ATLANTA, April 19, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- In a new interview, author and former Clinton Administration Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Economics and Statistics Paul A. London said Wal-Mart's opponents are threatening America's economic future by trying to limit retail competition.
"I'm very concerned about the attacks on Wal-Mart because I believe they are based on the idea that there is some good alternative to fierce competition. But there isn't," London said. "In politics and economics, competition is the American idea that changed the undemocratic world, where elites always prevent new people from competing. When people start to think that competition is too intense or that America can't compete, a lot of what America is about goes away."
In his book The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret behind American Prosperity (The AEI Press), London explains that bipartisan political decisions in the 1970s to break up monopolies and near monopolies in numerous sectors of the U.S. economy made possible the growth and prosperity of the 1990s. He credits Wal-Mart with leading a "revolution in retailing" which complemented similar changes in other sectors and richly benefited the American people.
Speaking to americansforwalmart.org, London said, "Wal-Mart has been very good for America. It's a very American phenomenon, a new guy coming along and shaking up 20 percent of the economy. It's a model of competition that the world envies and is trying to copy. I hope there are always Americans who come along the way Sam Walton did, and the way other people did in other industries, to shake up established companies and make them serve consumers better."
To read the entire interview with Paul London, go online to www.americansforwalmart.org
Assessing Wal-Mart's impact on retailing, London said, "Consumers in the United States have done very well because of Wal-Mart, especially low-income consumers. People vote with their feet, and they have gone where the deals are better... Along the way, Wal-Mart did more to fight inflation than the Federal Reserve - and killing inflation makes low unemployment possible."
London said that various commercial interests as well as several important unions are behind most of the efforts to limit Wal-Mart's growth.
Consumers in the Northeast and other areas, according to London, are "losing out" by having fewer Wal-Mart stores. "It is harder to open a Wal-Mart in the Northeast than in it is to open one in the South. (And this) is a problem for consumers in the Northeast, where they don't get Wal-Mart's help in making the whole retail sector less expensive," he said.
London credited Wal-Mart with boosting relative regional prosperity in the South and West and said that those who oppose Wal-Mart's efforts to expand are doing so at significant cost to other parts of the country.
London, a Democrat who served in the Clinton Administration from 1994 to 1997, urged fellow Democrats to recognize what Wal-Mart has done to fight inflation and to give lower income Americans more choices. "While a lot of opposition to Wal-Mart has been from Democrats, many other Democrats realize that Wal-Mart has been very good for poor people," he said.
London said Democrats from Woodrow Wilson to Bill Clinton understood the positive power of competition: "Bill Clinton was exactly right to say we have to make change our friend. And the proof that change can be our friend is the 1990s, when, for a lot of reasons, the economy did marvelously well."
On other topics, London said the health care industry would benefit from greater competition between groups of doctors and hospitals focused on providing the best care at the lowest price. "It is not about competition between insurance companies. What the country needs is competition to give better care," he said.
About the interview, americansforwalmart.org Executive Director Luke Boggs said, "Paul London shares our view that Wal-Mart's opponents are attacking not only America's leading retailer but also the very foundation of our free market system."
"In his book The Competition Solution, Paul London argues that competition creates new efficiencies and drives investment and economic growth. As a nation, we cannot afford to let a vocal minority of Wal-Mart critics succeed in limiting competition or running it down as an idea when that is what makes the economy work," Boggs said.
Paul A. London is now president of Paul A. London & Associates in Washington, where he is a consultant on economic and competition-related issues. London, who served as deputy undersecretary of Commerce from 1994 to 1997, is author of The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret behind American Prosperity (The AEI Press).
A grassroots consumer effort, americansforwalmart.org is the founding and sole campaign of Americans For Free Enterprise, Inc., a nonprofit Georgia corporation not affiliated with or funded by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Executive Director Luke Boggs is an Atlanta-based writer who has written for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other publications. Later this month, he will share his views on Wal-Mart at Columbia University.
For more information and the complete interview with Paul London, go to www.americansforwalmart.org