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Back in August, the founder and CEO of Whole Paycheck Foods pissed off quite a few of his customers with his right-wing screed on health care reform in the WSJ.
As it turns out, this op-ed wasn’t the product of a quirky, idiosyncratic independent, but rather, a fairly typical wingnut, as we learn in this week’s New Yorker.
Mackey told me that he agrees with the book’s assertion that, as he put it, “no scientific consensus exists” regarding the causes of climate change; he added, with a candor you could call bold or reckless, that it would be a pity to allow “hysteria about global warming” to cause us “to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” One would imagine that, on this score, many of his customers, to say nothing of most climate scientists, might disagree. He also said, “Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.”
Mackey also apparently learned nothing from the experience of his WSJ op-ed, and wades back into the health care debate.
In that op-ed piece, I was trying to make the argument that health care is really not different from anything else we provide for ourselves”—he had mentioned food and shelter—“and that capitalism is better than socialism at providing those things.”
But it is different.
First, food production is heavily subsidized and regulated by the government, and we don’t let people starve to death, which is not the case with health care.
But leaving that aside, people can make all kinds of decisions and choices based on a huge range of variables and personal preferences about the kinds of foods they eat or where they live. The choice to rent a small apartment or buy a large house is not driven by survival.
But heart transplants and brain tumor removals and life-saving cancer meds simply cannot be subjected to the same range of preferences and cost-benefit analyses, because the choice is a binary one (life or death), and most people are willing to pay an infinite amount of money to live. And that’s why over 60% of bankruptcies in the US are the result of medical bills.
Markets just don’t work with health care, as the rest of the industrialized world — but apparently not Mackey — has figured out.
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Belive me this guy is a first class asswipe. I know. I met him when he had but two or three stores and he was an asswipe then and there is no evidence he has changed, in fact the evidence is othewise.
Is he single handedly trying to alienate his customer base? Apparently, he has NO IDEA who the typical Whole Foods customer is, or should I say, former customer. Everytime he speaks, Costco and Trader Joes and local organic markets must be smiling.
“Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.” I’m guessing that the millions of poor people living in third-world countries near the equator would beg to differ.
Did you ever hear about the great deception
Well the plastic revolutionaries take the money and run
Have you ever been down to love city
Where they rip you off with a smile
And it don’t take a gun
Van Morrison
We used to let people starve to death a couple generations ago. I hope it doesnt take as long to get health care for everyone.
Food production, water, roads, fire departments, police, legislatures, judiciary systems, the administrative branches of government and of course tax redistribution to protect the less fortunate are all part of the great socialist plot. Some ideas are just too good to get rid of.
Mackey is simply banking on greenhouse gasses being beneficial to organic produce. Eventually crops won’t even require soil, you’ll be able to root them in mid-air.
Great diary Blue Texan
A lot of Democrats, even progressives don’t get this seminal fact too. Neither do libertarians.
Keep saying it.
Hey, I’m from Urbana!
So does prosperity cause warmer temperatures. Warmer temperatures cause prosperity. Or is this the old stock market to mini-skirt phenomena. I prefer the viking to global warming correlation myself. We don’t need to reduce carbon emissions, we just need to bring a few more vikings back to Canada.
Old joke:
There are only two things to worry about in life and that’s whether you’re going to be sick or well.
If well, ya got nothing to worry about and if sick, there are only two things to worry about; whether you’re going to live or die.
If you’re going to live, then nothing to worry about and if you’re going to die there are only two things to worry about; whether you’re going to heaven or going to hell.
If you’re going to heaven ya got nothing to worry about and if you’re going to hell then you’ll probably be too busy shaking hands with all of your friends to worry.
So there ya have it.
Hope those feet of yours are certified organic John, cause they sure end up in your mouth a lot of the time ! Looking locally, which I know John does not, the benefit to our local economy from any and all projects designed to fight global climate disruption would be huge – it would simply reverse the flow of money out to the mega fossil fuel corporations, coal,gasoline,natural gas, propane, and keep that money where it could multiply locally. It will be my pleasure to take my business to my local food coop as well. Thanks John.
“Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures.”
You should enjoy your margaritas in the fires of hell, then.
Nicely played.
Too bad…they really have good (expensive) food. I guess when it comes to their stomachs and convenience, my SF neighbors won’t stop going there. I’m willing stop. We need more alternative smaller markets. Cheers.
With Republics revering “markets” so much, I wonder why they work so hard to game them?
