================================================= Expat Worlds Bi-Monthly Digest ================================================= 7 November, 2005 Vol. 7, Issue 18 .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== THE STORY =================== -=One Nation Under Wal-Mart=- ==== OTHER EZINES ================ ==== EW SPECIAL ================== -=Trust Account=- ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... == -=Trivia=- -=News Story=- -=Jokes=- ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============= -=WinGuard Pro 2006=- ==== INSIDE THE CURRENT EXPAT WORLD == -=Table of Content=- ==== THE STORY ================================== One Nation Under Wal-Mart By Terrence McNally In his irreverent new book, journalist John Dicker reveals the super-high social costs of Wal-Mart's super-low prices. If Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be one of the world's top 20 economies. There are now nearly 5,000 stores worldwide, over 3,500 in the U.S. A new Wal-Mart SuperCenter opens every 38 hours; with yearly sales of $288 billion, Wal-Mart employs one of every 115 workers in America. Wal-Mart has an enormous influence on all facets of business -- manufacturing, trade, communications, transportation, design, you name it. But as journalist John Dicker describes in his first book, The United States of Wal-Mart (Jeremy P. Tarcher), the backlash -- from citizens, workers, unions and governments -- has begun. TERRY MCNALLY: You supplied the statistic -- if it were a country, Wal-Mart would rank as the 20th largest economy. Any idea what countries rank below it? JOHN DICKER: It's bigger than Ireland, Sweden and Israel. Fifty years ago Americans knew the phrase, "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA." Today GM's credit rating is in trouble, it's been offering its employee discount to everyone in hopes of generating sales, and Wal-Mart rules. What does this shift mean for all of us? I think it means that corporations don't take the same sort of responsibility anymore. They can get away with a lot less. The idea that you pay your workers a living wage for a job that's also a career -- that seems to be on the decline. It obviously also signifies the switch from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Rights that were fought for and won in union campaigns in the '20s and '30s in manufacturing have yet to be won in the service sector, retail in particular. Wal-Mart claims it benefits millions by supplying more jobs than any other company and lower prices worldwide. What's wrong with this picture? Well, on one level it's correct. I'm very critical of Wal-Mart's PR in this book, but one thing Wal-Mart's CEO gets right is that he continually reminds people that the heart and soul of Wal-Mart's customers live paycheck to paycheck. To serve them, Wal-Mart provides cheaper check cashing services and cheaper money wiring services. They really cater to that clientele, and that creates a very complex political dynamic. How do you explain to a poor person that a $28 DVD player sucks? I wouldn't want to go to a checkout line and engage in that conversation. One of the things that we saw with Southern California's grocery strike: Wal-Mart is putting the pinch on. They're forcing their competitors down to their level of wages and benefits. Retail has never been a source of incredible jobs. You've never been able to get rich working in a store as a clerk, but there used to be more of a middle ground. What you see in retail now is a certain bifurcation. On the high end, you have Whole Foods or Wild Oats, the kind of frou-frou markets where I have a piece of squash on layaway. On the lower end you have Wal-Mart. You also have Aldi, a very interesting German hard discounter. They'll have about 800 items for sale, but you go in and there's only three people in the store working. If you want a shopping cart, you put in a dollar deposit. It's pretty ingenious. You get your dollar back when you return the shopping cart. It saves on labor, right? You don't have anyone doing parking lot reconnaissance, herding stray carts around. If you want a plastic bag, you pay for it, I think it's between 10 cents and a quarter. In exchange for these labor-saving techniques, you get significantly lower prices. A&P did something like this recently on the East Coast. They shut down their deli and their bakery, and now you have to pay for your plastic bags, but prices went down 20 percent. Hard discounters, places like Costco or Wal-Mart, used to be