Poor Mexicans Heart Walmart

[JayB]

Salient Quotes

 

"When Wal-Mart was building a store in Juchitán in 2005, local shopkeepers and leftist groups tried to rouse popular sentiment against the American invader."

 

"Over the past few years, local shopkeepers have teamed up with leftist intellectuals to try to block the construction of new Wal-Marts in several places."

 

For now, however, such efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based antiglobalization group, is advising Mr. Alvarez and others in Los Cabos who want to prevent Wal-Mart from entering Baja California Sur, the only Mexican state without a Wal-Mart store. The group figured it might sway the town's new left-wing mayor, Luis Diaz, a member of a political party that opposes free trade.

 

But Mr. Diaz is welcoming the American retailer. "I can understand that some businesses might be hurt by Wal-Mart, but the fact is that the people here want it. It increases the purchasing power of people with very little money," Mr. Diaz says in an interview.

 

"...town officials say Wal-Mart is staying. "The ones who have benefited the most [from Wal-Mart] are the poorest," says Feliciano Santiago, the deputy mayor. "I hope another one comes."

 

"Yes - we want to help poor people by restricting competition and forcing them to use their meager incomes to pay above-market prices." Glad to hear that the poor people in Mexico are using their collective buying power to tell the coalition of Leftist intellectuals and price-fixing retailers to STFU.

 

http://palousitics.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-mexico-wal-mart-is-defying-its.html]WSJ Article

[knotzen]

Poor Mexicans Wal-Mart for the same reasons poor Americans Wal-Mart.

 

Whatever else you can say about the corporation (I admit there is plenty), it serves a purpose, and people who shop there, my disabled parents among them, really dig the store and the prices that allow them to get more for their little money.

 

[olyclimber]

Shopkeepers and Intellectuals???? OMG.

 

of course they like lower prices. but what is the long term cost? heaven forbid an intellectual help them understand that! looking at the bigger picture, such as what happens when a store like Wallmart comes in and runs all the local shops out of business, and you're left with out of town (or out of country) ownership and you get some minimum wage jobs in return. but you also get some nice cheap and affordable Chinese products. sounds like a win-win. but then that is thinking it through and getting all intellectual on the issue, which of course it bad.

 

"intellectual" - what a strange word to turn into a negative. i guess perhaps if you don't like thinking you might oppose intellect. But I do know that if anyone is a thinker on the board it is you JayB. So you do you intellectualize your own intellectualality such that you can get through the day without beating your self up over it? Perhaps you are bi-intellectual? Both non-thinking and thinking, layered in a taco shell, smothered with cheese, wrapped in a deep dish pizza, and deep fried?

 

very provoking blog there. i'm sure you'd never write so shortsighted.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

local shopkeepers have teamed up with leftist intellectuals to try to block the construction of new Wal-Marts in several places."

 

 

Oye! You can almost smell the tamarindo and feel the crumbling concrete under your feet. Yet another example of JayB's hardhitting, investigative journalism. Almost as compelling as his uncited, keyless bar graphs. How does he continue to smash the clueless left with blow after decisive blow?

[ashw_justin]

I hear that leftist intellectuals are doing the same thing here in the States. While the champions of cashism courageously lobby zoning changes and manipulations of city limit boundaries in order to build tract housing and Costcos, the evil leftist 'residents of the community' get all insurgent, like they have some kind of right to oppose the Great Moneyfest Destiny. God put us on this earth to make money and git-dimmit, get a clue you fucking big-brained heathens!

 

 

Edited March 6, 2007 by ashw_justin

[Crux]

Howard Cosell never said it better.

 

Uh, about the blow after decisive blow, and all that.

Edited March 6, 2007 by Crux

[Dechristo]

If the area is big enough in consumer-spending to interest WalMart, you can bet there was already those on their way to becoming the local equivalent of WalMart.

 

If WalMart were blocked from coming in, it would be a matter of time before someone cornered the market competitively.

 

There's always price-fixing.

[Mr_Phil]

Saying leftist intellectual in Mexico is redundant.

 

All the rightist intellectuals have escaped across the border to the US.

[tvashtarkatena]

Walmart parking lots increase average global temperatures.

[tvashtarkatena]

Walmart parking lot runnoff kills salmon.

[tvashtarkatena]

Walmart systematically abuses it's employees by breaking overtime laws.

[tvashtarkatena]

Walmart increases automobile CO2 emissions by locating it's stores outside urban cores where land is cheap.

[tvashtarkatena]

Walmart has a screamin' deal on that combo BBQ/smoker I've been itching to buy.

[JayB]

The salient feature of both opposition groups is that they have motives quite apart from the well-being of the poor, despite their claim that it is concern for the poor that animates their opposition to Walmart.

 

Mexico has traditionally been one of the most closed and corrupt (no coincidence between the closure and the corruption) retail marketplaces in the world, where retailers have colluded with local politicians in order to lock out competition and leave the local people with no choice but to pay excessive prices or go without. It's easy to see how this benefits those who control local commerce, but how anyone can claim that this state of affairs benefits the poorest Mexicans is beyond me.

