Michael Barone is main editor of the "bible of American politics," the Almanac of American Politics. He also writes for US News and World Report. Today he discusses the overwhelmingly good economic numbers from the last two years.
The American economy continues to surge ahead, though you won't read much aboutit in the mainstream media. Economic growth in the third quarter was 4.1 percent -- despite Hurricane Katrina! -- the 10th consecutive quarter with growth over 3 percent. Unemployment is 5.0 percent-- lower than the average for the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.
Since April 2003, the economy has created a net 5.1 million new jobs. Core inflation is only 2.1 percent, and gas prices, which surged above $3 a gallon after Katrina, are now down around $2. Productivity growth for the five-year period of 2000-2005 is 3.4 percent, the highest of any five-year period in 50 years.
And what company is at the heart of this economic good news: Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is efficient and provides products people want for a good price. I continue to say that the argument against Wal-Mart is not economic but aesthetic. Wal-Mart does essentially the same thing as Target, Shopko, KMart, etc. So why the vituperative denunciations of Wal-Mart? I suggest two reasons. One, Wal-Mart is simply more successful, and some people just can't stand success. It's the same reason we often hate the sports team that wins all the time, for instance the New York Yankees. The second reason is that Wal-Mart is simply seen as "low class." It is consumerism for working stiffs, which seems to be damnable, unlike the consumerism of rich liberals. Some people are willing to pay more to buy at more "authentic" stores. But this itself is thinly veiled consumerism, as discussed yesterday by Jonah Goldberg, as NROs "Corner" argues Rod Dreher's "crunchy conservative" thesis. Goldberg says:
I shop at Whole Foods all the time -- because they have better produce and the like than the local Safeway. But let us have no illusions: Whole Foods is the epitome of consumer trendiness not the antithesis. It appeals to the vanity and faddishness of rich babyboomers and bobos. A six dollar bar of soap is in no way a rejection of crass consumer culture, it is the full flower of it.
This, by the way, is essentially the argument of Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture and David Brooks's Bobos in Paradise. There is a yearning for distinction that corporations market to. Thus the market niche for "alternative" items, be it music, food, clothes, etc. I am better than you because I buy the "elite" brand of soap, not just crummy old Irish Spring (my preferred brand, by the way). I suspect the problem many on the left and right have with Wal-Mart is that it is just too damned common.
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