Target is a retail company that appears in The Bob Zadek Show only in passing, as an illustrative example in broader arguments about markets, competition and labor. No episode in the excerpts treats Target as a subject: there is no discussion of its founding, its ownership, its corporate governance, its finances, or its record on any policy question. The retailer enters the conversation twice, in two different episodes, and in both cases it is named by a speaker to make a point about something else — once about consumer choice, once about employer-provided benefits.
Target as the alternative store
In the June 2018 episode on Janus v. AFSCME, Bob Zadek and Jonathan Tasini argue about whether consumers would pay more for goods if the extra money went to workers’ wages and healthcare. Tasini describes focus groups conducted around Walmart in which participants were asked whether they would pay a nickel or ten cents more on a product if Walmart had to guarantee workers healthcare and pay higher wages; he reports that virtually everyone in the room said yes. He adds the caveat that Walmart benefits from the poverty of its shoppers, who have no option but to shop there. Zadek responds that the focus group asked the wrong question: the real free-market question is whether a shopper, presented with two Walmarts — one charging more and offering better benefits, one charging less and offering none — would choose the higher-priced one. He argues that in the focus group’s framing the participant had no choice, since if every Walmart raised its prices the shopper would simply pay more and grumble. Tasini concedes the point and suggests that the comparison should instead be Walmart against “Joe’s store or something, some other competitor.” Zadek supplies the name: “Or Target.” Tasini takes it up — “Or Target, for example” — and continues that some people would rather pay ten cents less, while insisting that the larger national question is whether a low-cost world benefits society The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
The exchange is brief and does no work beyond supplying a concrete rival retailer. Target is not described, characterized, or evaluated; it is simply the second store that makes the choice real. The substantive disagreement in the passage is between Zadek’s claim that a genuine choice between competing stores is what a free market means and Tasini’s claim that competition on price alone produces a society where people cannot pay their bills. Target is the prop both men use to stage that disagreement.
Target and paid leave
Target returns in the June 2019 episode with Veronique de Rugy on the gender pay gap, where it serves a different illustrative purpose. In a discussion of whether the free market acts as a barrier to discrimination, de Rugy argues that the market creates incentives for employers to treat workers well without requiring employers to be virtuous. She points to Target’s announcement that it would extend paid leave to part-time employees as evidence. Her explanation is that Target needs employees, the economy is growing, and companies are competing to attract the best employees; the way to do that is through more cash — she notes wage growth, especially at the lower level — and through additional benefits. She stresses that Target’s motive need not be generosity: extending benefits is a means of survival and good business practice rather than a sacrifice of the bottom line. She uses the example to argue that the free market aligns employers’ incentives with outcomes that are overall desirable, and that a market outcome should be judged against the constraints in play, including government intervention, rather than labeled a market failure whenever it disappoints Veronique de Rugy on the Gender Pay Gap (2019).
As in the earlier episode, the reference is compressed. De Rugy does not say when the announcement was made, what the paid leave consists of, how many employees it covers, or how Target compares with other retailers on benefits. The fact does its work entirely as an instance of a general claim about labor market competition.
Across episodes
The two episodes that mention Target — the Janus v. AFSCME discussion with Jonathan Tasini and the gender pay gap discussion with Veronique de Rugy — use the company for unrelated purposes, one to illustrate consumer choice between competing stores and one to illustrate employer competition for workers. The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Target between the earlier and later episode: the company is a name dropped to make an argument concrete, and neither guest nor host returns to it, qualifies the earlier use, or builds on it. There is no Target argument running across the show, only two separate invocations of the same retailer.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts say nothing about Target’s founding, headquarters, size, ownership, or history, and nothing about its labor practices beyond the single reference to paid leave for part-time employees. They contain no discussion of Target’s pricing, its competitive position relative to Walmart beyond the bare naming of both, or any controversy involving the company. Nothing in the sources indicates that Target was ever the subject of an episode, a segment, or a sustained line of questioning on the show. Any account of the company itself would have to come from outside these excerpts.