Mackey sounds like most of the Villagers. They don’t care who, what or when about the little people so the constantly misunderstand and underestimate them (us). If they continue to do this we will eventually get the upper hand so we can survive.
Shit. I had decided since Mackey was no longer CEO at WholePayCheck I would go get my favorite coffee. This is going to keep me away.
Mackey is the poster boy for the sleazy underbelly of the growing “Green” industries. Green in t-shirt color only.
I lived in the city for years. 12 Ave. between Balboa and Cabrillo. Still miss it.I always shopped at Cal Mart.
especially those precious “free” markets, in the name of which much blood has been spilled and vast numbers of people bankrupted and disenfranchised.
Mackey resigned this past week. Guess the heat just got him thrown out.
His stated goal all along has to put every small local co-op out of business. I won’t set foot in his stores ever again if I can help it.
He’s still running things — he’s on the board, for starters. He just dropped one of his titles. It’s his baby, and always has been.
I thought that pirates were the key?
As far as food/shelter being different from health, I tend to put it in terms of customer decisions. A customer goes into a clothing store having decided 1. “I want to buy a shirt” and 2. “I have the money to afford a shirt.” When a patient has cancer, the patient hasn’t made either one of those determinations. The doctor says “Y’all have cancer” and the patient has to then determine how that works with the rest of his/her schedule/agenda/plans and how they are to afford it.
Darn. I thought he was gone. I went into the local WF and was stunned at the prices. Very nice clean store, however. Won’t be going back.
I don’t remember once seeing people eating out of dumpsters when I was in Leningrad during Soviet times. I can say I’ve seen women feeding their kids in strollers from bins behind restaurants in Saint-Petersburg at least 10 times, as recently as 16 months ago.
As for wealth tending to warmer climates I think 85% of the people in Africa would beg to differ.
“Markets just don’t work with health care, as the rest of the industrialized world — but apparently not Mackey — has figured out.”
_________________
Maybe that’s why sick people from all over the world come to the US for medical care.
Boycotting Whole Foods is a good way to demonstrate that capitalism can work. Those “smaller” markets you refer to need all the help they can get, customer-wise, and a few folks periodically picketing their local Whole Foods location will help to engender the transition away from Whole Foods.
Those people can PAY for that special care. Many Americans cannot.
I don’t think most of the folks that are Whole Foods regulars really care about green issues at all. Mackey has never made any claims, that I have read at least, of being the least bit concerned about the environment. Not today not two years ago. Whole Foods is about exclusivity and being able to protect one’s personal chemical risks from food. On other blogs I’ve read numerous testimonies about how wonderful Whole Foods is and how contemptible the lefties are for being disappointed with Mackey.
His market is the rich, self-indulgent, health conscious, SUV drivers of the world. This outburst will have as much effect on sales as the previous ones did when he was still CEO.
Nearest WF to me is 110 miles. In this town whole foods means not having to share your bag of M&Ms.
I thought it telling that when I was last in the Old Town area of Alexandria, there was a Whole Foods — but no locally-owned co-ops — smack dab in the part of town where Regent University and the other corporate-conservative lobbyists are located.
Meanwhile: Pastafarians! Think of these gems as your very own communion wafers!
I have not set foot inside a Whole Foods since the WSJ op-ed piece… what a dick. There is a beautiful new Whole Foods a short distance from me where I enjoyed shopping (and actually miss), but no more. I use the nearby Albertsons, Vons, and a small local neighborhood place I love, Bobs Market. The other day I was in a rush and Whole Foods would have been much more convenient to stop in, but I resisted the impulse and continued my boycott. Thank you Blue Texan for reinforcing my appropriate shopping decisions.
Wholefoods treats the green farmers the same way that Walmart treats it’s vendors. They low ball them almost out of existence. And when they decide to open a new store they do so if another organic store/co-op is doing well in the town. If so, they move in and put that place out of business. Capitalism? Sure. Fucked up. Yes.
His fucking stores are filled with over priced crap. I know a few people that worked for him and say nothing but bad things about him and his phony ass marketing scam called Whole Foods. Only stupid yuppies buy food in these places after they’ve had their double lattes.
I hear eating at Whole Foods makes you fat.
Too bad Shoal Creek didn’t put Whole Foods out of our misery in 1981.
Or flat, as in broke.
This is a crock. A tired one at that.
Rich folks who think the market does work and they can buy life tend to shop world wide. Of course we know the real data which ranks the US in the high thirties as to quality.
Do you have a link? One the includes the number of US citizens that go out of country for health care?