novelties. Now really low prices are becoming entitlements. But they're not free. Super-low prices have social costs. This is a conversation that I think the country is slowly beginning to engage in. How much does the Walton family make per year? If you're a member of Sam Walton's lucky sperm club, that is if you are one of his four heirs or his wife, Helen, your annual dividend payout -- I believe Forbes reported this in November -- is about $176,000,000. That's your paycheck just for waking up Walton. All the sibs rank in the top 10 of Forbes' richest? I know Rob Walton, who's the chairman of the board, and his sister Alice are both up there. In doing your research, what did you learn that most surprised you? Wal-Mart can enter a retail category and dominate it, and the world kind of yawns. All of a sudden you discover Wal-Mart's the world's largest jeweler. You don't think of Wal-Mart and jewelry, but because of their economy of scale, they're the largest jeweler. They also quietly enter certain areas of business. You can now get a dental plan or a healthcare plan for your employees through Sam's Club. They start slowly, but eventually they perfect things and roll them out nationwide, and boom -- it's huge. They more or less use gasoline as a loss leader to drive traffic into their stores. They use petroleum as a dancing monkey. As you point out, some of them are Wal-Mart gas stations, but a lot of them aren't. They're just charging rent. People come for the gas, stay for the shopping. Also, if you're Wal-Mart, you want to keep customers in your store as long as possible, and that has other implications. Exclusive concerts by various bands are broadcast on Wal-Mart TV; Wal-Mart pioneered this concept, and they call it "retail-tainment." They put on events, they have in-store radio, in-store TV, special broadcasts -- all to keep people in the stores as long as possible. The more time you spend, the more money you spend. That's generally a safe ground rule for any retailer. By the way, Garth Brooks recently announced an exclusive multiyear deal in which Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and their online outlets will be the only places his music will be sold. This multimillionaire, who's sold 105 million albums, more than all but the Beatles, Elvis and Led Zeppelin, sang at Wal-Mart's annual shareholders meeting in June wearing a blue smock and told the audience "It's great to work for Wal-Mart." You go, Garth. From Bentonville, Arkansas to world dominance -- you'll grant that Wal-Mart has not become what it is today simply by being rapacious, won't you? The company has been one of the wisest innovators of new technologies, hasn't it? Sam Walton was famous for saying, "Try it, do it, improve it." On a basic level, Wal-Mart is a master of data. I would love to turn loose a sociologist or an anthropologist at Bentonville's information systems department. Other retailers merchandise for Father's Day or Labor Day weekend or Back-to-School. Wal-Mart can merchandise for the weather. With the hurricanes last year in Florida, they mined data from stores in the hurricane's path to find out what people buy when they know a hurricane's approaching. They nailed it down specifically to strawberry pop-tarts. Toaster-oven treats in general were big, but #1 -- strawberry pop-tarts. This is a company with nearly 5,000 stores worldwide, but they know in a Florida hurricane, strawberry pop-tarts. And they have the infrastructure to get those strawberry pop-tarts into stores within a day or two. Other retailers are still catching up, but they've been able to do that for years. They call it merchandising a store at a time. They have all these people querying their databases. Two stores might be five miles apart in LA, and they'll know, "OK, this store is really close to the beach," "This store is right near a Best Buy," "This other store is near a senior citizen's home." All the demographic factors around a particular store go into the merchandising mix. It might look like they all carry the same items, but they actually don't. Wal-Mart is extremely clever at mastering data. I assume many think that mastering data happened with Amazon and other online retailers. But these folksy folks from Bentonville, Arkansas saw the potential of this dynamic information relationship between customer and store way before anyone else, right? Perhaps because they're from Bentonville. They weren't located in a major city, so they had to deal with distribution in a different way. They