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DarkJedi · 12-04-2003, 12:22 AM

Inspired by tonight's wallmart thread.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3044wal-mart.html

This article appears in the Nov. 14, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease
by Richard Freeman and Arthur Ticknor

The Wal-Mart department store chain, which employs 1.3 million people at 4,700 stores worldwide, and in 2002 became the largest corporation in the world, is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations, and the Third World.

Wal-Mart is a driving force behind the decadent Imperial Roman model of the United States. Unable any longer to reproduce its own population's existence through its own physical economy, the United States has, for the past two decades, used an over-valued dollar to suck in physical goods from around the globe for its survival. Wal-Mart is both the public face and working sinews of that policy. It brings in cheap pants from Bangladesh, cheap shirts from China, cheap food from Mexico, etc. Workers who produce these things are paid next to nothing.

Not since the days of the British East India Company as the cornerstone of the British imperial system, has one single corporate entity been responsible for so much misery. At the core of its policy, Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas. This causes the exodus of millions of production jobs from the United States and the setting up of slave-labor concentration camps around the globe. Wal-Mart's policy includes crushing living standards in America, forbidding its workers from unionizing, bringing in workers illegally from abroad, and bankrupting tens of thousands of stores and outlets on Main Street, ripping apart communities and their tax bases.

On Nov. 1, 2004, Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche declared that Wal-Mart and its destructive policy must be stopped. LaRouche declared a boycott against Wal-Mart, to expose it and take it down. LaRouche told a cadre school gathering of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Philadelphia, "Wal-Mart is not a company, it's an epidemic disease. Wal-Mart is one of the biggest factors in causing unemployment in the United States.... Wal-Mart is your enemy.... It's destroying our community; it represents globalization; it represents an institutionalization of the values which stink." (See full text in Feature.)

Wal-Mart has been primed for this role since 1962, when it was founded by Sam Walton in his hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. It has such immense power in the United States, and leverage overseas, that it has run roughshod over all opposition?until now.

Sam's Club ... Over Your Head
Sam Walton started in the retailing business when he bought a Ben Franklin five and dime store in Newport, Arkansas in 1945. In 1962, he opened the first store under the name "Wal-Mart." In 1970, Wal-Mart made its first public stock offering; the issue was underwritten by Stephens, Inc. of Little Rock, an investment bank which has been identified with some shady dealings.

In 1987, a turning point came for Wal-Mart, when it opened its first superstore, called Hypermarket*USA, modeled on the hypermarkets of Europe. At that time, the average clothing or grocery store in America had 15-22,000 square feet of space. By contrast, the hypermarkets, now called supercenters, had 150-200,000 feet. The supercenter was based on the idea of one-stop shopping: In the same store, one could buy groceries, merchandise and appliances, fast food, and photo development; one could also do one's banking. Wal-Mart took advantage of an advanced inventory system; its bulk purchases of goods, which led to price discounts; and a ferocious anti-labor policy keeping wages very low.

The company set out to obliterate its competition. At the Bentonville headquarters, Wal-Mart still displays the pictures of the heads of its 24 major food and merchandise chain competitors, each framed like an FBI "Wanted" poster. It now builds one new store every 42 hours.

Figure 1 shows that Wal-Mart's annual sales quadrupled from $55.5 billion in its Fiscal Year 1993, to $244.5 billion in FY 2003 (which ended Jan. 1, 2003).

Walmart has grabbed a dominant or near-dominant position in key sectors of the retail market:

* It sells 19% of all grocery-store food in the United States, making it the largest food seller. It plans to double grocery and related sales from $82 billion to $165 billion during the next five years, which would give it command of 35% of the market. It plans to open 40 supercenters in California over the next five years, which is a major cause for the grocery strike in southern California. Managements at the three major grocery stores in southern California, where 70,000 United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW) workers are striking, have said they are trying to renegotiate lower employer contributions to health-care benefits, because they fear that Wal-Mart plans to saturate southern California with stores, and they will be unable to compete.

