Posted on 07/23/2005 5:50:03 PM PDT by CHARLITE
If a capitalist corporation gets to be a big success, it inevitably finds itself in the cross-hairs of leftist political activists who don't much like capitalism, and especially don't like large corporations.
In the 1980s, General Motors found itself in this position when Michael Moore made the movie "Roger and Me." More recently McDonald's has been a target, attacked by (among other people) film maker Morgan Spurlock in "Super Size Me."
Wal-Mart, now the largest business corporation in the world, could hardly escape the activists' ire. The huge retailer has been charged with underpaying and mistreating its employees, destroying communities, and oppressing workers in the Third World.
Wal-Mart's critics claim the average wage of sales clerks (conveniently, the lowest-paid group of workers in the company) is only $8.23 per hour. Point out that this is well above the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour and the activists will complain many of the employees work only part-time, and many of them don't buy the relatively expensive health insurance coverage Wal-Mart offers employees.
Of course, a lot of people--women who want to devote time to their families and people who are working a second job--prefer to work part-time. And in a modern economy, many workers have spouses whose jobs provide full medical coverage. If the pay and working conditions at Wal-Mart were in fact so intolerable, the company would have trouble finding employees. But it doesn't, even when the economy is booming and unemployment is low.
Wal-Mart is said to "destroy communities" by driving traditional "mom and pop" stores out of business. No doubt this is often true, but the reality of the modern American economy is that small and medium-size businesses are booming--but only when they offer some high-quality or specialized good or service, when they're particularly innovative, or when they fill a niche nobody has noticed before.
The days of the corner appliance store that sells the standard models at prices substantially higher than the "big box" stores are gone. So Junior and his sister Janie don't get to inherit the family appliance store. Why they would want to do that, rather than open a boutique or start a computer software business, is a mystery.
When economist Emek Basker of the University of Missouri looked at the employment effects of having a Wal-Mart move into a community, he found it actually increases employment. Nostalgia can be gratifying, but it's not a good basis for preferring fewer jobs rather than more.
Another charge commonly made by the activists is that Wal-Mart oppresses Third-World workers by paying them too little and having them work in substandard conditions. It's perfectly true that wages and working conditions in Third-World countries are poor by American standards ... and perfectly unclear why "American standards" should be relevant.
The employment provided by the suppliers of Wal-Mart (and other American firms) is quite a lot better for everyone involved than the alternative--typically subsistence agriculture. Nobody has produced any evidence that Wal-Mart's suppliers pay less or have poorer working conditions than other industries in poor countries.
The simple fact is that all advanced economies began with a "take-off stage" when the workforce left agriculture to do hard and poorly paid work in industry. That creates the foundation for a more advanced economy, where the pay is better and working conditions more comfortable. Nobody knows how to skip that first stage.
I suspect what the critics really dislike about Wal-Mart is not economic, it's cultural. Wal-Mart is very "red state." It's headquartered in Arkansas. It's mentioned in country songs.
The crowd that likes to say it's on the side of poor Americans ought to appreciate a place whose prices make a modest paycheck go a long way. But they prefer to fight the culture wars, and Wal-Mart is their bugaboo.
John McAdams, Ph.D. (john.mcadams@marquette.edu) is a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute and a professor in the political science department of Marquette University.
You HAD to open up that can of worms didn't you?
RED MEAT, RED MEAT!!!
I'm eliminating most of your topics you've posted this in, as I have for nearly every thread you've started. It's getting tiring.
As if the the fancy department stores pay their sales clerks more. In NH, starting pay for sales clerks at Filenes is $6.75 and Macy's is $7 and change.
Im a die hard conservative, but alls you have to do is go to the small towns across the US to see all the damage Walmart is doing.
Walmart is a monopolistic force in most of the areas it operates in; it does not serve the free market, it distorts it.
A socialist has no business talking about the free market. Admit it...you just hate competition.
I've got it on good authority that Walmart is just a front to collect funds for the Chinese military. Time to send in 86 & 99. Oh jeez.... forgot to drop the cone of silence.
Hide what? What deficiency?
How are they a monopoly when Target, Costco and others seem to compete nicely with them?
Oh, you must mean how they beat the competition fair and square and thus make great gains in the market place....I haven't seen any laws lately that require everyone to shop ONLY at walmart like the laws USED to say for Maw Bell. Hmmmmm, you need to explain this a bit more for me.
Excellent point.
- find a Walmart that doesn't sell the exact same merchandise that can be bought at Target, K-Mart, Fred Myers...even military exchanges. I'm still looking for the Walmarts that only sell the cheap Chinese stuff.
- I've yet to see a Walmart in a community that wasn't already up to it's ears in numerous other soulless chains: McDonalds, Pay-Less-Shoes, Pizza Hut, Target, Wendys, K-Mart, etc. I'm still looking for the Walmart location where mom-and-pop still had a store when Walmart was built.
- I'm still looking for a Walmart where the employees are locked in at night and wearing special collars that will zap them with 30,000 volts of electricity if they don't pretend to be fine to the customers.
I sure would like to know where I can find one of those Walmarts...everyone talks about them but I can't find them.
Hmmmm, I'm still looking for a mom & pop that actually doesn't gouge the customer. Mom and Pop need to hustle!
Until I do, I'll do my shopping at Walmart, where I know I can find what I need at a reasonable price!
The WalMart that opened in our hometown has greatly improved customer reach in a basically rural area but located on a 4lane hwy. Many businesses have increased profits, more local-owned-bank-atm's, more residences have city water and sewer since walmart needed to add that (their expense) improved exit ramp and stoplights at exit (their expense), new water tower (their expense) expanded commercial water line in residential and undeveloped rural land (combined expense) new factory/manufacturing opened up to increase part time worker influx... I could go on and on about how the supercenter has greatly improved the living, profits, business dealings of our rural town (6000). I hate unions. Just look at the cities and towns where unions 'rule'. They are dicrepit and in ruin.
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