couldn't rely on a big warehouse in a big city because they weren't near one. Other companies would outsource their contract to a wholesaler who would supply them, but Wal-Mart had to do its own supplying. That meant building its own distribution centers. A lot of other companies still don't have their own distribution centers, especially for food. Wal-Mart is more vertically integrated so they can more easily implement technological changes in distribution to increase efficiency. If you're a retailer, it's all about turning over stock. You don't want to have anything in the warehouse too long or on the shelf too long, but once it sells out, you want to make sure another one's replacing it. And Wal-Mart is genius at that. At one point Wal-Mart prided itself on buying American. I assumed that was one of the big things that helped them grow. When did that change, and what's the case today? Sam Walton was famous for a campaign he started in the mid-'80s to get Wal-Mart to buy from American companies. He made a big deal about one Arkansas apparel manufacturer, for instance. But even though this one particular apparel maker was making shirts in Arkansas, they still had Wal-Mart purchase their raw materials in bulk from China. So this move off-shore actually was simultaneous with the Buy America campaign. There's a kind of myth around Sam Walton. A lot of people say that if Sam were alive today, none of this would have happened, and that's just bogus. I think the shift to overseas production transcends one company. It's complicated. On the one hand, Wal-Mart didn't start the trend, but they certainly helped push it. "Wal-Mart is both a beneficiary and a driver of the race to the bottom in the global economy," says Alejandra Domenzain, an associate director of Sweatshop Watch. Tell us more. Activists like the National Labor Committee and others who monitor offshore manufacturing, particularly apparel, note that, while companies like the Gap have signed on to disclose where their factories are and to let independent human rights inspectors into them, Wal-Mart refuses. They will not tell you where they're operating in China, and they won't let human rights inspectors in. I think it was the Gap a couple of years ago that released a report based on these inspections. It wasn't flattering to their own company, but they did it. They were behaving responsibly, even if what they were saying was "Hey, we're not getting it right all the time, here's what we did wrong." Wal-Mart has never acquiesced to that, and I think that's part of the struggle right now. Barbara Briggs of the National Labor Committee out of New York told me that the question used to be: "Can we get these manufacturing jobs to come back to America?" Increasingly the answer is that's not realistic. Now the question is: "How do we pressure and lean on companies to behave responsibly in places like Southern China?" Without getting into a plug, I've heard comparisons between Wal-Mart and its smaller rival, Costco: that Costco's not actually a bad public citizen. Is that true? Though only about 15 percent of Costco stores are unionized, it's my understanding that being a cashier at Costco can be a career. From what I've read, if you've been there four years, you can be making around $45,000. I think 90 percent of their workers have health care and it's fully paid for. That's another model. But Costco's not the same store as Wal-Mart. It's a club store, and you're paying $40 a year in membership. Shopping there is kind of like treasure hunting. It's hard to do all your grocery shopping for the week there. And when you see how big items are, you think, God, unless I'm a family of 10, this isn't going to work. At a Wal-Mart SuperCenter you can do grocery shopping as we've grown to understand it: All I need is a dozen eggs and a half gallon of milk. Costco competes more with Sam's Club, but in many ways not with a Wal-Mart SuperCenter. You referred earlier to the Southern California grocery workers strike. For those who didn't follow it, what happened there? Southern California and California as a whole is huge booty for Wal-Mart because they only have their regular stores here, they don't have their SuperCenters. A SuperCenter is a traditional Wal-Mart general merchandise store with a grocery store attached to it. They're usually between 180,000 and 210,000 square feet at the top end. Since the mid-'90s this has been Wal-Mart's main growth vehicle. Next year I think they plan to open about 250 SuperCenters and only about 