{"id":35,"date":"2005-02-28T09:16:13","date_gmt":"2005-02-28T13:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/02\/28\/dont-blame-wal-mart\/"},"modified":"2005-02-28T09:16:13","modified_gmt":"2005-02-28T13:16:13","slug":"dont-blame-wal-mart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/02\/28\/dont-blame-wal-mart\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Blame Wal-Mart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a47'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By ROBERT B. REICH (New York Times, February 28, 2005)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; The problem is, the choices we make in the market don&#8217;t fully<br \/>\nreflect our values as workers or as citizens. I didn&#8217;t want our<br \/>\ncommunity bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall)<br \/>\nyet I still bought lots of books from Amazon.com. In addition, we may<br \/>\nnot see the larger bargain when our own job or community isn&#8217;t directly<br \/>\nat stake. I don&#8217;t like what&#8217;s happening to airline workers, but I still<br \/>\ntry for the cheapest fare I can get.<\/p>\n<p>The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers<br \/>\nin us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social<br \/>\nchoice as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with<br \/>\nmore than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance,<br \/>\nfor example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and<br \/>\nservices. My inner consumer won&#8217;t like that very much, but the worker<br \/>\nin me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with an increase in the<br \/>\nminimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees<br \/>\nto organize and negotiate better terms.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble<br \/>\nfree trade with China and India &#8211; that would cost me as a consumer far<br \/>\ntoo much &#8211; but I&#8217;d like the government to offer wage insurance to ease<br \/>\nthe pain of sudden losses of pay. And I&#8217;d support labor standards that<br \/>\nmake trade agreements a bit more fair. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By ROBERT B. REICH (New York Times, February 28, 2005) &#8230; The problem is, the choices we make in the market don&#8217;t fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I didn&#8217;t want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall) yet I still bought lots of books from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multinational-corporate-responsibility"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}