On 21 May 2013
in
I don't understand Paul Krugman,
Bellingham Bill said:
indigenous says
Walmart raised the standard of living of it's customer or they would not have shopped there
sure, that's the rightwing economics theology.
and it's true in the short-term, individual shoppers are initially better off shopping at walmart than local retailers.
problem comes in the macro, as more and more of the wealth flows of the economy leave the paycheck level -- both the shopper's local economy and the global working wage economy -- and accumulate with capital -- "the 1%" to lack a better term.
That's been the story of 1970 to now and entirely why things are so fucked now.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH
But through service differential more jobs should have been created and less menial ones
Less money circulating in the paycheck economy means less demand. The middle quintiles have their wages beaten out of them via the high economic rents in energy, medical care, and housing.
There are some jobs being provided in these sectors -- 200,000 in oil:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES1021100001
14M in health care:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CES6562000101
but household expenses in just these two fields works out to over $200,000 per job in these industries, giving an scale of the flow going to the capital ownership and not the labor factor.
The only monopoly is through crony capitalism
"Crony capitalism" is just a thought-terminating cliche, something stupid people say when they don't really understand (or want to understand) reality.
Monopoly is a feature of any unregulated market. Power begets power.
See Microsoft for how that worked, 1980-now. No "cronyism" required.
