Eating Left
By Amit Singh | Saturday, August 15th, 2009 | PolicyIn all honesty, I am typically pretty annoyed with the Whole Foods in my neighborhood. The organic bananas go rotten in 2 days, the selection of cereal is pathetic, and the sushi is overpriced. But I will gladly spend my money at one of the staples of liberal life after reading Whole Foods Co-Founder and CEO John Mackey’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. An interesting tidbit he included is the fact that Whole Foods allows the employees to vote on their benefits:
At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.
Some may criticize Mackey because they think stores like Whole Foods, which focus on delivering high quality and organic products to their consumers, are trying to profit on making people healthier. I view that as a good thing. Gold’s Gym and Sports Health compete for our business by coming up with creative classes to make exercise more fun. Now we see Harris Teeter and Giant selling organic milk which only Whole Foods used to sell. I purchase grass-fed milk from Whole Foods myself after reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma and perhaps other grocery stores will do the same in the future.
The point is that government involvement in our healthcare will make Americans less healthy. If our citizens want to be healthy, then the Free Market will be much more effective at delivering solutions than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington.
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5 Responses to "Eating Left"
Amit, I enjoyed this. Partly the personal touch and partly the illustration of people choosing to be able to control their health care rather than totally giving that up to a pseudo parental government.
It also illustrates a consumer’s willingness to endure something less than ideal (Whole Foods) or make a change in choices because something admirable is going on somewhere. It kinda brings to mind the stronger numbers at Ford after the other two became owned by the government.
After seeing the reaction of whining leftists who now vow to boycott Whole Foods b/c of Mr. Mackey’s column, I will try to spend more of money there. Unfortunately, that means a trip to Charlottesville. No good deed….
Amit, once again I find myself shocked to be agreeing with you. Keep up the excellent pieces here on BD. My respect for you has increased ten-fold since the primary last May.
thanks Britt!
Dan, thanks for the respect
but it makes me wonder what changed?
btw, the chocolate covered raisins aren’t bad
Amit, mainly just the heat of the primary has finally wore off and I can look at things from a much more neutral perspective rather than looking at from a “my guy has to win” perspective haha.
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