The Dirty Secrets Behind those Low Prices
In case you haven't noticed the quiet 180 that Wal-Mart has pulled in recent years, it currently is about as un-American as you could possibly get: it's crammed full of cheap Chinese goods manufactured in a near absence of basic human rights. China is a country where an average monthly salary is about $50, few laws prohibit pollution, and any pseudo-political movement (such as a workers' union) is snuffed with bullets and blood. There is no freedom of speech, there is no free press, and if you make comments remotely critical of the government, you could end up breaking rocks in some unnamed gulag for the rest of your life. In short, China is a wet-dream for corporations like Wal-Mart who rely on worker exploitation to achieve higher profits. Wal-Mart argues that its suppliers comply with Chinese law, but this is a laughable response. Chinese "law" depends largely on who's watching and how large their billfold is. When an auditor inspects a plant, chances are that Wal-Mart tipped off the plant owner well in advance: child workers stay home that day, fake time sheets are displayed, and everyone is briefed on what to say.
Even if you delude yourself into thinking that such employment practices are an improvement for third world workers, you may be surprised that Wal-Mart has carried out its dictatorial labor practices in our own country. It has systematically denied or oppressed any attempt to pay its workers higher wages or give them adequate health care. This is a company that actually has a hot-line for managers to call if they suspect that their workers are unionizing. The few attempts by Wal-Mart employees to unionize have been annihilated with gestapo-like tactics. While this may be the norm in Communist China, this isn't how the game is supposed to be played here in "The Land of the Free."
Wal-Mart's practices exert incredible downward pressure across the globe. If a factory in China has to work 90 hour weeks and force workers to sleep on the factory floor so it can keep its contract with Wal-Mart, factories across the globe will be forced to work for similar wages under similar conditions. Workers in Mexico and Bangladesh may lose their jobs because they simply can't compete with the cost of Chinese labor. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that China's currency is not publicly traded, a clever little trick which allows the Chinese to produce goods for far less than the fair market price.
The domino effect continues as other retailers are forced to find Chinese manufacturers in order to stay competitive. Some market analysts argue that the increased spending caused by low prices is helpful to the economy because jobs lost to Asia in the manufacturing sector will translate into new jobs in other sectors, but this ignores the fact that the newly created jobs offer only a fraction of the pay. Wal-Mart is to capitalism what the inquisition was to Christianity. When capitalism is carried to such extremes, it acts as the complete antithesis of all that it supposedly represents.
As taxpayers, we are the ones picking up the tab for Wal-Mart's underhanded tactics. A single 200-person Wal-Mart store (similar to what we have in Lawrence, KS) costs taxpayers an estimated $420,750 per year. Most of this occurs because underpaid Wal-Mart employees are forced to dip into federal funds for everything from health care to housing assistance. Companies that pay better wages do not rob the nation's coffers in such insidious ways. Wal-Mart's theft of federal funds is all the more disgusting when one considers that it is by far the largest corporation on the planet.
Although Wal-Mart's low prices may be good for us as consumers, they are horrible for us as workers, taxpayers, and as family members. Follow your nose: those low, low prices lead to low, low wages and low, low standards of living, and if you have any hope of finding a better job for yourself or your family, you'd avoid Wal-Mart like the plague that it is.
