Costco etc.
WHY IS COSTCO GOOD AND WALMART BAD?
WHY IS BEN & JERRY’S GOOD AND McDONALD’S BAD?
These are among the critically important philosophical questions of our times.
Costco and WalMart
On my semi-annual shopping trip to the nearby WalMart, I see ethnic diversity that is only matched by the rush hour crowds in a Port Authority Bus Terminal passageway. Income diversity — clearly not so much; one-third of WalMart patrons live completely paycheck to paycheck. They come to the store because product prices are stunningly low (a revelation I know).
One would imagine that those of good heart, the description of all liberals, would applaud such an endeavor as an economic benefit of major proportions to a diverse and needy consumer group. But no, there is constant sniping, and a sneering attitude by many, who prefer the more comfortable surroundings of a Costco, where greater discretionary incomes can buy much larger quantities of everything, including unneeded stuff (which certainly happens at WalMart as well).
“WalMart is the reason that small town merchants are being eviscerated” is a leading complaint. Presumably JC Penney, Sears, Macy’s, Kmart and a long list of other larger retailers never had any impact on their lesser-sized competition. Meanwhile, Amazon, which everybody loves because of its incredibly efficient order/delivery system, is in the process of competitively punishing every retaler with an immobile physical location, and making WalMart itself think more deeply about geographic spacing of its stores in the United States (it is closing a few outlets) and other operational issues.
Next—“WalMart does not pay its people well and its healthcare benefits are poor.” Let’s see, the overall turnover rate in the retail industry is about 50%–in six months, a number which historically has seemed impervious to well-intended training programs and which has argued against arbitrarily paying more than the compensation level at those extinct local businesses. (Nobody ever criticized a clothing store for simply hiring young customers who looked good in their clothes and giving them virtually zero training.) Business owners typically are not persuaded by the logic of pouring money into an approach which has no payback attached.
Ironically, WalMart itself is now ignoring much of the truism concerning retail staffing and is currently injecting both additional training and higher pay into its operating approach. It is doing this, not for political correctness, but for good business reasons, stimulated by incremental competition from below (dollar stores), the excesssive costs associated with such personnel turnover, and the need to create a better customer experience. And it is willing to suffer a decline in profits to accomplish its new approach. Will this revision in the company’s modus operandi ultimately prove beneficial? Who knows: the free market will provide that answer, not any of the critics.
As for healthcare plans, they are the subject of controversy and different approaches throughout corporate and entrepreneurial America alike. WalMart is only different in one respect –it is big, very big: 4500 stores in the USA alone.
Aha, a major discovery: “WalMart buys stuff made by low-paid workers in China.” Now that is an argument clincher, a revelation completely unique to WalMart, a business approach unknown to any other company on the Fortune 500 or 1000 or your neighborhood store. The issue of labor cost and conditions only arises when a person wants to make a political statement; otherwise, and for all the other products in either closet or pantry, the critic is mute. (From a philosophical standpoint, if labor and capital have no border controls, should people? But that is too heavy a concept to tackle in this essay.)
On the other hand, enter Costco and its more affluent shoppers: average household income of $75,000. Does anybody question whether the success of this company has cost jobs at prior suppliers to either wholesale or retail accounts? No, the people are nice (probably higher paid than at WalMart) and there is a pleasantness to the place. I dare say that some of the shoppers would admit, “there are more people like me here” (i.e., different from the situation at a WalMart, with its less privileged clientele).
Because of the good aura surrounding Costco, you do not hear about their sourcing patterns. Of course, neither do you hear anything about conditions relevant to the Far East seamstresses of haute couture dresses and gowns found in ultra chic Fifth Avenue shops.
Does anybody recall criticism of Costco, one of the largest booksellers in America, when the 40,000 employees of Borders lost their jobs. (Does anybody step back from an iPhone because of its sourcing situation? Nah, because we like, no love, the product. All other considerations ebb to nothingness, just as the Sierra Club builder of a vacation home does not omit Brazilian flooring because the Amazon rain forest is being cleared.)
Ultimately, the fundamental philosophical question is clear: who will be the decision-maker on which businesses live, which grow, and which slowly dwindle to nothingness. To paraphrase William F. Buckley, I would rather leave these decisions to the first twenty names in any phonebook than to twenty professors or twenty government officials.
Ben & Jerry’s and McDonald’s
I am salivating just thinking about it: four fluid ounces of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream! And only 270 calories. I will simply ignore the accompanying “nutritional” data: 22% of daily fat, including 45% of saturated fat; 23 grams of sugar, and 17% of daily cholesterol. Thirty days of eating this delicious food will bring joy to heart surgeons. But the perpetrators are good guys, their cows are “happy” and everything is fair-traded. Ben & Jerry’s, gotta love them.
When you “Super Size” your eating approach at McDonald’s, it has a similar deleterious impact on your health. But Mickey D’s is, boo, bad. Why—the company is big, corporate, does nasty things to its cows, and disproportionately promotes its unhealthy food to impressionable kids. Ben & Jerry’s, on the other hand, promotes its products to everybody. See the vital difference!
Meanwhile, please take a look at a chart of per capita sugar consumption plotted against the incidence of diabetes, then go to your local supermarket for an informed shopping experience.
The SAT
When I asked the graduate school student in Urban Education whether her distaste toward standardized tests extended to those given pilots or plumbers, she immediately switched gears to talk about poverty. I did not ask her whether we should water down education standards until poverty is resolved.
Despite the publicity when well-known colleges announce with a strange tone combining pride and defiance that they have dropped SAT scores from their application requirements, the test still means something, particularly given the correlation of its results to success in year one of college.
Professional educators often regard a 1000 combined score for the Reading and Math portions (ignoring the Writing segment, a calamity of sorts, but that’s for another essay) as being indicative of college readiness. Others use 1550 for the three test components combined.
The national average for the latest round of tests was 1490, uh, not good. (My home state of New Jersey weighed in with a 1520, comprised of 500, 521, and 499 respectively). Only 42% of SAT test-takers achieved the 1550 level, with the rate for Hispanics being 23% and that of African Americans, 16%.
Culturally biased questions (perhaps partly reflecting the inadequately diverse composition of the staff at ETS, creator of the SAT), inferior urban education systems, and second language situations are typically labeled as key factors behind antagonism toward the SAT. As an offsetting factor, many entities which work with students having subpar SAT results believe that they can be successful on college campuses where the average SAT is 100 points or higher, assuming there are adequate support services available.
Without in any way denying that the SAT can be improved — which in actuality is taking place (reacting to test question complaints and a loss of market share to the competitive ACT offering, previously reluctant Eastern institutions now are accepting both SAT and ACT results), there is a fear that negativity toward the SAT becomes sloppily conflated with a similar attitude toward standardized tests in general, resulting in reduced academic, and even aspirational, expectations.
If the Complete College America data are correct—5% of two-year college students earn their degree in two years and under 20% of four-year public college students earn their degree in four years—one suspects that defects in the SAT process are not a critical education reform issue, but simply one item on the long list of factors.