[Vision2020] Costco Preferred Over Wal-Mart

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (August 29, 2006) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special
thanks to T.V. Reed of Pullman.

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Costco preferred over Wal-Mart

Two of the handful of fanatical Wal-Mart advocates in town have recently
written that Costco would never come to Pullman because our per capita
income is lower than places like Clarkston where the store has located. But
anyone with basic economic understanding knows the per capita income for
Pullman (and Moscow) is skewed downward by the presence of so many students
whose actual spending power, thanks to parents, is far beyond what income
would indicate.

The median income for folks 25 and over in Pullman is $50,416. That figure
represents more than 9,000 people - more than the entire population of
Clarkston with its per capita income of $29,100. There is no reason why
Costco and many other stores won't find this area attractive. Attempts to
convince us that only Wal-Mart would be interested in Pullman are misleading
and denigrate our considerable attractiveness as a community.

What Costco has proven definitively is that Wal-Mart's elitist model of low
wages, meager, expensive benefits, and vicious anti-union activity is not
necessary to big-box success. One local Wal-Mart booster traveled to
Arkansas to get the "facts" about the corporation, and was apparently wowed
to talk to big boss Lee Scott himself who told him what a wonderful company
he runs.

As any competent journalist or researcher for government, business or
academia knows, you never take at face value the self-reporting of the
research subject. Digging for the facts beneath Wal-Mart's claims and
comparing them to rival Costco reveals a clear, objective contrast. Costco
has twice as many employees enjoying health benefits, and the company pays
for 90 percent of those benefits as opposed to 60 percent for Wal-Mart.
Starting salaries at Costco average $3-$6 per hour higher than at Wal-Mart.
Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart has twice the employee turnover rate of Costco.

These differences belie Wal-Mart's claims, and prove their elitist model,
where wealth supposedly trickles down from the Waltons (five of America's 10
richest individuals), can be replaced by one where workers are paid fairly
and let their money trickle up into the economy.

T.V. Reed, Pullman

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If I wanted to overhear every tedious scrap of brain static rattling around
in your head, I'd read your blog."

- Bill Maher