Reply #74: Let me tell you a thing or two about choice, pyrogen [View All]

"Choice" is relative, and it's relative to the ability of the individual to make the choice.

A person who is "poor" and has limited financial resources does not have the same choices available that a "comfortable" person does.

WalMart's strategy is to, forgive me for being blunt, sucker the "poor" into shopping there, using loss-leaders such as your precious can of tomato juice as an example. Sure, buy the cheap juice, and maybe the cheap macaroni, and the cereal and the soda, and the meat. . . . .but because poor people often don't have the time to exercise choices -- they work more and less regular hours than the more affluent -- they can't spend an entire day shopping at WalMart for some items, at Target for others, at Safeway for others. They can't afford the gas to drive around either. so they get suckered into buying the crap sold at WalMart, whether it's furniture that falls apart or a toilet seat that wears out.

But because our culture DEMANDS consumption and because the greatest measure of "success" in our country is wealth, as demonstrated by consumption, these people get suckered in again and again and again. Not by genuinely low prices, but by bait and switch, by loss leaders, by a dozen other scams.

In this current economy, there are few choices when it comes to jobs, and those who have even the most subsistence of incomes are afraid to lose what precious little they have. Are they truly "free" to make choices? Would you be if you were in their shoes?

Oh, forget it. I don't think you're the type to indulge in that kind of debate. Your mind is already made up: it's all about the lowest price you have to pay for juice.

I can't believe I've spent so much time on this, except that maybe someone else learned something.

Tansy Gold, who hasn't set foot in WalMart in five years and never will