[opendtv] Re: "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?"

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "OpenDTV (E-mail)" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:38:56 -0500

Monty Solomon wrote:

> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2304.html

Interesting article. Nothing new or surprising, except
perhaps for the idea that today, the manufacturer has
become the serf of the retailer, rather than the other
way around.

The retailer holds the cards. Maybe that's the long
term answer to the oft-cited problem that off-shore
manufacturing takes away jobs. Maybe the answer is
that there's inherent value in being the distributor
and retailer (and the guy specifying the features) of
manufactured products. And maybe that's going to
become the foundation upon which the economies of
developed countries will be based.

In a previous Frontline show, they showed how western
economies after WWII grew baseed on the "producer
becomes also the consumer" model. The guy building
the Vespa motor scooter also became the customer for
the washing machine. That's how the economy boomed.

So now the economy is morphing into the retailer
becoming also the consumer. Since the retailer is
the guy who interfaces with the consumer, he will
be the guy best suited to specifying the products to
be manufactured. I don't see anything inherently
wrong with this economic model, compared with the
one where the manufacturer became the consumer. Nor
is it obvious to me that the new version of retailer
would necessarily command lower wages than what the
factory line worker was earning. But it is a different
skill set to teach.

Bert
 
 
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