The Curmudgeonly Professor

Recognizing Our Global Economy While Getting Ready for the Day

I awoke this morning and checked my Chinese bedside clock after sleeping on my Chinese sheets and pillow cases.  I turned on my TV from Thailand for a moment and then shampooed with Energizing Citrus and washed with Lemon Grass-Grapefruit body wash made, as far as I could tell, in the USA.  I used a washcloth made in Portugal with Egyptian cotton, and dried on a towel made in India.  I shaved with a $1 cheapo can of shaving cream made in China purchased at the dollar store, using a razor blade made in the USA.  I applied after-shave balm made in Germany, and applied Canadian deodorant.  My dental floss, toothpaste, and hair gel all came from the USA.  I dressed in a polo shirt made in Indonesia, put on pants made in the Dominican Republic and socks made from some country in South America that dumps a ton of lint into the toes.  Finally, I put on my shoes made in Slovakia, sat down at my desk at my Chinese computer and began editing photos taken with my Japanese camera.

In economics terms, this scenario is the product of a massive cost-cutting movement toward free trade in the global economy.  Since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff did its best to help demolish the US economy early in the last century by erecting trade barriers, free trade and economic protectionism have been emotional issues that look at the evidence of lost US jobs, closed factories, dead blue-collar towns, and dying industries.  In their places have come the WalMarts and other big box stores, whose buying policies dictate costs and production contracts around the globe.  The benefit we have received is low costs.  The pain we have suffered is loss of jobs and industries.  No matter how much we may long for the US economy of yesteryear, we will never see it again.  Some policies may perhaps be altered to stop rewarding businesses for moving their production overseas, eliminate unfair trade practices, and other stopgap measures may be tried.  In all likelihood, the trend toward globalization will be accelerated, not reversed.  Such is one of the major benefits, or tragedies, depending on how you are affected from this enormous upheaval in global economics, of the burgeoning global economy.

In some ways, I long for the old subsistence economy we lived during the years of the Great Depression where almost nothing was "store bought" and where we improvised and got by with whatever we could produce and make ourselves.  I don't know that I am any happier now than I was then.

We go Shopping at Walmart and Costco, Once Again

The Curmudgeonly Professor rarely receives criticisms of his blog, mostly because doing so isn't worth the bother to most viewers, but he has received a couple of inquiries such as, "When are you going to write about shopping at Walmart and Costco again?"  Apparently these people are at a loss to know how to manage their own trips to these two educational institutions, each of which will suck $1-200 bucks out of your bank account with a couple of rolls of toilet paper, a $5 rotisserie chicken, a 20 pound sack of oatmeal, a large bottle of mixed nuts, five kinds of bathroom cleaner, some 4-bean salad, a couple of cheap paperback books, and some impulse surprises.  To accomplish this task, here is some guidance:

1. Do not move more than 5 feet away from your wife during these shopping expeditions.  She will just as soon leave you stranded in the store and go home if she gets lost, except she needs you to haul the loot into the house and disperse it so that you then wonder how you spent $150 on absolutely nothing.
2. Learn to avoid mommies yapping on a cell phone while navigating a cart full of five or six kids around sharp corners without looking.
3. In St. George, don't stare at the lines of three to five polygamist ladies in their long prairie dresses, distinctive braids, and black clunker shoes, each of them pushing a cart overloaded with zillions of dollars worth of stuff and trailed by a batch of little kids. 
4. Don't ask your wife if you can buy a bag of goodies, because her answer is always "No."  Just throw it in the cart.  After all, that's what little kids do, and they usually get by with it.
5. Recognize that Costco, particularly, is a social community gathering place where friends and neighbors congregate in large gossipy circles in the midst of the main traffic aisles, largely ignoring your pleas to get the heck out of the way or you will ram them with your cart.
6. Check out all the free food samples at Costco.  Recognize that some days, Costco is just plain stingy and won't cough up $5 worth of food samples just to bribe you to spend another $100 on tasty frijoles and refried beans.  But on a good day, you can pretty well make out with chicken wings, smoothies, chicken nuggets, brownies, and heaven knows what else.  Just be prepared for a mommy with five kids to line them all up at the free food stand and watch the kids scarf up everything to that it's all gone when you get up to the front.
7. Watch out for creative cart drivers who know how to steer through, into, around, hundreds of people at a speed no less than 50 miles an hour.
8. In Walmart, as we keep reminding, be sure you can differentiate between the Exit Door and the Entrance Door.  You are supposed to exit through the exit door and enter through the entrance door.  This is one advantage of going to Costco, since you have to go in the entrance and go out the exit door, where a checker is supposed to count and eyeball your items and mark your receipt with a colored marking pen.  Some times they make a conscientious effort if there are no people in line behind you to make sure you haven't snuck out with some goodies, or that you paid $100 for something that isn't in your cart.  No such problem at Walmart.  Just get out of there and rejoice.
9. Don't be offended if the "greeter" at Walmart doesn't greet you, and just short of snorts or something as you walk by.
10. The more often you go to Walmart and Costco, the more money you will spend.  The best idea is to stay home.

We trust these guidelines have refreshed your ability to navigate these two stores.  We gripe about them continuously, but the biggest gripers are usually the first in line.  Best of luck.

See Business Week Article on Success of Amazon.com

As promised, I am officially resurrecting the Curmudgeonly Professor's Business and Economics blog, linked to the right.  My first story there is a link to Business Week's article by Heather Green on Amazon's Amazing Fourth Quarter, which you can read here.