Translator

Posts Tagged ‘big-box stores’

Wal-Mart is Turning the American Dream Into a Nightmare

At one time, many towns in the United States looked like the tranquilly that Norman Rockwell used to capture in his paintings. These towns were places were a the local man could open a store and compete with his neighbor’s businesses. Those stores would employ local families and sell goods made by similar families in an American Factory. They were not the run down boarded up shops of a below the poverty line town with a single Wal-Mart. They were not the kinds of places that would send the wealth of America over to a communist country that enslaved its people. They were the kinds of towns that existed before Wal-Mart and other big box stores moved in. Some researchers argue that, “Wal-Mart has had a substantial positive impact on America’s economy” (Hansen 4). I say that Wal-Mart severely hurts the overall economy of the United States, because Wal-Mart uses unfair business practices, keeps its employees below the poverty line, and sends America’s wealth overseas.

If you own a retail store in a town with a Wal-Mart, then you don’t need anyone to tell you that Wal-Mart uses unfair methods to destroy local businesses and eliminate all fair competition. Most small businesses start from the ground up, slowly growing their business’s over time without the use of government subsidies and are at the mercy of American job providing and prevailing wage paying factories. On the other hand, Wal-Mart received over one billion dollars nationwide in government subsidies (Greenwald). These subsidies help build roads and provide the utilities for a new Wal-mart store. These are benefits that the existing stores in an area never get from their local or state governments. Local businesses have to foot all the bills themselves, but Big-Box stores like Wal-Mart do not have to. These subsidies, along with having to compete with Wal-Mart’s overseas factories, make it impossible for the local business person to compete with the lower costing items sold at a Wal-Mart Store. In Stacy Michell’s book Big-Box Swindle:The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, she contends that “…the economic structure that mega-retailers are propagating represents a modern variation on the old European colonial system, which was designed not to build economically viable and self-reliant communities, but extract their wealth and resources” (xiv) In short, Wal-Mart destroys the ideals of the free market and makes us dependent or enslaves us to them.

Another reason small business can’t compete with big box stores like Wal-Mart is, Wal-Mart keeps its employees below the poverty line and relies on government programs to off-set their employees cost of healthcare and food. The average Wal-Mart clerk earns below what the federal government considers the poverty line (Hansen 5). Wal-Mart actually encourages their employees to go on programs like Medicaid and Welfare and their employees cost taxpayers over one billion dollars (Greenwald). That’s right, I said one billion dollars and there is barely over three hundred million people living in the United States according to the United States Census Bureau. Keep in mind that Wal-Mart has over a million employees and is the world’s largest employer (Hansen 2). Go ahead and add in your share of the Wal-Mart tax burden the next time you are buying one of their ultra cheap products. Now let me clarify; first we subsidize the building of a Wal-Mart store with taxpayer dollars, then we subsidize their healthcare program and their employee’s wages, and local businesses are supposed to compete with them in a free market. No wonder Wal-Mart is so profitable.

The worst part is, the money spent on Wal-Mart’s merchandise doesn’t even stay in the United State’s economy, it is sent to one of fifteen counties including Communist China, a country that treats its citizens like slaves. Wal-Mart “imported more Chinese products (12 billion) than any other retailer” (Hasen 20). I’ve personally walked around a Wal-Mart trying to find a single product made in the United States and failed to do so. According to Stacy Mitchell’s book Big-Box Swindle:The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, “aside from their local payroll, which typically accounts for less than ten cents of every dollar spent at a big-box store, chains return very little of the revenue they take in back to the local economy” (40; ch. 1.2) Wal-Mart thirteen of the countries that Wal-Mart does business in have booming economies and have had over a four percent annual growth since Wal-Mart arrived (Wilkerson). If that doesn’t show where our dwindling economy is going, I don’t know what does. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad about it, if they were not exploiting what I generously define as indentured servants. In Robert Greenwald’s documentary Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Price, A girl employed by a Wal-Mart factory in China is forced to live in a run down dorm, she works seven days a week, over twelve hours a day, and she does all of that for three dollars a day. Go ahead local hardware store owners, try to compete with three dollars a day with no overtime.

Supporters of Wal-Mart argue that Wal-Mart has had a substantial positive impact on America’s economy (Hansen 4), that they have wrung inefficiencies out of the supply chain saving consumers money. (Hansen 2), that they are merely giving the customer what they want (Hansen 6), that low prices help bolster the nation’s economy (Hansen 4), and that property-tax revenue generated by big box stores far outweigh any detrimental impacts (Hansen 9). Wal-Mart itself has said, “Saving money is a means to helping our customers live better. By offering the best possible prices on the products our customers need, we can help them afford something a little extra” (About Us). That’s nice but when my taxes are paying for the labor and construction of a Wal-Mart, I just don’t see how I’m saving any money. I also find the idea that Wal-Mart is putting more money in consumers pockets by selling them a Chinese made pair of toenail clippers for less money than an American factory would illogical. If you are unemployed because you can’t find a factory job making toenail clippers, then you can’t afford to buy ones made in China no matter how low they sell it for. Despite what the supporters of Wal-Mart say, I have yet to hear an excuse worthy of justifying the killing of small businesses, the paying of slave wages, and the exporting of America’s wealth.

There is hope and it comes in the form of voters and city ordinances. In Rhode Island, Exeter’s Town Council voted four to zero to amend zoning so that retail stores couldn’t be larger that forty thousand Square Feet (Naylor). This effectively keeps out stores like Home Depot and lets the smaller stores thrive. “Dozens of other communities have capped retail store sizes, including Boxborough, Mass. (25,000 sq.ft.); Ashland, Ore. (45,000); Flagstaff, Ariz. (70,000); Taos, N.M. (80,000); and Stoughton, Wis (110,000)” (Hansen 8). From the year 2000 to 2005 ordinary citizens halted around 200 big-box store development projects (Mitchell x). Three hundred and fifty businesses in Austin have formed an alliance that promotes buying from local businesses (Mitchell x). If more and more towns and more and more voters follow this trend, then maybe we can take our jobs back from China and keep some of our tax dollars in our communities. On paper, the simplest thing that people can do is spread the word and not do business with big-box stores like Wal-Mart. I said simple not easy. Stopping ourselves from shopping at big-box stores might be the hardest thing for us instant gratification junky Americans to do. It is time for American shoppers to prove they care more about their country, their neighbors, and their children’s future, than they do about the convenience of shopping for everything under one roof. If you and I stop shopping at big-box stores like Wal-Mart then we support ourselves as much as we do each other. Join me in my boycott of Wal-Mart and similar big-box stores.

Works Cited
“About Us.” Walmartstores.com. Wal-Mart, 2001. Web. 22 Nov. 2009.
Greenwald, Robert, dir. Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Price. Brave New Films, 2005. DVD.
Hasen, B. “Big-Box Stores.” CQ Researcher. 10 Sept. 2004. Web. 13 Nov. 2009.
Mitchell, Stacy. Big-Box Swindle The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses. New York: Beacon, 2006. Print.
Naylor, Donita. “Council Rejects Big-Box Stores.” The Providence Journal. 08 Apr. 2008. Web. 21 Nov. 2009.
“US & World Population Clock.” Census Bureau Home Page. United States Census Bureau. Web. 29 Nov. 2009.
Wilkerson, Michael. “Thewal-Mart effect.” Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale, Nov. & dec. 2009. Web. 29 Nov. 2009.