Sam's Choice, Our Consequences

[vovat]

On Thursday night, bethje and I watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. By a bizarre coincidence, it turned out that the most recent episode of Bullshit! was also about Wal-Mart, and mostly took the opposite position, even mentioning and criticizing the creator of the documentary. So I guess I've now heard both sides. {g} I probably agreed more with the documentary, although I had gripes with some aspects of it. It didn't really help that the Bullshit! episode was one of the ones that seemed to be of the "let's beat up on the idiots who take the opposite position, and ignore anyone who might actually have a valid counter-argument" variety, which are usually the weakest episodes. Mind you, they DID find some idiots, who stereotyped all of the customers and employees of Wal-Mart. That seems to me to be largely comparable to the morons who complain to the teenager behind the counter at McDonald's about the destruction of the rain forest. Yeah, I'm sure that minimum-wage employee was the one responsible for that. I don't know. When I go to a discount store, it'll more often be Target or Kmart. I'm not sure how evil they are, but Target is a lot prettier than your average discount store, and I have a weird loyalty to Kmart due to going there so often as a kid. (I might well have ended up with the same loyalty to Jamesway, had they not gone out of business.) I've never particularly cared for Wal-Mart. The one I go to most often always seems to be understaffed, with less than half of the registers open no matter how many customers are waiting, and pallets of unopened boxes lying in the aisles. But I'll shop there occasionally, and I don't really condemn other people for doing so. For many people, it's hard to find or afford other places.

Much of the documentary was about how Wal-Mart makes people work long hours under crappy conditions for little money, and doesn't really care about their employees. While I believe this is true, how many businesses nowadays really DO care? In this respect, I suppose you could say that Wal-Mart isn't technically any more evil than any other retailer, just better at it. If American businesses are allowed to pay people way less than a living wage, do you think they're going to NOT take advantage of this? But The High Cost of Low Price went on to mention other problems with Wal-Mart, including racism, sexism, clean water law violations, lack of security in their parking lots, and being anti-union to the point that they actually spy on their employees. One of the things that I found most interesting, however, was how they'll encourage their employees to go on welfare, and accept grants from local governments. If Wal-Mart is really capitalism at its best, as some people claim, why are they taking advantage of so many socialist-type programs? Not that I (unlike Penn and Teller) am opposed to socialism per se. The free market is good as far as it goes, but unchecked laissez-faire capitalism seems to me to be a largely self-destructive system. I'm in favor of more government regulation of business. But then, since the government seems to be largely in the pockets of big business anyway, maybe that wouldn't really make much difference. But when administrations like Reagan's and the current President's try to deregulate everything and give tax cuts to mega-corporations, allegedly trusting that they're going to use all the extra money to "stimulate the economy," that's just so ridiculously transparent.

Comments

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

My friend worked at target and they pay above minimum wage and offer decent health insurance for part time employees. Starbucks, which everyone loves to hate also offers good benefits and decent wages. Those are the only two big retailers I have ever heard positive things about, though.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that a lot of retail outlets pay SLIGHTLY above minimum wage. I believe I made about a dollar more per hour when I worked at Kmart. But when you work only part-time and don't know when your hours are going to be until less than a week before, that's often small comfort.

I've heard that about Starbucks, and I can't say I really have anything against them, but then I don't drink coffee. I DO like their apple cider and orange cupcakes, though. I couldn't imagine going there every day like some people do, though, even if I did like coffee. After all, unlike Wal-Mart, it's incredibly expensive.

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

My friend Andrew worked at Target and made about 10/hr and worked about 30 hours a week pretty consistently. It probably really depends where the store is located, though. Before I moved to MA I never made more than 8.50 an hour anywhere, and I worked in childcare, with adults with disabilities, in a women's shelter and at a college bookstore (full time, not as a student). In a lot of areas, though, that is a reasonable wage if you are just supporting yourself. It is sad how undervalues certain types of work are, though.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

And how the wages businesses pay are often totally out of sync with the cost of living in an area.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Eh, I've had an only slightly rational boycott of Walmart going for a few years-- I say "only slightly" because there's a billion other evil corporations out there that I could be boycotting, but don't, so the Walmart thing is kind of random, especially since we need cheap stuff. But I've always felt oddly uncomfortable in Walmarts --agoraphobic in the most original sense-- even though I DON'T feel uncomfortable in K-Mart (which I also have a weird loyalty to from going there as a child and especially as a teenager because the guy I liked worked there among other reasons... and really my hostility to Walmart started because they wanted to--and eventually did-- open up a store RIGHT NEXT TO that K-Mart and a bunch of other smaller shops that were totally going to be put out of business by it-- while they did suffer, they haven't totally gone out of business, I think because enough people were annoyed by that Walmart's opening that they managed to avoid it themselves). Anyway, so it was easy to decide I PARTICULARLY didn't like Walmart and since there ARE so many other places to shop near me, it's kind of a weak boycott on my part.... And we just discussed getting a Sam's Club membership again today out of desperation....

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess I've more or less boycotted random places from time to time, but they were usually places I wouldn't go anyway, so convincing myself that I was avoiding them on purpose was just for my own peace of mind. But I guess that's generally the way for individual boycotts, since they don't really affect much. In order for a boycott to do much, you'd have to get, say, an entire community involved. And people have done that to drive off Wal-Marts, although whether the net effect on these communities ended up being positive or negative is a point of contention.

[kristenjarrod.livejournal.com]

You know I'm in the extreme minority that doesn't like Target. I just feel out of place there. And they aren't really friendly to the plus size. But I've beaten this dead horse before.