Debate-Mart

Economist Jason Furman and author Barbara Ehrenreich are currently engaged in a Wal-Mart discussion at Slate. Read the entries and follow the debate; it's a solid discussion on a hot-topic, though I doubt it will change people's minds. (As those that already have an opinion are most likely to read it and least likely to be changed by it.)

I just want to quickly point out a flaw in Ehrenreich's logic after Furman discussed two very different stores: Best Buy and Stereo Exchange. Best Buy has the good prices but the less knowledgeable (and paid) staff while Stereo Exchange is the opposite. If all of the former were replaced by the latter, we would have more "good" jobs but more unempolyment. Ehrenreich responds: "If Stereo Exchange took over from Best Buy, there'd be a lot more better-paying jobs in the retail electronics business. Why wouldn't the former Best Buy workers take a lot of these new and better jobs? They're not all as clueless as you seem to think."

There's a lot of reasons why this argument is not so but let me illustrate a key idea with a story. I knew someone who used to work at Best Buy. He said one of the most annoying things about the job was when customers would ask him where stuff was. He never knew the answer so he quickly learned a fast way to handle the problem: he simply would pick the corner of the store farthest from him and confidently declare that's where the product is. (Customers, as it turns out, are incredibly gullible in this regard.)

It is not that Best Buy empolyees are all clueless: some just don't care. Some would care if they were paid more, true. But others would only care if they were paid much more and others wouldn't care at all because it's just a summer or part-time job--they have no desire to go through additional training. Both customers and the work force demand retail diversity. Why shouldn't it exist?