Today's Olympian

This should make it official: the city of Tumwater, like most these days, is about to become all but entirely dependent on corporate businesses for any and all commerce.

The issue of Walmart, good or bad, is an interesting one. Personally (in case the lead sentence above didn't make it clear), I am among those who refuse to shop at Walmart (unless it's the only option) and take every opportunity to attempt (politely and objectively) to convince others that they shouldn't shop there. My reasons for taking this stand are many, but the big ones are as follows:

1. Their notoriously low wages render most employees incapable of affording their health plan contributions, leaving them little choice but to take advantage of government-subsidized healthcare. Whether we shop there or not, every working American is paying for Walmart's health plan.

2. While it wasn't always the case, the majority of the products sold at Walmart are manufactured in China. This keeps prices low, but it is a particularly glaring example of how corporations have sold American manufacturing down the river (or perhaps across the ocean?). I should add that the reasons for doing business overseas are very sound, strictly from a business standpoint, and I do think American labor has become unsustainably costly, but those things are for another thread.

3. Once a Walmart appears in a given city/town, the majority of that community's small businesses disappear because they can't compete. This is pure Capitalism at its finest, but it is an especially detrimental consequence of corporate megastores, of which Walmart is king.

4. Walmart abuses its buying power to force suppliers to give them cheaper wholesale prices. Because suppliers can ill afford to lose their Walmart accounts, they regularly succumb to pressure to lower prices for Walmart, which means those suppliers then need to increase the prices they charge smaller customers in order to earn a profit and stay afloat. In turn, the smaller businesses have no choice but to mark up their prices, which steers their customers toward, you guessed it, Walmart.

5. The Walton family is seldom associated with humanitarian or community-enhancing endeavors, despite the fact that they are all very near the top among the world's wealthiest individuals. By comparison, look at someone like Bill Gates, who also sits among the elite in terms of wealth. I'll grant you that his business practices have done more than their fair share of damage to competition in the software industry, but he spends billions of his own dollars annually on humanitarian efforts and his own foundations, so he is certainly giving something back to the world that has made him what he is.

6. The general experience of shopping at Walmart (at least in Aberdeen) is a nightmare. I'd rather pay somebody else more for my stuff than deal with the stress of trying to navigate aisles that aren't big enough to allow two carts to go through side by side, never quite sure where I will find what I am looking for.

To be fair, there are some good things about Walmart (at least on the surface. To begin with, they offer low prices, which helps many Americans afford things they need(?). They also employ large numbers of people in their communities, even if they do pay them poorly. In addition, one would be hard-pressed to argue with the convenience of being able to find the variety of items under one roof that can be found at Walmart. Americans love convenience, and aside from the sometimes challenging shopping conditions, Walmart provides that in spades. Walmart is also a shining example of a small, independent business owner benefitting from the American Captialist system to become hugely successful. The Walmart business model, laiden with undesirable side effects though it may be, is absolutely brilliant.

It's interesting (and sometimes discouraging) to me to read through the comments readers submitted regarding the linked article. The people who make many of the same arguments I just made are typically condemned as liberals. I find this strange, as conservatives are typically the ones who most strongly promote small business, which is probably the biggest loser in the Walmart game. Conservatives also tend to be anti-big government and social services spending, and it seems to me that the argument regarding Walmart's health plan would be one a conservative would typically make. I can see where the warm, fuzzy, humanitarian stuff comes across as liberal, but I think if liberals and conservatives alike took a close look at this particular issue, they would find they have much more in common than they might expect.

So now you know why I don't shop at Walmart. I don't look down on anyone who does shop there (or at least not just because they shop there). Lower prices are a very powerful argument, especially in today's economy. That said, I would submit that the price on the price tag is not necessarily representative of the total cost of items purchased at Walmart.

I try to keep an objective viewpoint on this stuff. If anyone has anything to point out that I should be considering, I'd like to hear it.

Oops. I just used up my whole lunch break. Oh, well. Happy Friday!