Walmart and other stores selling food and basic needs are the eventual recipients of much of the money put into extended unemployment insurance payments and food assistance. As those programs cut back the reality that many Americans can't even afford to shop at Walmart any more starts to come through.

Way back in the distant years of the '60s, there were folk trying to warn us of the meteoric rise and likely future convergence of new technology and the marketing, PR and opinion-engineering industries. Vance Packard and Marshal McCluhan come to mind, among others.

Since then, virtually all of our major media has become owned by businesses with wide-ranging interests, interests which they're not averse to furthering with their media holdings. Schools have been cranking out marketing specialists with psychology backgrounds, the study of polling and focus groups has blossomed, and advertising, both overt and covert, continues to break new ground.

Corporate interests are working every single day to divert popular opinion away from the concepts that government works, that regulation might be necessary, and that corporations don't have your best interests at heart.

Walmart ain't the only one.

Does it have a room full of these:

http://www.thevelvetstore.com/Merchant2/…

We have been told repeatedly since The Great Bush Depression that it would be a long, slow climb back. Just look at Europe. They are having a rougher time than us because Obama and Pelosi saved us with stimulus money. Now the fed is talking cut-back. If you had told me the Dow would be over 15,000 in 2013 back in 2008, I would have laughed. And your point about the hypocrisy, while true, leaves me to wonder about all those mom and pop stores Wal-Mart replaced. How would they have fared?

You may want to fix the link that says "are on food stamps and PUBIC assistance". Or not ....

Like Alan Greenspan when he was hauled in front of the Senate after the fall, the current financial elite simply can't understand why the holy trinity of economic deregulation, government austerity, and super-personhood for corporations isn't working. Worse, when its not working, they simply insist it is, or it will, if we would only implement an ever more extreme version.

They are in the sad state of denial that affects old people too tried to change and too petulant to accept that they have been so wrong for so long.

So low wages, motivated solely by the aim to increase stock prices and executive compensation, means consumers can't afford to consume? Who could have predicted that?

Riiiiight Raindrip, because Wal-Mart has NEVER, not even ONCE been accused of violating Local, State or Federal laws, why the very idea - it's PREPOSTEROUS, I TELLS YA!

And you DO know where oh so many of those people without "the funds to shop at Whole Foods or even QFC or Safeway" work?

C'mon, guess...

Seriously, guess...

No? Really? You have no clue?

Okay, I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "Doll-Fart"...

@ 8, see @ 7.

You should definitely fix "pubic assistance", Dan. Pubic assistance could be fun. The public kind sure as hell isn't.

As a fan of the Hudson River School of painting please don't take it out on the artwork. It's not the fault of the painting.

Punch the idiots who run the company. They are the ones who deserve it.

Dan, did you even read the article? Wal-Mart seemed to go out of its way to not grouse about low pay. Indeed, at the end of the article, WM stated that economic recoveries are sometimes not seen through the average man's paycheck!

But, it's not just Wal-Mart keeping everything down. I've been on mid-career (3-7 years of experience required) interviews recently where the salaries have ranged down to below $40k. In Seattle. And, the career is a trained career.

That's obscene.

P.S. What does The Stranger pay? Are you adding to this shit show? I'm talking outside of the usual unpaid interns, which is bad enough.

Maybe people are just tired of shopping at Wal-Mart. There's only so many trashy people and crappy merchandise one can abide.

@13 Hey Bright Eyes, one of the key quotes from Walmart is the following:

"Retailers also singled out the payroll-tax increase as one reason consumers were feeling thrifty.
'If you’re making around $50,000 a year, that’s $40 a paycheck that our customer doesn’t have that they would’ve had last year' Mr. Holley said. "

It *specifically* blames reduced take home pay for their problems. It's just blaming a tax hike instead of the shitty base wage and weekly hours problem that actually leads to low salary (and no benefits).

@15 Hey, Bright Eyes,

Wal-Mart seemed to go out of its way to not grouse about low pay.

It blamed things on a $40/pay check tax hike, but didn't mention or blame low pay. To wit, it is spinning it away from the corporations and into the government.

Dan wrote, Wal-Mart is bitching about other companies and their lousy, low-paying jobs. That is very specifically not the case here. In essence, and as a source of the cause, it totally is the case. But, Wal-Mart is specifically not mentioning low pay because that implicates themselves as well.

OK, let's pretend we're in Bewitched for a moment.

Shall we have Endora wipe out all Walmarts from the face of the earth as if they never existed? All the employees would be magically as some other job (for better or for worse) and all the Walmart cheap crap would not be available for purchase (for better or for worse).

Who wants to tell Endora to start the chant?

I just caught Dan's double-negative.

@18: Welcome to the Land of False Equivalency and Bullshit Hyperbole! If Wal-Mart is to be criticized, it must be wiped from the face of the Earth! That is what the liberals want! Nothing in between! Burn it all! Get to thuh choppa! Arrrgh!

Stay classy, Walmart.

What is it about that museum (paid for by Walmart shoppers) that just pisses me OFF??

@18 Listen, you simple-minded schmo, one of the effects of Walmart is to increase unemployment. Whenever a Walmart opens, dozens of smaller regional and mom-and-pop shops close. The business strips of many a small town have been decimated when a Walmart has opened up nearby.

The whole idea of big-box stores is efficiency, moving the most merchandise with the fewest employees. Every employee in a Walmart replaces at least two who have lost their jobs somewhere nearby, probably at higher pay. Yes, the consumer benefits... as a consumer. But most consumers are also worker/producers, and when the jobs dry up, there's not that much net benefit.

That efficiency comes at a very high price. As a major end on the supply-chain, Walmart also influences where stuff gets manufactured. Not only do American retail jobs disappear, so do manufacturing and marketing jobs.

Think about all that, if you can safely do so without herniating your congenitally underdeveloped brainpan.

Raindrop, do you GO to Wal-Mart? Ever? They are chronically understaffed because Wal-Mart doesn't want to pay too many people too little money.

@18: Or, you know, we could deal with the real world. How about instead we end capitalism, so people actually have to engage in useful labor to get money instead of simply making money by owing lots of capital? You're equating calls for a company to behave better (most people) or calls to eliminate the abstracted system of legal contracts that is a company (me) with eliminating the provision of services carried out by workers employed by the company and making all of the physical property owned by the company vanish. "Walmart" is a collection of documents that define the ownership and operation of the abstraction we call a corporation. Walmart OWNS various property - including land, buildings, and goods - and employs people to do work, but even eliminating the corporation (that set of documents defining ownership and operation) doesn't (necessarily) mean destroying all of the property and ending the productive labor (such as it is).