Unfortunately for me this is like saying we should boycott Coke because of the health risks from the drink. I don’t drink Coke and I’ve never been to Whole Foods.
As far as I know, playing with their website thingy, I could drive 200 hundred miles or so for the experience but I doubt it would be fun. In the summer we buy from a farmers co-op, in the winter we go to a plain old grocery store or the local co-op.
No there is huge consensus the earth is warming. The poles are melting. We know the reason why greenhouse gasses and we know that reason won’t stop in the future.
We also know that if New Orleans does drop into the sea that guys like John Mackey will deny that they their actions caused the government to do nothing about global warming.
And that they should not be forced to pay a cent to help refugees.
Well crap.
Maui is at last supposed to get a Whole Foods this spring. Now I’m not gonna be able to patronize it.
There is always Earthworks. . .or barfworms as we called it!
Just imagine. When all our coastal cities are under water, the rich will move to the center of the country. The rest of us will be under water, too, but Kansas will be really crowded.
Apparently he hasn’t learned from his first harsh lesson. Keep on flapping your jaws to an audience you don’t understand. Wealth does not make you right. However it does tend to keep him from knowing when to shut up.
Chances are we will be in revolt and taxing the rich to pay to feed the refugees. Still wasn’t John forced to give up a title because his comments turned off customers?
If thats true this comment will cost him especially after they seemed to have told him no more talking to the press and pissing off Lefty customers because the companies stock still has not recovered.
True high priced grocery stores in a recession really can’t afford to lose customers.
No CEO gives up a position even if its only a title without being forced to John is pissed at us:)
Hey, ya know what else we learned from Mackey’s New Yorker profile?
* Whole Foods hourly workers earn an average of $16/hr.
* Those same workers are given further financial incentives to lead healthy lifestyles in the way of store discounts for meeting personal diet and nutrition goals.
* Executive salaries (including his own) are capped at 19 times the pay of the average team member (as compared to 400 times that at most companies).
I disagree with Mackey’s opinion on healthcare, climate change, and a range of other issues, but it is downright irresponsible for progressives to single out a business like Whole Foods for a boycot simply because we disagree with the personal political views of its CEO. I wish we had a Whole Foods where I live in McMinnville, Oregon. Maybe then some of my friends and family could enjoy the benefits of a living wage (something they certainly don’t enjoy with Walmart being the areas biggest employer).
Yeah, Whole Foods is spendy. So is Starbucks. So is Nordstroms. If you can’t afford it, don’t shop there (I certainly can’t!). But don’t let your bitterness about Mackey’s personal assholery and his store’s high prices lead you to decry a business that provides good, living wage jobs, and at least tries to encourage environmental awareness and healthy eating.
That was the first thing I thought of,too. His customer base are the birkenstock wearing, reusable grocerybag toting, volvo driving vegans and macrobioticists.
Not the Lexis driving Martini and steak crowd.
He talks like a guy who owns a chain of high end steakhouses, not an organic veggie supermarket
Nineteen or twenty years ago when I knew him he thought he had the corner on natural foods and was the only person in the country who knew shit about the natural food industry, which of course was very wrong. He claimed he would run every other person out of that business. The purveyor with whom we were visting just laughed at his outrageousness.
Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Raj Patel’s The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy hosted by Stirling Newberry.
Well, duh. If you’re the CEO of a company that makes more profit by contributing to global warming, then your prosperity does correlate to warmer temperatures. Too bad there are all those other pesky people out there whose fortunes don’t rise on the same trajectory. Now if only they could figure out how to have paying customers without having to do anything for the masses, we’d have a perfect society with no need for health care costs or environmental sanity costs. It’s so annoying when those masses can’t manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without whining about giving them back their boots.
Fortunately, for us deniers, the majority of believers can’t even spell Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
During my tenure in the field of sustainability, as a USGBC LEED AP, I have witnessed such a rush to go extreme that we have jeopardized the many irrefutable successes and progressive paths that have been steadfastly constructed and vetted for decades. But my greatest concern today is the general climate of this so-called green movement. Wrought with irresponsible green washing and careless mandating by the political community, we have most certainly guaranteed a drawing of the proverbial lines in the sand. As both sides calculate and maneuver their minions into position, the real casualties will be the troops in the field – those of us who understand responsible sustainability and promote ways to make an environmental difference without breaking banks and backs.
