Together with a few sister big box stores (Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot), Wal-Mart accounts for roughly 50% of Americas much vaunted productivity growth edge over Europe during the last decade. Fifty percent! Similar advances in wholesaling supply chains account for another 25%! The notion that Americans have gotten better at everything while other rich countries have stood still is thus wildly misleading. The US productivity miracle and the emergence of Wal-Mart-style retailing are virtually synonymous.
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“Nearly five years on, there is no rule of law, no accountability. The Afghans know it is all a charade, and they see us as not only complicit but actively involved. You cannot fight a terror war and build a weak state at the same time, and it was a terrible mistake to think we could” … In the modest Kabul tailor shop, Mohammed Jan, 50, snipped a pattern with shears. He said he brought his family back from Iran two years ago “because we were told there was democracy. Instead the old warlords are back,” he said. “At night people are robbed at home. In the day they are robbed at the ministries. I feel cheated and full of sorrow.”
