Walmart's Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class with an Underclass Forced to Buy Its Shoddy Goods

By Stacy Mitchell
Almost 30 years ago, as the U.S. was bleeding jobs, Walmart launched a "Buy America" program and started hanging "Made in America" signs in its 750 stores.  It was a marketing success, cementing the retailer's popularity in the country's struggling, blue-collar heartland.  A few years later, NBC's Dateline revealed the program to be a sham.  Sure, Walmart was willing to buy U.S.-made goods - so long as they were as cheap as imports, which, of course, they weren't.  Dateline found that Walmart's sourcing was in fact rapidly shifting to Asia.

This year, Walmart is back with a new "Buy America" program.  In January, the company announced that it would purchase an additional $50 billion worth of domestic goods over the next decade.  This week, Walmart is convening several hundred suppliers, along with a handful of governors, for a summit on U.S. manufacturing.

This sounds pretty substantial, but in fact it's just a more sophisticated and media savvy version of Walmart's hollow 1980s Buy America campaign.  For starters, $50 billion over a decade may sound huge at first, but measured against Walmart's galactic size, it's not.  An additional $5 billion a year amounts to only 1.5 percent of what Walmart currently spends on inventory.

Worse, very little of this small increase in spending on American-made goods will actually result in new U.S. production and jobs.  Most of the projected increase will simply be a byproduct of Walmart's continued takeover of the grocery industry.  Most grocery products sold in the U.S. are produced here.  As Walmart expands its share of U.S. grocery sales - it now captures 25 percent, up from 6 percent in 1998 - it will buy more U.S. foods.  But this doesn't mean new jobs, because other grocers are losing market share and buying less.  What it does mean is lower wages.  As I reported earlier this year, Walmart's growing control of the grocery sector is pushing down wages throughout food production.    

Home health-check scheme expands

Joe Barr said measuring his vital signs at home enabled him to understand his condition better 'could save NHS money'Computers check health from homeProjects 'could cut costs of NHS' A medical scheme piloted in Cornwall, which enables patients to monitor their health from home is to be rolled out across the UK.

The prime minister said the Telehealth trial had reduced death rates by 45% and hospital admissions by 20%.

David Cameron said the scheme, run by NHS Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, was "a great success".

The Telehealth computers check peoples' vital signs and send data to medical staff, who can intervene if necessary.

'Understand my health'

Joe Barr who has diabetes, heart failure and a lung condition said: "The aim of the game with this little machine is to keep me out of hospital and I recommend it to anyone with a long term condition.

"It's given me the opportunity to understand my health and my body, because at the end of the day I'm responsible for my body."

NHS Cornwall has run the pilot over two years and involved 1,000 people.

Carol Williams, director of service improvement for NHS Cornwall said: "It's much more cost effective to do the preventative work and it's much better for people's quality of life.

"For these patients we're spending less money on crisis intervention and them going into hospital which in turn releases more money to be spent on preventative programmes and earlier detection."