Sam Walton to the Rescue
Passed along by a friend:
1 . Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2.. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people and is the largest private Employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the World.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.
8. During this same period, 31 supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had 5 Years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur At a Wal-Mart store. (Earth’s population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Wal-Mart.
You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to Fix the economy.
Categories: My Blog
Eric Morey
As of 2008 many of these facts seem to be understated.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/bigwalmart.asp
This is one of the few chain emails that, while not technically accurate, is not misleading.
Jess Austin
What is hidden behind that seemingly simple “fix the economy”? What about our system of governance would encourage any rational actor in any position of authority to “fix” the economy, rather than act as all previous rational actors have? It is a category error to expect decisions of governance to depend on skill (or ethics) rather than incentives.
Wal-Mart is like many other surviving, organic economic actors: its true purpose is to thrive and grow, and it is limited in that effort primarily by external factors. Of course we might compare it to other large successful corporations, but I would also compare it to the military-industrial complex, the drug war, the welfare/entitlements system, industrial and public-sector unions, the Catholic Church, etc. The actions of these organic actors only incidentally contribute to their stated purposes (and are often seen to fail when measured against those purposes), but are ruthlessly evolved for the sustenance and growth of the actor itself.
That’s great for actors whose actions remain entirely in the private sector. In that case, customers’ free choices are the ultimate external check on the organic actor. As one can guess, I’m quite suspicious of entrepreneurship that crosses the public/private barrier. I take the quoted chain-mail to advocate Wal-Mart execs in public service because they are felt to be better at these tasks than the incumbent “economy fixers”. I disagree, because I see ruthlessly inexorable mission creep and marketing-driven manufactured consent as a _defect_ of 20th-century governance, as salutary as these phenomena may have been on the private side.
Remember, we non-lobbying taxpayers are the flightless birds of this island ecosystem. Let’s not introduce yet _more_ effective predators. Keep the pigs and rats of private enterprise on the mainland, please. That might allow us to address the government predations we already face.
Zaq.Hack
My main selection criteria for candidates for public office has become, “What are you going to do away with in this unsustainable mess?” “Reform” has become hyperbole for “bloat.” I don’t want people to offer to “fix” the economy, anymore … I want them to leave it the heck alone.
The barest minimums should be required from enormous centralized power. This is what our founders had in mind. They knew that the larger we make the levers of power, the more corrupt the movers of those levers become.