on purpose, sometimes because we get distracted or make mistakes, and it’s going to take a massive increase in law enforcement if we really want citizens to start vigilantly reporting them.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) recently released a report about low-wage workers — those making less than $10 an hour. In 2011, 26% of private-sector jobs in the U.S. were low-wage jobs. These jobs were highly concentrated in a few industries. Just over half (52.1%) of all low-wage workers were employed in five sectors:

Most low-wage workers are employed by large businesses, those with more than 100 employees. NELP looked at the three largest employers of low-wage workers — Wal-Mart, Yum! Brands, and McDonald’s. All three have seen significant profit growth over the last four years:

The heads of these corporations are doing quite well, too:

Care 2 posted about the report and included additional details about low-wage workers. The relative worth of the minimum wage continues to decline, since prices for common consumer goods increase while the minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour:

Finally, over at the Economic Policy Institute blog, David Cooper posted a table that provides an overview of the demographics of those who would be affected if Congress passed Senator Tom Harkin’s proposed bill that would raised the minimum wage to $9.80/hour:

Thanks to Dolores R. for the links!

Apple’s profits more than quintupled in the last five years, but their tax burden has risen much more slowly.  Last year, just 9.8% of their profits went to taxes.   “By comparison,” writes economist Marty Hart-Landsberg, “Wal-Mart was downright patriotic — paying a tax rate of 24 percent.”

How does the company do it?  Hart-Landsberg summarizes the New York Times: “The answer is tax loopholes and a number of subsidiaries in low tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands. ”  More details at Reports from the Economic Front.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.