WalMart

If you go into the local WalMart now, as we are

getting near the end of the month, you notice right away that there are very few customers. People around here are poor and usually don't have any money until the first of each month.

The grocery stores are empty of people at this time, too. You go into Sears and there are not even sales clerks, never mind customers. These businesses are already getting subsidies in the form of tax breaks and food stamps for their Chinese-wage-level workers, so you wonder how much longer they can stay in business.

I am in WalMart yesterday with a friend and she says to me, “Everybody hates Walmart – the people who work here and the people who shop here and the people who don't shop here.” I engage the cashier on the way out and she definitely hates the place. “They're always criticizing me... I'm out of here in two weeks... Definitely,” all said in anger.

Many explanations have been given as to why WalMart failed in Europe but their US-style pay and treatment of employees was surely the biggest. It became a laughing stock as well as hated. It now looks to Latin America for expansion, thinking it should be able to get away with it there.

I spoke a couple years ago with an executive of a US company that outsources its manufacturing to China, and told him that there will come a point when most people in the US are not going to be able to buy your stuff from China, because they won't have adequate jobs and money. He was silent, didn't respond to me, but I know from other conversations with him that he still thinks it is a problem that doesn't concern him. He outsources his manufacturing to China because, he says, his competitors would put him out of business if he didn't.

But my question is still valid and perhaps more relevant than ever: How can the US businesses prosper if most people don't have any money?

My own observation, being poor myself as well as all my neighbors being poor, is that there are additional, unspoken, reasons why my question is not addressed by wealthy people like my above-mentioned executive friend.

One is that people who have money don't really believe that the poor do not have money. They think you're not telling them the truth when you say “I don't have any money.” They don't really believe it. I've seen it many times. It feels like they are thinking, well, if you don't have any money, why don't you go to the bank and get some? That blindness or denial is very clear and familiar to anyone who doesn't have any money.

Another unspoken reason for not answering the question is that wealth seems to be a relative thing. A couple, with no dependents and a million in assets, can feel that they desperately need more money even though their combined annual income is well over a quarter of a million dollars. They don't feel wealthy at all. They feel they need more, that no amount is enough, that there is not enough to go around, and that all that they have can be gone overnight. They feel a need to take all they can get. In fact, and I'm not the first to observe this, but one of our most remarkable cultural phenomena is that the rich now believe, not only that they are not given the respect and love due them, but believe themselves to be victims. This relative nature of wealth may also account for their animus toward poor people, that desire to prevent them from having health care and even food – if you can push someone else further down then you are relatively better off.