 

The claim that opening up the local retail sector to price competition will ultimately hurt the poor by putting local shops out of business is also false. If the only way a local retailer can survive is by charging higher prices, then they deserve to go out of business. The claim that this will hurt the local economy is also false - and in this case quite ironic, given the state of the local economy in most small Mexican towns. If you compare total wages before and after the arrival of such a store (how do low-end retail jobs pay in Mexico?) you won't see much of a change initially, and if anything I'd wager that they go up. But the initial change in total wages is not the primary impact that the store will have - it's increasing the purchasing power and the total disposable income of the local people. If your grocery bill, for example, is cut by one third - you have that money to either save or spend. That money is then available to spend on the full spectrum of goods and services that's available in the vicinity. This is a hard concept for people to grasp, but imagine a situation where the price of gas was elevated to $10 a gallon, and price competition was forbidden. What impact would this have on anyone engaged in a business other than selling gas? Would it help those businesses or harm them?

 

That addresses the local businesses and their opposition to Walmart. As far as the "leftist intellectuals are concerned," their opposition is offensive on a number of fronts. First and foremost, they are not poor, and by restricting price competition they are imposing hardships on the least fortunate members of their society that they will not share. The second reason why their opposition is illegitimate is it presupposes not only that they - rather than the poor people - know what truly counts as authentically Mexican and must be preserved, but that they should be granted the power to make that determination and force others to accept their judgement. The third is that Leftist intellectuals in Mexico - to an even greater extent than Leftist intellecutals in the US, if that's possible - are economically illiterate, and are still arguing on behalf of policies that have been completely discredited, and are responsible for the endemic poverty that has continues to plague that country. Leftist intellectuals arguing against economic freedom is like witch doctors arguing against vaccination or anti-retrovirals.

 

The reassuring thing is that the folks who all of this impacts the most have had the sense to ignore the exhortations of the activist-class on behalf of the micro-protectionist retailers. I can only hope that the same will happen with the disease and drought resistant crops that the well-fed activist-class is out to deny to all of the hungry people in the developing world.

 

 

[JayB]

 

 

[archenemy]

I got laid in a Walmart parking lot once. Well, actually it was more than once.

[olyclimber]

pics?

[underworld]

mexican?

[archenemy]

ew

[tvashtarkatena]

The salient feature of both opposition groups is that they have motives quite apart from the well-being of the poor, despite their claim that it is concern for the poor that animates their opposition to Walmart.

 

 

 

The salient point in every one of your posts is that your leftist intellectual nemesis is a fiction. What do you know about Mexico or Mexican culture, for example? Do you speak Spanish? Have you been there? Do you have Mexican relatives?

The leftist intellectuals you commonly speak do exist...in your own mind, as a mirror image of your own academically cloistered persona...with the volume turned up or down as you see fit.

 

Your policy recommendations, what few you actually put forth, as you are mostly an armchair critic, historically have produced disaster. Your GMO cartoon is a classic example. Please...stay in academia where you can publish little papers that no one will read so you can at least do no harm.

Edited March 6, 2007 by tvashtarkatena

[archenemy]

ouch

[Dechristo]

 

ouch

pfft, you've got to be kidding

[prole]

Your outpouring of paternalism and ongoing crusade for "economic freedom" once again masks the savagely elitist and cynical underpinnings of that ideological freakshow that comprises your worldview. You should be more honest with your CC.com audience instead of treating them like children, doling out crumbs of disaggregated data and economic arcana with large dollops of tired Friedmanite clarion calls to capitalist utopia.

Your inability to recognize or answer to any of the charges made against Wal-mart by the other posters speaks volumes about your use of narrow economistic criteria here and elsewhere. The myriad (and thoroughly documented) ways in which Walmart has harmed communities apparently represent either externalities or are trumped by the manna of "increased purchasing power". Even disregarding for a moment the systemic injustices perpetrated by this leviathan, are you so dazzled by the spectacle of the array of "goods and services", efficiencies of scale, the MAGIC of the marketplace as to actually believe that the production and consumption of mass produced, overly-processed, monocropped, exported, cheap plastic crap is the highest aspiration of humanity? Oh, but of course, we are talking about the poor, the objects of all your paternalistic attentions, the patients who never seem to survive (or survive in spite of) the administration of your economic medicine. Given the proliferation of WalMarts across the landscape, one would expect poverty to have been eradicated completely! But that isn't what you are saying. Purchasing power! Yeah, only if it's shoddy enough, dangerous enough. For you, it's okay for people to be poor, in fact it's natural and beneficial for your system as a whole (and for WalMart especially). They just need more change in their pockets for 2-liters of Coke and lawn furniture. Voile! Now they're "absolutely" wealthy! Wealth creation? All that's being created is a new dependency that parasitic companies like Walmart exist on by exploiting. At least be honest about what you and your philosophical forebears really think about greed, class-rule, and "human nature" instead of exploiting people's natural empathy to further your fucked worldview by appealing to the poor. Whack MC indeed. You should've been a preacher.

Leftist intellectuals? Instigators and provocateurs? As if poor and working-class people don't know when they’re getting screwed! But of course your economic technocratic elitism only requires that they understand the model. Anybody who complains is just ignorant even when they can see with their own eyes that it’s rotten. Give us some graphs Jay_B. Make us understand. All will be revealed behind the curtain! You're a shyster, a snake oil salesman and the planet is starting to awake from your spell.

By the way, your anti-intellectualism should surprise no one, it's become a hallmark of all your postings. It's also a hallmark of fascist and totalitarian regimes that have always made appeals to "common sense", the "common man" and the poor. Go figure.

 

[G-spotter]

Vote for Pedro.

[olyclimber]

verbosity is kewl.