Our readers have ample evidence as to how I feel about the whole “May I see your receipt please,” bit of theater at Walmart (or any big-box retailer) but I have a really had time figuring out how Walmart could enforce a life-time ban from all its stores.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

While I certainly understand where the critics in this story are coming from, I don’t think this is a sign that Walmart is a racist company.

I’m outraged that you can buy any Barbie doll for just $5.93. Little girls who choose to play with Barbie should treasure and love their dolls. Pricing them about the same as a large box of cereal encourages children to think of their dolls as disposable. You just know that Barbies were higher quality twenty years ago.

And think of the conditions in that Chinese factory where those dolls were made!

I think Wake-Up Walmart has moved entirely to Facebook now, because I got this there first too:

UGA historian Bethany Moreton has won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award for her HUP book To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise…The award is given each year by the Organization of American Historians for the best first book on a significant phase of American history. In investigating the complex network that gave rise to the giant we know as Wal-Mart — on that united Sun Belt entrepreneurs, evangelical employees, Christian business students, overseas missionaries, and free-market activists — Moreton’s book uncovers the roots of the “Christian service” ethos that has increasingly powered capitalism at home and abroad.

Shame on you if you haven’t read it yet. Of course, you can always read her post on this very blog to whet your appetite.

On a lark, I tried searching for it here, but at least Walmart.com is kind enough to send you to Barnes and Noble so you can get it in a few days.

This article (which I got through the Wake-Up Wal-Mart Facebook page) deserves much more attention. Why don’t you go read it now, and I’ll try composing one of my patented outraged posts as soon as I have time.

So says I guy who wrote to the Consumerist.

Note to Jeff: This one is about showing your receipt.

No, the W on his chest does not stand for Walmart, although if you look back through the archives of John Backderf’s cartoons you’ll see that he features the relationship between White Middle Class Suburban Man and Walmart quite a bit.

WMCSM has been let down by his big-box favorite, but he’s clinging to his Palinesque values.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Our co-blogger Robert Feinman passed in July. Jonathan has already posted a best of series taken from Robert’s more than 600 posts to The Writing On The Wal. But Robert wrote elsewhere as well and, for some time, I’ve enjoyed a Sunday morning tradition of reading the essays he posted to his personal blog.

Beginning on 18 October I began to cross post Robert’s essays to share his thoughts. Strictly speaking, Walmart was not specifically the subject of Robert’s writings, but Walmart was certainly always a player in the universe he explored.

The Phony Medicare Crisis

Those not wringing their hands over the the looming Social Security collapse are crying wolf over Medicare/Medicaid instead.

This is mostly unwarranted. A quick look at some factors will illustrate this.

1. Growth rate of medical costs: Over the past several decades medical costs have grown faster than the cost of living and have become an increasing percentage of the GDP. There are several reasons for this, increasing number of people (especially the elderly) being covered, cost of new technology, transition to a corporate delivery system from a mixed local and non-profit one, and the cost of patented drugs.

2. Aging of population: An older population will require, on average, more health care. The old population is increasing in absolute numbers, as well as a percentage of the total. The life span is also increasing.

Lets analyze each of these in turn.

The growth in coverage is mostly over. There are at present about 40 million under covered out of about 300 million. So full coverage would only be an additional 10-15% over the next decade (including population growth).

The cost of new technology. There has been a growth spurt in expensive medical equipment such as MRI and PET scans. There was a bulge in expenses as these went into general use. We can expect some short term bulges in the future when similar inventions occur, but overall new technology lowers cost. The cost of laser vision correction has now dropped so low that doctors are dropping out of the field, for example. A new scan for heart attack victims promises to greatly reduce the cost of diagnosis in an emergency situation. Fifty years ago a computer cost as much as an airplane (and was almost as large) and now they are throw-aways in cell phones. Why not expect the same price/performance for medical devices.

We have moved from the family doctor and the local non-profit hospital to the corporate group practice and the for-profit medical facility. This has added about 30% to the cost of delivering services. The claims about competition lowering costs have not been borne out. Companies do not enter a business unless they can make a profit, unlike charities. Therefore they need to gross enough over the actual costs to generate this profit. As a society we have decided to add a layer of expense to the health care delivery system in the form of insurance, benefits monitoring, purchasing agents, etc. These are mostly unnecessary expenses when compared to a universal system and are lumped into the health budget, but are really a way to subsidize employment.

