Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

We just saw this movie on cable and were aghast.

At first, I tried to view it like a "regular capitalist." Hey, if people want to work there it is their choice.

Only, of course, when Wal-Mart came to town and wiped out many small businesses for many of the employees, er, associates, this was the only game in town.

But when the story detailed how Wal-Mart gets incentives, total million of dollars to go to town to provide jobs, only to encourage the associates to rely on tax provided health care and food stamps - I could no longer take it. As many testified: these subsidies could add more police and fire fighters, more teaches assistances. And then, forcing employees to work over time off the books, the lack of minimum security at its parking lots and the slavery type conditions in Asia and the hostile racist environment..

From reviews:

The people who speak out against Wal-Mart are hardly rabble-rousing anarchists. Greenwald's film takes pains to point out that they are often deeply patriotic conservative Republicans who swear by the capitalist system but feel that Wal-Mart's inordinate size and power give it unfair leverage in the marketplace.

For these were people who had bought completely into the Wal-Mart mythology, the lure of working for a strong organization that offered opportunities for advancement and cared enough about its employees to call them associates. Realizing that the company they worked for was not the Wal-Mart of their dreams was often a shattering experience, a coming to terms with a god that failed.

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I cannot fault individuals for whom shopping at Wal-Mart is a difference between affording prescription medication and decent food and clothing. And I have to wonder how much this "every day low prices" has contributed to the stagnation of income for most of us since we "could still shop at Wal-Mart." But we should still be able to go after our elected officials who gave so much money to Wal-Mart to come into town and make main streets look "like a neutron bomb hit it."

And this, really, is our problem. We all mourn the outsourcing of jobs and the destructions of our local businesses, yet we go shopping at big box stores and thus perpetuate the cycle. There was even a segment from the Daily Show where a woman shopper said she could not believe it that employees had to rely on Medicaid and Stewart's comment was: you cannot believe it? You are holding a (don't remember the precise figure) coat?


Wanted to include this conclusion of the review from the NYT:

But it's impossible not to remember what happened with Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11": it outraged many Americans, made White House decisions look ridiculously dishonest and/or inept, and President Bush was re-elected anyway.