* It handles 16% of all pharmacy-drug sales in the United States, and plans to increase that share to 25% by 2008, which would make it the largest pharmacy in America.

* It controls 30% of the U.S. household staples market?paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo?and analysts predict that it will increase that share to 50% before decade's end.

* It is Hollywood's biggest outlet, selling 15-20% of all CDs, videos, and DVDs in the United States.

* It sells 15% of all single-copy news publications.

Reciprocally, Wal-Mart controls a large and increasing share of the business done by almost every major consumer-products company: 28.3% of Dial's (soap products); 24% of Del Monte Foods'; 23% of Clorox's (bleaches and cleaners); and 23% of Revlon's (cosmetics). It controls one-fifth or more of the business done by Proctor & Gamble (household products and soaps); Levi Strauss (jeans and clothing); and Newell Rubbermaid (household consumer rubber products). That is, Wal-Mart is all of these firms' biggest outlet, by a wide margin.

This gives Wal-Mart tremendous leverage over all its producers/suppliers, even though many of them are in the Fortune 500. Twenty years ago, the supplier of products went to Wal-Mart, and told Wal-Mart the price to charge for each product. Today, Wal-Mart "co-determines" the price; it tells the supplier what type of product it wants, how to arrange its inventory, what sort of product line to develop. Because Wal-Mart determines how much shelf space each supplier receives, it has life-and-death control over that supplier. If Wal-Mart says that it wants a product's price to be lowered by 20-25%, that supplier will be forced to outsource an increasing share of its production.

Likewise, Wal-Mart has become a conveyor belt, either directly or through its suppliers, for imported goods, mostly from cheap-labor countries. Wal-Mart imports 10% of all America's total imports from China. According to the Sept. 26, 2003 Irish Independent, "If Wal-Mart were a country, it would rank ahead of Great Britain and Russia in total imports."

[snip] go to website for rest.

