"WalMart: A Progressive Success Story", by Jason Furman, chief economic advisor to President Obama

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48. Obama Nominates America’s Biggest Walmart Cheerleader as His Chief Economic Adviser

Nominated...and eventually [link:appointed.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/jason-furman-obama-and-walmart

Obama Nominates America’s Biggest Walmart Cheerleader as His Chief Economic Adviser
AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore

June 11, 2013 |

On June 10, 2013, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Jason Furman to become the next chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. This is a big-time, highly influential post. So what kind of economist is Furman?

One who thinks Walmart is the best thing since sliced bread.

For Furman, Walmart is nothing short of a miracle for America’s poor and working-class folks. For him, progressives should be cheering the firm: he even wrote a 16-page paper titled, " Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story," which was posted on the Center for American Progress website. Here’s a sample of Furmanomics:

“By acting in the interests of its shareholders, Wal-Mart has innovated and expanded competition, resulting in huge benefits for the American middle class and even proportionately larger benefits for moderate-income Americans.”

For the man who will have President Obama’s ear on vital matters like jobs, the evidence of whether Walmart’s wages and benefits are substandard is “murky.” And he doesn’t much care for those who question Walmart’s approach: In the 2006 dialogue with Ehrenreich on Slate, he upbraided activists who had pushed the firm to increase wages and offer better benefits:

"The collateral damage from these efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits is way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony.”