Finland for Thought recently posted on Wal-Mart in Finland, which is all about the nonreaction of Finns to a WM clone:
Let's examine that last question; is Wal-Mart actually considered evil by most Americans?
Wal-mart in the United States and Prisma/K-Citymarket are identical, they both are gigantic... But the two countries appear to have different attitudes towards them�Americans have a �love-hate� relationship with Wal-Mart. They love to shop there, but hate to give their money to an evil huge corporation who causes smaller stores to close its doors.
�but I don�t see the same reaction in Finland.... Why isn�t Prisma & K-Citymarket looked in the same light as Wal-Mart in the U.S.?
1) In the U.S., right-wing radio personalities do not talk about Wal-Mart at all. (That's my experience, please correct me if I'm wrong). The attack on WM is an attack almost always from the left, including the religious left. And it is up to "the left" to substantiate claims that most Americans dislike WM or have a love-hate relationship with it. I'll grant that some do--let's say ten million do. That is 3% of the population--not most Americans. The onus is not on WM to show that people like it. It is not surprising that many small businesses, The Nation, PBS, Bill Moyer, and unions all agree that WM is bad; their own ideological and/or financial interests are opposed to WM's success. That WM protests at city council meetings are dominated by anti-WM activists is not at all surprising; what is surprising is that so many potential shoppers show up to defend WM. Either way, these anecdotes say nothing comprehensive about the median of American sentiment regarding WM. As far as I know, no serious study has demonstrated that there is an increasing anti-WM feeling among the population.
2) Here's a quick nonscientific poll of American sentiment. Technorati tracks around 5.8 million blogs. In the past 90 days, 53 bloggers have written "I love Wal-Mart" 123 bloggers have written "I hate Wal-Mart". You say, aha! That's over 2 to 1 against Wal-Mart. True, but 5.8 million bloggers have not written either. That's a ratio of 5,800,000 to 200 or 29,000 to 1. Alternatively, there were 33,000 posts that used the word "Wal-Mart" in the last 90 days; assume each of those blogs posted about WM only once, then for every blog that wrote about Wal-Mart, 175 didn't. Regarding WM, indifference dominates the American temperament.
3) Frankly, most Americans are not in a love-hate relationship with any political party, corporation, union, charity, church, government, etc. That does not describe the American temperament, which I would say is more aptly described by "most Americans just live their lives". It is not true that most Americans "hate to give their money to an evil huge corporation" that closes smaller stores. Wal-Mart does not close smaller stores by merely opening its doors; Americans who prefer to not shop at smaller stores force smaller stores to shut down by shopping at WM.
4) In general, Americans do not hate evil huge corporations. Granted, a vocal minority does. But most Americans love their cars (produced by evil huge multinational corporations), and many are strangely fond of their Japanese-American-German auto brand; most Americans eat at evil huge international food chains like McDonalds.
Finally, the extremely strong role of trade unions in Finland--to the point where the have a major impact on economic decisions, means there is little union muckraking in Finland regarding the WM clone. In 2000:
The trade unions in Finland play the key role in preserving the interests of big business against those of their members. The SAK, the largest trade union federation, which mainly organises manual workers, has 1.1 million members out of a total workforce of around 2.4 million people. The STTK white-collar union federation has 655,000 members, and the federation of academic professionals' unions has 375,000 members. Taken together this gives a figure for union membership of around 80 percent, similar to the rest of Scandinavia, and far in advance of most other countries in the world. Many unions also have significant student, unemployed and retired memberships.The real hatred for WM in the U.S. is the labor-left's disgust at WM's success at keeping away unions, and competition with unionized stores...
Posted by Kevin on January, 10 2005 at 10:54 AM
