So how, exactly, does Wal-Mart get us those low prices, yet high profit ?
They are very hard on their suppliers. To compete for Wal-Mart's business,
it is necessary to stop manufacturing here in the US and ship jobs to a capitalist
paradise like China where there are subsistence wages, long hours, sweatshops, and no
environmental regulations. The products can themselves carry toxic
ingredients. With loose or non-existent regulations on imported products, consumers are
on their own to figure out the consequences. So part of the deal is we lose
manufacturing, and get toxic products.
When Wal-Mart builds new stores, it often sites its stores in the town
adjacent with the lower taxes, it goes for taxpayer funded incentives, and the result in
many places is boarded up downtowns, small business closed up, and a lot fewer retail
choices. The town's tax base implodes, and services are curtailed to correspond.
Urban sprawl accelerates, downtown rots, and low wage jobs replace decent ones lost. How
is that for a deal ?
If Wal-Mart is tough on its suppliers, it is just as tough on its employees.
It tends to pay minimum wages which are barely living wages, it effectively is
subsidized by taxpayers because its employees qualify for food stamps and medical
subsidies. Your tax dollars subsidize those low Wal-Mart prices because they are making
up for those low Wal-Mart wages.
Employees might have some leverage for higher wages if they were allowed a
union, but Wal-mart aggressively opposes unions. They closed at least one store
when it looked like organizing was successful. The right to organize a union is part of the
UN Declaration of Human Rights. Wal-Mart employees don't have that right.
The Walton family has lobbied mightily to roll back the "death tax" (aka the
estate tax). That would "provide an estimated $32 billion tax break for the Walton
family."
(http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2010/08/77666.php)
This Republican initiative has the potential to bring back the kind of feudal aristocracy that this
country's founders abhorred. That too is part of the deal.
http://www.seconnecticut.com/aristocracy.htm
If the new normal is low paid, low skill employees then we will not have a
robust economy again. Wal-Mart is bringing the southern plantation model to the world.
....It is very smart...for the Walton family. Not you.
Wal-Mart is a prime example of a
monopsonist: a company which is such a powerful
buyer that it can pressure its
suppliers into suicidal terms. The only way suppliers can meet Wal-Mart's
demands is by moving manufacturing to third world countries. The US has lost
millions of manufacturing jobs in the last few years. Not only has
Wal-Mart devastated thousands of small
towns, vigorously opposed
labor unions. pushed their minimum wage
employees onto the
public dole, strained public
health facilities, it helped strip the manufacturing base from this country.
The US trade
deficit has soared, and overseas
sweatshops have flourished.
Before Ronald Reagan there might have been
anti-trust enforcement for
Wal-Mart, but since Reagan,
Republicans don't
enforce anti-trust. That should change.
ABC News Investigation: The Blueberry Children
--Children as Young as 5 and 6 Working in the Fields of
Large Blueberry Grower Featured by Walmart
30 Oct 2009 Walmart and the Kroger supermarket chain have severed ties with one
of the country's major blueberry growers after an ABC News investigation found
children, including one as young as five-years-old, working in its fields. The
children were discovered at the Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Company, in South
Haven, Michigan, this summer by graduate school students working with ABC News
as fellows with the Carnegie Corporation. The owner of the company, Randy Adkin,
was once featured on a Walmart billboard advertising his "locally produced and
locally sold" blueberries.
Tell
the FEC to investigate Wal-Mart According
to a
recent article in the Wall Street Journal,
Wal-Mart threatened employees that if they voted for pro-worker
candidates like Barack Obama, the Employee Free Choice Act will pass,
making it easier to form unions in Wal-Mart stores. Telling employees how to vote in a U.S. election is
not only morally reprehensible, it's potentially illegal.
Video
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Walmart (Watch it free
on-line.) What is behind the low prices at your neighborhood Wal-Mart? "Wal-Mart: The
High Cost of Low Price" is a feature length documentary that uncovers a
retail giant's assault on families and American values.