Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

The problem with the other review here is that was written by someone who took Econ 101. He should have stuck around for Econ 102.

The arguments for 'Free Trade', or uncontrolled trade, are based on a model built by Ricardo in 1817. His model was of a barter economy with the assumption that capital can not flow across borders. He came up with the idea of comparative advantage, and showed, in his artificially constrained world, that countries benefit because of trade.

So why does Ricardo's model not apply to the actual world? Because of financial instruments! We have trading partners who are willing to run perpetual trade surpluses with us. They send us goods, we send them money. So the equation doesn't balance, and there can be a net loss of jobs. In addition, capital migrates - factories close here and open in China and elsewhere because they have an absolute cost advantage. You could fix this problem with deregulation, but we'd have to compete directly with their wages (productivity adjusted), and we'd have to be willing to foul our water and air.

The economics taught in the vast majority of schools today is useless (I earned my MBA from U Chicago). The worst part is that Econ 101 students learn simplistic models and then actually believe that they apply to the real world.

If you love Michael Moore documentaries and anti-GMO and anti-nuclear power documentaries you will love this one. It's an anti big-company, anti free market, anti trade documentary. They do actually interview a single actual professional economy expert but only for 3 minutes.

The rest of the interviews are with "they took ur jobs!"-workers and journalists. Still a good watch if you already have a great understanding of how economics and mathematics work. Read at least 10 economics books before watching this to understand the true science and what trade does and does not do. Trade is not always bad. And stopping import of steel to protect steel-unions like Bush did is both illegal and stopping scientific and economic progress.

Once again, uninformed activist journalists perhaps meaning well botch up a simple concept such as the free-market. Some diagrams drawn by a decently trained high school economics teacher might have helped. For a better treatment on the subject, read some von Mises, Friedman & Smith. You might still not answer in the affirmative to the central question--you might not like the free market; fair enough--but at least you'll actually come away with an understanding of the issue, not a "aren't they bad guys for offering low priced products!" platitudes. Most astounding quote: Wal-Mart is damaging America because "Americans have the higher incomes that allow them to purchase China's products while China has lower salaries & can not buy American products." Umm? So America can afford China's labor, America has the wealth where China does not, but somehow Americans being rich is damaging to America. Something wrong with that statement. It's gems like that which go unchallenged because I don't think the journalist has the depth of the subject to push the interviewee to actually make his case.

Again, whether you agree with the show's premise or not, the show, though intoned in a low, sophisticated but foreboding voice fails to really address the issues.