40 regular variety stores. Southern California and urban markets in particular are hugely important to them, because they're really under-represented in the major metro markets. In 2002 Wal-Mart announced plans to open 40 new SuperCenters in California. That gave the unionized grocery stores -- Vons, Ralphs and Albertson's -- an excuse to go to the bargaining table and tell the unions that they'd better accept concessions because of this looming competition from Wal-Mart. While it's true that Wal-Mart is eating the lunch of unionized stores, they weren't operating in the Southern California market yet. For a lot of reasons stores like Safeway were having their own financial difficulties, and this was a very convenient excuse to stick it to the union. It resulted in a four-month strike, and a lot of people were unhappy about the way it was run. It wasn't the most well-coordinated strike, and there were confusing messages on the picket line. Unfortunately it ended up with workers settling for a two-tier contract. People hired after the strike date get one deal, and people who were already there and stood on the picket line get another. One of the things the workers ran into was the problem of a local union striking national companies, who can sort of "amortize" nationally whatever they lose locally during the strike. The grocery industry developed regionally, and the United Food Commercial Workers, at least at the top executive level, never really adjusted their strategy. It was a very disheartening experience, and I'm critiquing the unions from the left here, not the right. You had the president of the UFCW, Joe Dougherty, who I think clocks about $350,000 with disbursements, declare this the greatest strike in labor history, comparing it to the Flint Michigan sit-down strike, and the next day he retires to his two homes in Colorado and Florida. This is disgraceful. I think unfortunately the United Food and Commercial Workers have lost credibility to really take on the Wal-Mart issue, because they just don't have the skills or the history of running these national campaigns. What do you think the big message is for the future? One of the things I talk about in the book is the fact that Wal-Mart transcends national polarization of left/right, red state/blue state. You're seeing a lot of suburban and exurban communities don't want Wal-Mart. But they're not fighting Wal-Mart by turning it into a referendum on, "Is Wal-Mart good for America?" They're sticking to the nuts and bolts of a specific local proposal. They're analyzing Wal-Mart's particular environmental impact statement, analyzing traffic studies. They're fighting it on the nitty-gritty. If in the process they decide they don't like Wal-Mart, they're kind of sucking it up. They're making a politically mature decision to not let that color local politics -- where it's not terribly relevant. Places like Union County, North Carolina or Monument, Colorado, which is near Colorado Springs -- places that are not hotbeds of progressive politics -- are taking on Wal-Mart, and it's a very different dynamic. It has a lot to do with the basic fact that we're "over-stored" in this country. There's a lot more retail space than ever before, and people don't need Wal-Mart as much. Basically I guess I'm advising people interested in taking on Wal-Mart to be incredibly practical. Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org). For more information about the issues discussed in this interview, visit Wal-Martwatch.com and Sprawl-busters.com. ==== OTHER EZINES & BOOKS ======================== ASIAN TIMES ONLINE Asia most trusted source for news, business,commentary and analysis from throughout Asia and our world. (www.atimes.com). ----- SURVIVAL BOOKS Go to and check it out! ----- japan-guide.com Extensive, up to date online guide on Japan living and travel related information. http://www.japan-guide.com/ ==== EW SPECIAL ================================= ARE YOU READY TO GET THE GOVERNMENT OFF YOUR BACK AND OUT OF YOUR POCKET- ONCE AND FOR ALL? Expat World has a method to do just that. It is a deposit trust account with a Canadian firm using a major financial firm for deposits and custodian of all clients funds. 