There has been a burst of patented drugs, commanding excessive prices, over the past several decades. Much of this has been the result of prior government-sponsored basic research. The amount of this research has now decreased so the pipeline is not as full. In addition the most widely used drugs are nearing the end of their patent period and can be expected to fall dramatically in price. Even if new patented drugs are released they will only amount to a small percentage of overall drug usage. Simple adjustments to marketing such as prohibiting prescription drug advertising to consumers and over prescribing of highly promoted drugs can also do a lot.

Just as medical technology can lead to lower costs, new treatments can be expected to do the same as well. Stem cell research and the like promises to cure, as opposed to treat, some chronic diseases. If someone is once again able to produce insulin because of gene therapy, then they cease to be a life long customer for diabetes medication.

The population is aging, however the old tend to be healthier than previous generations. Thus, the projected costs to cover this segment will not be as great as before. A small change in overall health can have a dramatic change in eventual costs. Just being able to treat a single chronic disease such as Alzheimer’s Disease could move thousands of people out of expensive chronic care centers as a per capita savings of $20,000 – $50,000 per year. Multiply this by the average three to five year stay and you can see a dramatic change in costs.

So what should be done now?

1. Decide if non-health related expenses (middle men) are going to accepted as part of the system, and if so stop using them as an excuse to restrict benefits. Society can decide to be deliberately inefficient if it wishes. Just look at farm subsides, or Amtrak. The costs just need to be accepted for what they are.

2. Rein in drug costs or, again, accept the deliberate market distortion. When the Medicare drug benefit starts and people can choose alternative private plans there will be downward pressure on prices, they just won’t come from the government.

3. Alter the revenue collection system. This can be done through a change in the present tax code, or by establishing a universal health taxation mechanism or the imposition of an entirely new tax scheme such as a VAT. If the public wants to meet the expense of the health care system, including the deliberate inefficiencies, it just has to decide to pay for it. The economy can afford it. Just buy a 42″ inch TV instead of a 50″ next year.

It’s obvious that many developed countries are providing equal or better care than the US at lower per capita cost, so there are plenty of models to choose from. If these examples were not staring us in the face the doomsday predictions might carry a bit more weight. But, its hard to argue with reality. We have set up a system where a private health management sector absorbs 30-40% of the nominal health budget and then we decry the associated costs.

The real motivation behind the current “crisis” is to shift even more of the health care budget from services to profit. What we are willing to accept is up to us.

Copyright © 2005 Robert D Feinman
Feel free to use the ideas, but the words are mine.

Stacy Mitchell at the Huffington Post:

What journalists and even environmentalists so often fail to do in reporting on Wal-Mart’s sustainability announcements is to provide some context.

Context is everything. Consider Wal-Mart’s latest announcement: It will push some of the factories that supply its stores to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a good thing in and of itself, but what happens when we measure it against Wal-Mart’s overall impact on the production of goods?

If you read this blog regularly, I think you know where she’s going:

Wal-Mart has carefully defined the parameters of sustainability to avoid running up against the basic formula of how it operates and grows. Glaringly absent from Wal-Mart’s recent sustainability report, for example, is any mention of sprawl or land use. There’s no discussion of how much undeveloped, carbon-absorbing habitat its big stores consume each year, even as the nation’s supply of both developed retail space and abandoned “greyfields” mushrooms to epic proportions.

Nor is there any mention of how the big-box format that Wal-Mart pioneered has led to a sharp increase in the number of miles Americans drive for shopping. Although suburbanization accounts for some of this increase, most of it is a function of the basic geography of bigger stores. Each supercenter serves a larger area than the dozens of smaller grocers and other stores it replaces. This means picking up milk is a longer trip than it once was and federal data show that “one-stop-shopping” hasn’t come anywhere close to making up the difference. Indeed, since Wal-Mart began expanding in the 1970s, the number of miles logged per household for shopping has grown more than 300 percent, while household driving overall has expanded 75 percent.

I’m so glad she decided to go here, because I’ve been so alone making these arguments for so long that I thought she might be crazy. Somebody else is finally saying that the Emperor has no clothes, and I couldn’t be happier.

