More Against Wal*Mart

As anyone who’s ever asked me “Do you like Wal*Mart?” will tell you, my answer is “No.”

Now that the necessity for good writing is out of the way, let me list a few facts (as found here) about the monopolizing, soul-stealing, anti-American corporation.

But first I’d like to say that I myself shopped at Wal-Mart until probably about 6 months ago, and that my research is extremely limited…in that I can only believe what I read on the internet, which is as reliable as any other source, but I do look around to get varying viewpoints. Regardless, here you go:

In Georgia, Wal-Mart employees are six times more likely to rely on state-provided health care for their children than are employees of any other large company. Keep in mind that if Wal*Mart were a country, it would be about as large as Sweden, strictly monetarily speaking.

Reliance on public assistance programs in California by Wal-Mart workers costs the state’s taxpayers an estimated $86 million annually. In comparison, smoking cost just under $18 million, according to this. Wal-Mart’s lack of a sense of responsibility costs the people of Kahlifornia more than the most hated of all habits…should we ban Wal-Mart in public places?

In the first decade after Wal-Mart arrived in Iowa, the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women’s apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drugstores, and 111 men’s and boys’ apparel stores. Do you think Wal-Mart offers 153 varieties of shoes? Yes, 153 varieties would be a little overkill, perhaps, but with no competition, what is Wal-Mart’s incentive to have even 2 varieties? “We’ll start shopping somewhere else before that happens,” you say? Projections show that by the end of this decade, Wal-Mart will have 50% of the market share in some areas of merchandise, including areas like music and DVDs.

Every year Wal-Mart purchases $15 billion worth of products from China. The average Chinese worker only starts out at under $2 a day. I know, it isn’t Wal-Mart’s responsibility for how the Chinese labor hierarchy works, just like it isn’t our responsibility to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because of their business practices. We all need to save $.10 on every can of peas.

There was an interesting program on PBS’s Frontline program, and here are some of the viewer responses.

This guy makes a living off of telling small businesses how to thwart the Big Blue Box and keep alive. Of course, he admits he still shops at Wal*Mart.

And this is my final link for you…perhaps best of all. You’ll need a New York Times subscription to check out the validity of it all, but you can get the basic idea from the first page.

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