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Cheers from the money people at Expat World ==== HUMOR, TRIVIA, NEWS AND MORE... ================ NEWS STORIES What's in Bush's pockets? WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Inquiring minds want to know. What does President George W. Bush carry in his pockets? Not much, it turns out. A Latin American journalist at a briefing on the president's trip to the region this week told Bush he wanted to ask the "unofficial" question that he asks all presidents -- what does he carry in his pockets? Bush magnanimously answered by pulling out a white handkerchief with a flourish and then rummaged around in both pockets. And finally, showing that he had nothing to hide, Bush pulled both pants pockets inside out. They were empty. "Es todo. No dinero," ("That's all. No money.") Bush joked in his own brand of Spanglish. "No wallet, no bolsa (wallet)." He even showed off his Timex wristwatch, but quickly added: "I'm not supposed to be endorsing products." --- Hotel owner fears pub with no beer IDLE harvest workers impeded by heavy rainfall have almost drunk an outback Queensland hotel's supply of beer and rum dry. The population of Nindigully, 600km west of Brisbane, has surged from nine to 200 people this week as rainfall of more than 100mm in the border region hampers work on its grain harvest. Nindigully Pub owner Steve Burns said he had ordered extra supplies to cater to the stampede of thirsty plant operators, truckies and locals. However, Mr Burns said he feared the hotel's beer and rum would dry up before the much-needed supplies arrived. "We ordered early Monday morning but ... normally it takes five days for us to get a truckload," Mr Burns told ABC radio. "I ordered ... pretty close to a semi-trailer load – 12 tonnes of beer and spirits to replace what they drank." He said the region would be in "all sorts of trouble" if extra grog didn't arrive by Friday. "Truckies get a bit toey if they can't get a take-away carton to sit down on the river and have a beer," Mr Burns said. "I think they will get pretty stressed if we run out so ... if it rains tonight, which it's actually looking a bit overcast again ... if it rains again we're in trouble." He said pub-goers also had to accept that the beer would take at least 24 hours to chill after it arrived. Nindigully Pub is one of Queensland's oldest hotels, located in its original condition and position on the banks of the Moonie River. Home to about 50 people and 15 houses in the early 1900s, Nindigully now features only two houses, the pub, an old general store and a town hall. --- They need to be told this? LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An exclusive California beach enclave has raised eyebrows by passing out tsunami safety brochures that warn residents, in capital letters, that they should never try to surf one. The pamphlets, part of an emergency preparedness campaign, inform residents of Malibu that tsunamis often follow large earthquakes and advise: "NEVER GO TO THE BEACH TO WATCH FOR, OR SURF, A TSUNAMI WAVE!" "I'm speechless," Malibu surfer Candace Brown told the Los Angeles Times. "I think the last thing people will think about when they feel an earthquake is surfing." Malibu's emergency preparedness director said he thought it would be prudent to address all possibilities. "Some people may feel that we are stating the obvious and some people may not," Brad Davis said. "We want to encourage people to move away from the coast rather than toward it." ----- Dutch witchcraft course qualifies for tax write-off APPELSCHA, Netherlands (AP) — Cobwebs cling from the wooden rafters. Dusty shelves are cluttered with glass jars of home-brewed potions, dried herbs and stone amulets. An oil cooker and a black cauldron sit in the corner, ready for the next full moon. This isn't a Halloween party, it's Margarita Rongen's year-round workshop and she is a witch — according to her tax return. Dutch witches were guaranteed a financial treat when the Leeuwarden District Court reaffirmed their legal right to write off the costs of schooling — including in witchcraft — against their tax bills. Those costs run to thousands of dollars. The court found on Sept. 23 that a witch can declare schooling costs if it increases the likelihood of employment and personal income. Rongen, a mother of two grown children, runs a school for witches, the "Witches Homestead," in the northern Friesland province of the Netherlands. She has trained more than 160 disciples over the past four decades in "a religion that is older than Christianity," she said. Courses are held 13 weekends a year closest to a full moon when outdoor rituals are practiced and potions boiled. Participants learn healing with herbs and stones, divination and fortunetelling with crystal balls and