I have no doubt that there are six different way from Sunday to be cynical about Walmart’s role, through it’s Chilean subsidiary Lider Hipermart, in the recovery actions following the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunamis that devastated Chile.

Walmart is learning how to do disasters.

From The Associated Press:

Aid from the national government had begun to reach some small communities around Concepcion by helicopter Tuesday, but the distribution effort became visible to the rest of the public only Wednesday with the convoy of seven dump trucks delivering food bags.

The food was donated by the government and businesses including the Lider Hipermart chain — a subsidiary of Wal-Mart — whose one store in Concepcion that wasn’t looted has now been commandeered by the Chilean military.

Good on you Walmart.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Gawker is the last place I expected to find a Walmart screed. It’s actually pretty good, in a snide, profane, Gawkeresque kind of way.

Senator Blanche Lincoln (D- Arkansas -Walmart) officially has a primary battle for her seat in the United States Senate. Everyone expected that the Republicans would pour cash into the Fall battle, but a primary is a whole different department.

From The Associated Press:

Democratic U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a moderate already considered one of the Senate’s most vulnerable members, is facing another roadblock in her bid for a third term: a challenge from the left side of her own party.

Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced Monday that he’s seeking the Democratic nomination for Lincoln’s seat, becoming the first in the party to formally challenge Lincoln and underscoring a schism in an election year shaping up to be difficult for the party in power.

“Washington is broken. It’s working for the special interests, not Arkansas families,” Halter said in a statement.

Eight Republicans already have announced interest in the Senate seat as Lincoln’s popularity wanes in the GOP-leaning state. She has been under has been under pressure in Washington to support President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

Notice that one of the few women in the senate is being opposed by no fewer than nine men. Hell, Snow White only had to deal with seven.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This story bears much deeper consideration than this video, but I want to get it out there so that we can all consider and commet. I don’t know how many ministers there are in Chicago, but 200 is not a number you lightly dismiss.

Does anyone else detect the scent of Walmarting in the air?

Further, why is the story breaking in Crain’s Chicago Business and not the Sun Times or Tribune?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

How do you really feel about Walmart? Here’s your chance to express your true feelings — pro and con — about the world’s largest retailer. Write whatever you like in the comments section and engage your fellow readers in the conversation.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Another settlement, covered in the WSJ:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. agreed to pay about $12 million in back wages and damages as well as hire more female applicants for warehouse jobs to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency announced Tuesday.

Wal-Mart’s London, Ky., distribution center denied jobs to qualified female applicants from 1998 through February 2005, and regularly hired male entry-level applicants for warehouse positions, the EEOC said.

“Wal-Mart regularly used gender stereotypes” for filling certain positions, the EEOC said in a statement.

Almost makes me think Walmart is turning over a new leaf. Now if they’d only follow labor law…

Marketers are famous for selecting names and phrases that they believe will inspire confidence and comfort among consumers of their products, and the strategy normally works. Walmart’s Straight Talk cell phone service, however, is blowing up.

From Digital Trends:

A slew of shill reviews for Wal-Mart’s Straight Talk cell service have us questioning whether the name could get any more ironic.

After garnering the ire of consumers with unlimited data plans that aren’t actually unlimited, Wal-Mart’s low-cost carrier Straight Talk has belied its name yet again with an even shadier marketing strategy: shill reviews.

While we’re used to spam from the likes of tiny companies that need every eye they can get, we were surprised this morning when Digital Trends saw a bombardment of shill reviews promoting Straight Talk – a prepaid cellular service backed by giants Trac-Fone and Wal-Mart.

A flurry of “reviews” under different usernames left brief comments on the phones in question followed by hyperbolic raves about the wonders of Straight Talk. While we’ve since removed them, our research on the company churned up a slew of complaints about poor customer service, days spent without cell phone service while the carrier attempted to port over an old number, and even PIN numbers that scratch off airtime cards with the scratchoff material above them, leaving users out the money they paid for them.

Although TracFone has earned a solid reputation in the past, we recommend folks read our full guide to prepaid cell phones to learn about many of the hidden pitfalls to prepaid providers.

Irony is so sweet.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.