Progressives, start your engines :

[via USATODAY.com - Giuliani expects decision next year on presidential bid]:

Giuliani, chief executive officer of business consultants Giuliani Partners, said government should be run more like a business.

"I think governments should be run much more like business where you set standards, you set goals, you have benchmarks and you evaluate performance," Giuliani told the conference.

"That happens more effectively in business than it does in government," he said.

Need me to tell you why this is so wrong? How about if I leave that to Stirling Newberry?

[via Daily Kos: Wal*merica]:

What do you call a company that takes in unskilled labor, and spits them out as fast as possible. This is the Wal*model of employment: do everything cheap, have a few positions that require skill, and drive everyone else hard. Even if it means breaking the law, because, hey, they don't have other employment choices.

This is the model that the south has run on for generations - no jobs, no choices, no labor problems! But it was Wal*Mart that could ship it all over the country. They broke a few laws doing so, discriminated against women, and looked for the unprosperous margins that needed the work. And then soaked up the remainders of downtowns and local merchants.

The key to their success, other than paying below minumum wage with below minimum wage standards and getting sweet heart land deals - was China. You see, if Wal*Mart could make something in China at 30% less, it could undercut everyone else by 10% - still enough to be a "deal" for the consumer looking for the rock bottom price - and then use that money to shave other prices on national brands to the bone. Every cheap iron you buy discounts 25 bottles of vitamins by 4 cents. They built a supply chain management system that shaved another precent or so off of costs. Between 1992 and 1999 almost half of the retail trade productivity increase in the US was Wal*Mart.

All of this did nothing for communities, because the drop in prices was exactly balanced by the drop in real estate values downtown and wages. It redistributed income a bit, but it reduced the total basic industry of the area, since the profit from the store went out of the local area. Everyone was more equal, and poorer. Think of Wal*Mart as bolshevism, only privatized.

No where did the profit go? Well, it went into make the Walton family very, very, very, very rich. It made a few other people merely very, very rich.

Discuss!

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