I agree - in fact, I thought that the page had cut off half of the article. It just ends with something about Walmart. I thought he was going somewhere with that.
The Walmart bit draws a parallel between factory labor and US consumerism along the lines of: global capitalism inserts laborers into Southeast Asian manufacturing assemblages and similarly corrals consumers into Northern Californian box stores.
While I think the comparison is at least interesting if not actually useful (to help think about the effects and consequences of transnational capital), that bit of reportage misrepresents the municipal reality that SF does not have a Walmart.
In fact, SF has been a bit of an outlier regarding the corporate giant Walmart, and some of SF's elected officials have vigorously opposed Walmart's setting up shop in SF. [0] Four years later, the Walmart closest to SF (Oakland) closed. [1] Presently, the closest Walmart to SF is 18 miles away (42 mins by car, which is an eternity in the Bay Area) in San Leandro.
The homelessness in SF is dispiriting and, yes, a sign of US sociopolitical attitudes about wealth and social welfare. Another sign of US sociopolitical attitudes (SF's in particular) is its continued rejection of Walmart which is notorious among Bay Area liberals (and conservatives, for that matter) for its anti-union and anti-employee policies.
