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damaliayo

Five Reasons You Should NOT shop at Wal-Mart

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Thursday 29th November 2007 | 03:28 pm
Where: Wal-Marts around the nation
Feeling: determined

Many of you know already that Wal-Mart is evil incarnate, but I’m still surprised every day at how many people continue to shop at this enormous disaster of capitalism, and purposeful exploiter of the poor. I’m absolutely disgusted that the band the Eagles, chose to release their newest album exclusively through Wal-Mart, showing that despite their 60s-70s roots, they are as greedy as the retailer itself. So, with the holiday season approaching, I find it helpful to remind us all why we should buy local and perhaps pay a bit more for a quality product instead of heading for the cheap. Wal-Mart has a bad track record on just about every area of evaluation.

I’ve listed five things in order of how strongly i feel about each reason.
These are only five reasons, please know there are many, many more.

1. Wal-Mart exploits poor people at every junction of its business. It relies on keeping them poor for their profit.
Poor people make the products, poor people are employed by Wal-Mart to sell the products, and Wal-Mart markets primarily to poor people who need the kind of low-cost products to get by day to day. Unfortunately- the poor people making the product are living in devastating conditions, working excessive hours, and being paid barely anything so cannot get out of poverty through working for Wal-Mart. The poor people selling the products are often forced to get governmental assistance (often at the urging of Wal-Mart) to cover the cost of living and medical benefits that Wal-Mart fails to provide. The poor people buying the products are roped into a cycle of poverty because the low-quality of product forces them to replace Wal-Mart sold-products more frequently because they break down. This means that these poor people will spend more on a single item over the course of their lifetime than they would have if they had had the money to purchase one of better quality up front. By forcing manufacturers to make bad-quality product in order to sell on Wal-Mart shelves, Wal-Mart ensures a life-long customer base who is forced to go to Wal-Mart to replace their bad-quality Wal-Mart product at the only place they can afford to do so. It’s a vicious cycle of the worst kind.

2. Wal-Mart is forcing manufacturers overseas.
Wal-Mart has changed the face of business as we know it. It used to be that manufacturers could set their prices and retailers would pay to stock their shelves. No longer. Because Wal-Mart has such a big share of the market, manufacturers are forced to sell their product to them or go out of business. This means that Wal-Mart can set the price they pay for any product they want to stock and the manufacturers have to comply or go under. This has driven many business out of service or forced them to close their US plants in favor of cheaper plants and labor overseas. This results in the loss of US jobs and the further exploitation of people of color all over the world. Wal-Mart is using capitalism against business, which is in opposition to the nature of American Capitalism, which should help the country grow and thrive.

3. Wal-Mart is anti-union.
Wal-Mart has been known to spy on, intimidate, threaten and fire any employees who try to unionize. Wal-Mart is fully aware that if they engaged in fair-practices with their employees, that their costs would go up. Their low-costs depend on paying their employees next-to-nothing.

4. Wal-Mart is racist and sexist.
There are several class action suits currently being filed against Wal-Mart by women, and there should be some filed by people of color. It is without a doubt that Wal-Mart not only treats women and people of color worse, but encourages a culture of oppression among its staff.

5. Wal-Mart has the highest crime rate in it’s parking lots and doesn’t care.
Don’t buy Wal-Mart’s line that it cares about you. It doesn’t. That’s right. Wal-Mart has security cameras installed, not outside for your safety, but *inside* the store to spy on their union-interested employees. There has been the highest high rate of crime in Wal-Mart parking lots and they simply don’t give a damn. This is reason enough not to take yourself, your kids, and you car to Wal-Mart.

I wrote these based on my own research, but more information is available here: http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jhayesboh/badbusiness.html

I HIGHLY recommend seeing the movie “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” for a comprehensive look at the impact of Wal-Mart on communities, and suggest you watch Frontline’s “Is Wal-Mart Good for America” to get a sense of the tactics that Wal-Mart uses to manipulate its suppliers.

