There’s so much going on in the USA that warrants attention these days that it’s hard to know where to start. But, since I’m an economist I’m going to start here.
“There are families not eating at the end of the month,” said Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, and “literally lining up at midnight” at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts.
Among the steps Wal-Mart is taking to address the changes in shopping habits, Mr. Quinn listed an overhaul of the retailer’s private-label brand, Great Value, which is promoted in commercials describing how families can fix dinners with Great Value products “for less than $2 a serving.”
The really sad thing about this blurb is that I got it from the Media & Advertising section of the NY Times. It did not come from the op-ed page, it did not come from the business section nor the politics section. It’s there because Walmart is having to work on its product mix to reflect hunger in those families living below the poverty living in one of the richest countries in the world –The United States–and I am deeply ashamed as a citizen of that country to read this anywhere STILL after all these years.
There’s been an academic discussion about the disconnect between what some of our nation’s statistics tell us is going on and the reality on the ground. There was a conference this weekend to talk about re-working the way the nation calculates its GDP. This is extremely important. Because of globalization, we are most likely over stating our performance in way that is throwing off our policy targets. We are losing per capita income from the lowest to middle quintiles and we are hemorrhaging well-paying jobs for our most vulnerable citizens. They are not able to get enough to live on and they are not wealthy enough to buy health care insurance or to pay premium taxes to feed an already over-bloated, costly, and inefficient industry. ...
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