hieroglyphs, and how to make potions. The cost is $206 per weekend, including reading material, lodgings and the tools needed for witchcraft. The full course of 13 weekends runs $2,678 and is open to women and men over 18. "Once you have become a witch ... you can pass along the things you have learned," said Rongen. "I have been a witch for 38 years and learned it from my father." Lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt was astounded to hear that the state was funding witchcraft and asked for clarification. He got an answer to his question last week in a letter from Junior Finance Minister Joop Wijn, saying that "Under the circumstances, the cost of a course to become a witch qualifies as school fees." Rongen invited Omtzigt to visit her. "If he would come here and try the divination rod and see how important it is to find things, see that it isn't pleasant to have earth radiation in your house, feel the forces of the earth, that would be magnificent." --- Oxymoron: open secret ----- The art of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. -- Douglas Adams ----- Never stand between a dog and the hydrant. -- John Peers ----- A father asked his 10 year old son if he knew about the birds and the bees. "I don't want to know!" the child said, bursting into tears. "Promise me you won't tell me." Confused, the father asked what was wrong. "Oh dad," the boy sobbed, "when I was 6 I got the there's no Santa speech. At 7, I got the there's no Easter Bunny speech. When I was 8, you hit me with the there's no Tooth Fairy' speech. If you tell me that grown-ups don't really make love, I'll have nothing left to live for." ----- 1200 people attended the recent International Psychic Society conference. Moderator: "How many attendees believe in ghosts?" (Over 80% of the hands were raised) Moderator: "How many have actually seen a ghost?" (58% of the hands were raised) Moderator: "How many believe that a ghost can be solid?" (23% of the hands were raised) Moderator: "How many have ever physically touched a ghost?" (3% of the hands were raised) Moderator: "How many have ever had sex with a ghost?" (After some pause one lonely hand at the back of the hall went up) Moderator: "May I ask where you are from, sir?" Attendee: "I am from Australia." Moderator: "And you say you've had sex with a ghost?" Attendee: "Oh sorry! I thought you said "goat." ----- Q: How do you tell if you're making love to a nurse, a schoolteacher, or an airline stewardess? A: A nurse says: "This won't hurt a bit." A schoolteacher says, "We're going to have to do this over and over again until we get it right." An airline stewardess says, "Just hold this over your mouth and nose, and breath normally." ==== THE RESOURCE TIP ============================ WinGuard Pro 2006 With WinGuard Pro 2006 you can password protect your programs, windows and web pages in one easy to use program! What's more, there is also encrytption for your personal files and folders. It offers an all-in-one security solution for your computer. With extra features to lock the desktop, boot keys, task keys, blocking software installations and internet access. If you can click a mouse, you'll be able to secure your PC with WinGuard Pro 2006 in seconds. Download it at . ==== INSIDE THE CURRENT EXPAT WORLD =============== EXPAT WORLD NEWSLETTER (VOL.17 ISSUE 8) Table of Content: - AS DUAL CITIZENSHIPS SOAR, OLD CONCEPTS OF LOYALTY AND PATRIOTISM FADE - BITS & PIECES - WELL DESERVED REST - APOLOGIZE OR NO EATS - TO DEATH DO US PART - SCAMS, SCAMS, SCAMS,EXPAT WORLD'S, WORLD OF SCAMS - CREATIVE STOCK SCAMS - FROM THE KINGDOM OF REVEREND GENE - CHURCH BULLETIN BLOOPERS - MORE CHURCH NEWS - SURVEYED -- THE WORLD'S TOP RETIREMENT PLACES - LETTERS FROM AMERICA - BUSH CHENEY REGIME COMPELS US EXPATRIATION - EXERCISE COULD BUILD BRAIN CELLS IN ELDERLY - SEX MAKES WOMEN HAPPY - GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE COUNTRY BEFORE YOUR COUNTRY GETS THE MONEY OUT OF YOU - COSTA RICA - WHERE DO I LIVE IS A CONSTANT FRUSTRATION IN COSTA RICA. - THE WORLD - NO POWER TO THE PEOPLE - BOCAS DEL TOROS - WATCH YOUR BACK - CHEAP CHARLIE'S FREEBIE PALACE - INTERNATIONAL SNIPS AND CLIPS - BIG BROTHER IN EUROPE - CRAPPER RAPPER - PRESIDENT BUSH SELLS LOUISIANA BACK TO THE FRENCH - IN HEAVEN - A XENOPHILE'S PLAN FOR AMERICA YOU MISSING SO MUCH Each week the EXPAT WORLD DIGEST gives you just a smattering of what you can find in the EXPAT WORLD newsletter that we produce once a month. 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