12-04-2003, 12:22 AM
DarkJedi No Refunds Issued. Industry Role: Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: GFY Posts: 28,300	Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease Inspired by tonight's wallmart thread. http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3044wal-mart.html This article appears in the Nov. 14, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease by Richard Freeman and Arthur Ticknor The Wal-Mart department store chain, which employs 1.3 million people at 4,700 stores worldwide, and in 2002 became the largest corporation in the world, is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations, and the Third World. Wal-Mart is a driving force behind the decadent Imperial Roman model of the United States. Unable any longer to reproduce its own population's existence through its own physical economy, the United States has, for the past two decades, used an over-valued dollar to suck in physical goods from around the globe for its survival. Wal-Mart is both the public face and working sinews of that policy. It brings in cheap pants from Bangladesh, cheap shirts from China, cheap food from Mexico, etc. Workers who produce these things are paid next to nothing. Not since the days of the British East India Company as the cornerstone of the British imperial system, has one single corporate entity been responsible for so much misery. At the core of its policy, Wal-Mart demands of its suppliers that they sell goods to Wal-Mart at such a low price, that they can only do so by outsourcing their work to low-wage factories overseas. This causes the exodus of millions of production jobs from the United States and the setting up of slave-labor concentration camps around the globe. Wal-Mart's policy includes crushing living standards in America, forbidding its workers from unionizing, bringing in workers illegally from abroad, and bankrupting tens of thousands of stores and outlets on Main Street, ripping apart communities and their tax bases. On Nov. 1, 2004, Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche declared that Wal-Mart and its destructive policy must be stopped. LaRouche declared a boycott against Wal-Mart, to expose it and take it down. LaRouche told a cadre school gathering of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Philadelphia, "Wal-Mart is not a company, it's an epidemic disease. Wal-Mart is one of the biggest factors in causing unemployment in the United States.... Wal-Mart is your enemy.... It's destroying our community; it represents globalization; it represents an institutionalization of the values which stink." (See full text in Feature.) Wal-Mart has been primed for this role since 1962, when it was founded by Sam Walton in his hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. It has such immense power in the United States, and leverage overseas, that it has run roughshod over all opposition?until now. Sam's Club ... Over Your Head Sam Walton started in the retailing business when he bought a Ben Franklin five and dime store in Newport, Arkansas in 1945. In 1962, he opened the first store under the name "Wal-Mart." In 1970, Wal-Mart made its first public stock offering; the issue was underwritten by Stephens, Inc. of Little Rock, an investment bank which has been identified with some shady dealings. In 1987, a turning point came for Wal-Mart, when it opened its first superstore, called HypermarketUSA, modeled on the hypermarkets of Europe. At that time, the average clothing or grocery store in America had 15-22,000 square feet of space. By contrast, the hypermarkets, now called supercenters, had 150-200,000 feet. The supercenter was based on the idea of one-stop shopping: In the same store, one could buy groceries, merchandise and appliances, fast food, and photo development; one could also do one's banking. Wal-Mart took advantage of an advanced inventory system; its bulk purchases of goods, which led to price discounts; and a ferocious anti-labor policy keeping wages very low. The company set out to obliterate its competition. At the Bentonville headquarters, Wal-Mart still displays the pictures of the heads of its 24 major food and merchandise chain competitors, each framed like an FBI "Wanted" poster. It now builds one new store every 42 hours. Figure 1 shows that Wal-Mart's annual sales quadrupled from $55.5 billion in its Fiscal Year 1993, to $244.5 billion in FY 2003 (which ended Jan. 1, 2003). Walmart has grabbed a dominant or near-dominant position in key sectors of the retail market: It sells 19% of all grocery-store food in the United States, making it the largest food seller. It plans to double grocery and related sales from $82 billion to $165 billion during the next five years, which would give it command of 35% of the market. It plans to open 40 supercenters in California over the next five years, which is a major cause for the grocery strike in southern California. Managements at the three major grocery stores in southern California, where 70,000 United Food and Commercial Workers (UCFW) workers are striking, have said they are trying to renegotiate lower employer contributions to health-care benefits, because they fear that Wal-Mart plans to saturate southern California with stores, and they will be unable to compete. * It handles 16% of all pharmacy-drug sales in the United States, and plans to increase that share to 25% by 2008, which would make it the largest pharmacy in America. * It controls 30% of the U.S. household staples market?paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo?and analysts predict that it will increase that share to 50% before decade's end. * It is Hollywood's biggest outlet, selling 15-20% of all CDs, videos, and DVDs in the United States. * It sells 15% of all single-copy news publications. Reciprocally, Wal-Mart controls a large and increasing share of the business done by almost every major consumer-products company: 28.3% of Dial's (soap products); 24% of Del Monte Foods'; 23% of Clorox's (bleaches and cleaners); and 23% of Revlon's (cosmetics). It controls one-fifth or more of the business done by Proctor & Gamble (household products and soaps); Levi Strauss (jeans and clothing); and Newell Rubbermaid (household consumer rubber products). That is, Wal-Mart is all of these firms' biggest outlet, by a wide margin. This gives Wal-Mart tremendous leverage over all its producers/suppliers, even though many of them are in the Fortune 500. Twenty years ago, the supplier of products went to Wal-Mart, and told Wal-Mart the price to charge for each product. Today, Wal-Mart "co-determines" the price; it tells the supplier what type of product it wants, how to arrange its inventory, what sort of product line to develop. Because Wal-Mart determines how much shelf space each supplier receives, it has life-and-death control over that supplier. If Wal-Mart says that it wants a product's price to be lowered by 20-25%, that supplier will be forced to outsource an increasing share of its production. Likewise, Wal-Mart has become a conveyor belt, either directly or through its suppliers, for imported goods, mostly from cheap-labor countries. Wal-Mart imports 10% of all America's total imports from China. According to the Sept. 26, 2003 Irish Independent, "If Wal-Mart were a country, it would rank ahead of Great Britain and Russia in total imports." [snip] go to website for rest.