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What Happened To Sam's Dream?
America is fast developing an "Alice in Wonderland" economy in which
reality is trumped at every turn by manufactured fantasies. In fact, fantasy
is just about the only thing America is still manufacturing in large
quantities.
That became obvious when Fortune magazine released its annual list of the
500 biggest companies in the United States. The top of the Fortune list is
no longer reserved for companies that actually make goods or that pay their
American workers a living wage. In the new American economy, corporate
success is measured by the ability of a company to sell goods made elsewhere
while squeezing the pay and benefits of American employees.
Thus it should come as little surprise that, according to the National
Association of Purchasing Management, U.S. manufacturing employment has been
declining for the past 18 months. Nor should it come as any surprise that
the No. 1 U.S. company, according to Fortune, is Wal-Mart, a retail chain
that packs stores with Chinese-made goods and sells them at cut-rate prices
to run Main Street stores out of business.
The rise of Wal-Mart to No. 1 status has not been a natural phenomenon. It's
success is a product of decades of Washington policy-making that has
undermined U.S. based manufacturing and limited the opportunity for working
Americans to obtain high-wage jobs. Democratic and Republican
administrations have implemented free trade, business development and tax
policies that actually encourage the shuttering of factories in the United
States and the shifting of jobs to foreign lands.
Instead of recognizing - as may European countries do - that high-wage
manufacturing jobs are essential to the health (and wealth) of national
economies, the U.S. government has embarked on a fool's mission designed to
replace those high-wage jobs with minimum-wage positions.
Sure some retailers sell some imported products for less. But they will
never sell anything for less enough to fill the income gap created by the
loss of family-supporting manufacturing jobs.
By battering Main Streets and depressing wage rates large chain retailers
take more from communities than they give. If Wal-Mart is the No. 1 company
in America, then America has an Alice-in-Wonderland economy that offers the
fantasy of productivity and progress rather than real jobs, real wages and
real public policies to benefit working families and their communities.
Below is a letter written by Sam Walton in March of 1985. What happen to
"Sam's Dream"? We can bring it back by asking for, demanding and buying
"Made in the USA".
View Sam’s Letter Page 1
View Sam’s Letter Page 2
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