Shop with your head as well as your hear this holiday season. The world is changing- we can no longer turn our heads the other way, we must take our lives into consideration with every act we initiate. Start here, it’s simple. Boycott Wal-Mart.

happy holidays of all kinds to all

damali
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Comments {1}

Jonathan Korman

(no subject)

from: [info]jonathankorman
date: Friday 30th November 2007 02:17 am (UTC)
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I vigorously agree that Wal-Mart is a cancer on society, for the reasons you say and many others. And though I'm sometimes skeptical about the enthusiasm for boycotts in activist culture, Wal-Mart is extraordinarily worthy of a boycott: I've never spent a nickel at Wal-Mart, and I discourage folks I know from shopping there.

But Mark Ames' article in The eXile was a sobering reminder to me that boycotting is itself a mark of my privilege.
A year and a half later, during a one-day vulture-like mall sweep to take advantage of the Bush-economy bargains, I stumbled into the Old Navy store in Santa Monica. Now if I know my reader, then I can see the nauseous sneer crossing your face: "Ew, gawd! Shopping! Malls! New clothes! Third Street Promenade! Ames, what happened to you? How bouge, dude!"


If you're thinking that, then all I can say is you're either a fucking idiot or you've got very generous parents. I was that fucking idiot before moving to Louisville. Hell, it was places like The Gap that first helped drive me out of the country. But that was before poverty mattered to me. Being poor in America is no fun at all. It's not only materially horrible, but it's a national sin, proof of your innate sloth and depravity. You're essentially a traitor to the State if you're poor, so the smartest thing you can do is shut your mouth and hang an American flag on your trailer.


But there are some things which make poverty more tolerable. Wal-Mart for one. I'd moved to Louisville with not even a fork or a spoon. Wal-Mart sells all that -- hamper, dishes, utensils, dish rack, sheets, telephones, you name it -- for prices so incredibly low that I was genuinely grateful. I thought about Wal-Mart's union busting, its abused work staff of geriatrics and economically desperate wage slaves, its stocks of Third World products which in turn further destroyed America's manufacturing, it's aesthetic Sovietization of America... and then I thought about my own shitty fiscal situation. Conclusion: "Fuck 'em."


Wal-Mart is one of the few bones with a little meat on it that America throws to its tens of millions of lower-middle and semi-middle classes. Goods that once may have been unattainable are now attainable, almost free, thanks to union busting, employee abuse, Third World slave labor, the destruction of over-priced ma and pa stores, the homogenization of Middle America and every other horrible sin. When I said "Fuck 'em," I didn't mean it in the sense that I'd turned coat and gone right-populist like some David Horowitz. I just meant that I needed those cheap dishes. And I understood how, from the point of view of the economically struggling millions, you could mistrust and loathe all the natty left-wing intellectuals, all the rasta-haired, chin-studded anti-consumerists who want to steal that one bone that you've been given: access to goods. Goods that allow you to keep from slipping down yet another terrifying notch on America's cruel socio-economic fortress walls. You may not have health insurance, job security or a pension, but if you have goods, even inferior imitations of Crate & Barrel, then at least you're not entirely out of the picture.


Which brings me back to my Old Navy shopping spree in early January. I'll admit, as much as I loathe shopping, that was a glorious day for bargains. My boxers, which I hadn't replaced in years, were in tatters. I bought several new pairs for $3 each. New pants: $19. Socks for a couple of dollars. And sweaters for $12. The store that day was full, but I was the only white person. Mostly young Latino couples and a few blacks.


The tags on the $12 sweaters said "Made in Indonesia."


Sweat-shop labor. Multinational. The Gap (Old Navy's parent company). Shopping malls. All the reasons why such authentically middle-class-quality clothes were available for lower-middle-class prices ..,.

I worry that there's something incomplete in my own privileged-lefty impulse to “buy local and perhaps pay a bit more for a quality product instead of heading for the cheap.”

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