The real poison to our efforts is administered to us sneakily by corporate greed and blatantly by strong-armed politics. As a fundamental capitalist, I find myself dismayed by the mindset and goals of corporations I have supported throughout my career. As a political activist, I am well aware of how corrupt and self-serving the system of politics can be. With greed and politics, everything they touch becomes so suspect that the lines in the sand quickly become impenetrable fortresses. How many people realize that Cap & Trade was created by Enron during the ‘80s, who gleefully reported to their shareholders that implementation would add billions of dollars to their profit margins? Who can respect, or believe, such a proponent of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) as Al Gore, when he demanded $1,500 for anyone wanting to shake his hand during COP15? Does anyone really trust these imposters? No. They have done a grave disservice to the cause of the true believers.
I am not in the camp of AGW, and I believe Cap & Trade may well be the largest global scam in history. There is such hysteria today that our government is looking into a gross reduction of our country’s farms in an effort to curb environmental pollution. And while our overseers are in a looking into mode, they are now looking into yet another scientific solution to curtail global warming – the radical step of shooting rockets filled with pollution into the upper atmosphere. This, of course, is all pure madness. Yet more Y2k messages that the end is near. In our lifetime. If we don’t sign away or wealth and future to large corporations and politicians that have sought refuse under the findings of a few scientists of dubious moral and professional character.
My message, however, is that I do fear for our environment to the degree that I promote responsible sustainability. I am convinced that through education, we can all learn how to conduct our lives in a manner that preserves our natural resources with little effort or great conflict with opposing positions. The country is aware of and accepted the fact that changes are needed in the way we work, live and play. Through organizations such as U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), federal/state/local building codes and various other organizations and rating systems, the industry is successfully addressing the important environmental issues we face today. As long as we continue to contribute based on education and reasoned intelligence and do not follow lock-step with any predetermined philosophy, we will survive the day and guarantee an environmentally friendly existence for future generations. Never, ever believe that it is My Way or the Highway.
What’s fantastic is that so many anti-Mackey’s have adopted veganism to (a) to reduce illness and (b) slow global warming.
What’s that?
You still eat animals thereby increasing your chances of cancer and speeding up the destruction of the planet?
Oh.
Trader Joe’s?
Really? You do know they are owned by one of the richest retail families in the world, second only to WalMart? You do know they are adamantly anti-union?
costco’s main man is a true lefty (even though he seems to be anti-union as well in his hiring practices….what all 3 (Trader Joes (and their parent Aldi), Whole Foods, and Costco) have in common is that even without a union they pay well over union salaries and have better benefit packages. But still no union (except the meat section).
You do also knwo that allt he lefty clothes you buy at Urban Outfitters benefits the very much non-lefty owner of that company as well.
We on the right, understand your proclivities pretty well, and apparently we do pretty well at catering to your consumer desires…
And his claim is not a global warming denial, it is an Anthropomorphic global Warming denial…and you guys on the left seem to be quite inquisitionish in your calls for idealogical purity.
John Mackey is “open minded”…sorry if it goes against your “dogma”
Given that all resources are finite, and in any system where it is delivered by the government, those resources are also very much finite, then rationing decisions will be made. That means there are a whole range of biologics which are nto avaialable in many provinces in Canda, or on many health plans in other countries with socialized/single payer/or other universal health care schemes.
Mackey is right, that in all these things, the market provides the means for the greatest breadth of access and breadth of delivery.
I meant anthropogenic, not anthropomorphic
Very well put rookwood.
I share your skepticism regarding AGW, and your goals fo living in better harmony with nature. Whether humans have caused, and more importantly could stop general trends in the climate of the earth is something which I cannot see scientists claiming with any level of credibility.
We drive a car that is big enough to move my family and my stuff to where it needs to get. I take public transit to work. W have retrofitted both my house and my vacation home to be as close to current building standards as is possible while preserving the charm and architectural integrity of the houses. We recycle. We turn lights off, we wear sweaters and such. We do what is reasonable to live a sustainable lifestyle, while still pursuing prosperity.
What I see in the greenwashing is repulsive, and you properly identify this. I see subsidies in relatively sunless countires like Germany swallowing up global output of solar panels and keeping them too expensive for the 3rd world, wehre they belong. a hut in Africa where they currently light dung in the hut to cook food would do very well with a 15sqft. solar panel which could power a small refrigerator, induction stovetop, and cell phone. If this combo could come to a price of under $300 that would be the single greatest achievement towards the alleviation of poverty in the world….
Instead I see bio-gas mills being set up and farmers all around the world planting corn that is meant to drive cars instead of feed people….or farmers in america being coerced into giving up food farming and planting forests. This is truly people hating…