Watching this gripping animation (h/t Ezra Klein) that charts the spread of Wal-Marts across the country got me thinking. I felt like I was really watching the spread of wage stagnation across the country. I’m not suggesting there’s any clarity as to which came first —Wal-Mart or the grinding halt in middle-class wage growth. But Wal-Mart’s accelerated growth in the 1980s matches this chart on wage inequality nicely (note the bottom two lines).
It’s a pointless chicken-and-egg debate at a certain level. You can’t blame Sam Walton (much less Sebastian Kresge or James Sinegal) for the fact that discounters that thrive on downward price pressure represent the only means most Americans have of maintaining the illusion of a rising standard of living.
As it happens, that same lack of wage growth locked in the necessity of a food system that could produce calories for as little as possible. And it’s the fact that Americans’ real wages have been flat or falling during the Age of Wal-Mart that makes fixing the food system so implacably hard. Tom Philpott touched on this a little while back, identifying the Achilles Heel in any Pollan-esque remaking of the food system.
The ability to buy plenty of tasty calories on a low-wage salary actually lies at the heart of our economic system. For 30 years, our system has maintained corporate profits through a steady attack on wages. One of the major reasons workers have accepted stagnant wages is, I think, that food prices as a percentage of income have fallen steadily since the 1970s, a trend which went into reverse only last year. (The other is the ready availability of cheap consumer goods made by even-lower-paid workers in China).
Given that reality, it makes little sense to talk about transforming the food system and revaluing food without transforming the economic system and revaluing labor. Pollan never gets too far into those topics.
Any solution that involves the statement, “food needs to be more expensive” is going to be what the experts call a political non-starter. How to restart middle-class wage growth is, of course, the gajillion-dollar question—although I agree with Kevin Drum’s prescription: More Unions!
But short of that, we’re faced with maintaining agricultural subsidies in some form. Right now, all Americans effectively receive food stamps—it’s just that for most of us those payments go directly to corn and soy farmers. We can rail against the wastefulness of subsidies all we want. But given that the alternative is higher prices at the grocery store, I agree with Philpott that our focus should be on better rather than smaller subsidies. Exactly how we structure that isn’t at all clear, but unless Wal-Mart and its ilk start giving their employees big annual raises, the government is going to have to work to keep food, preferably real food, affordable.
Chart by Ezra Klein.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving
Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care
Comments
View as Threaded
Jon Rynn Posted 1:56 am
16 Feb 2009
There would need to be a way to keep the manufacturing inside the US, thus "domestic content" laws -- because much if not most of this construction would have to be financed by the government, since the private sector isn't doing it's job. The WTO allows for domestic content for "general infrastructure", so counter debates in Congress, there shouldn't be problem there. And foreign companies would make plenty of money, because they'd have to do much of the work here, since American companies have been asleep at the switch and haven't had the encouragement that foreign countries have provided.
With a big shift to manufacturing, you would have the middle class jobs , andyou'd also have twice the number of service jobs (as I discuss here) that depend on all of those manufactured things that aren't manufactured here anymore.
And of course, we'd have to pass laws mandating recycling and minimizing pollution and energy-use from manufacturing, and provide the renewable energy needed for the manufacturing -- yet more middle class jobs.
Then people could afford organic food (that is, the kind of food people's grandparents used to take for granted), and we could shut down industrial agriculture.
Is that worth a gajillion dollars?
Permalink
Sharon Astyk Posted 2:31 am
16 Feb 2009
I'm not convinced that industrial agriculture can or will produce cheap food for much longer - at least not the food we've become accustomed to. In which case, reform can and should start with "if it isn't cheap, what good is it?" question.
Sharon Astyk
Sharon, with dirt under her fingernails.
Permalink
barthanderson Posted 12:25 am
17 Feb 2009
That said, I think you're right, Tom. Higher wages are definitely part of the equation, but without another viable food system in which to make money, factory farmers and industrial "food" manufacturers won't see fit to jump ship from the old one. They'll just keep turning the garbage-mill.
I do think we're getting closer to real change. The interlocked network of local foodsheds (that is, a decentralized, national-local food system) is the best model that I can imagine -- increased food safety, an enriched rural economy, better nutrition and healthful ingredients, etc -- but the feds and/or big bidness needs to invest in it dramatically to make it more viable.
As you said, it's a chicken-and-the-egg proposition. I just think we need to address supply and demand simultaneously or real change won't take effect.
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 1:51 am
17 Feb 2009
High fructose corn syrup and high fat meat, it's byproduct, are the main products of our sickening food culture.
With a "free" market system of food production and healthcare could we expect any better result? Most likely this modern plague will gradually infect every nation that adopts corporatist industrial governance.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink