A lengthy examination of the colossus that is Wal-Mart, with such tasty excerpts as:
Wal-Mart's discounted prices, however, come with a heavy price tag. Workers are under-paid and overworked in sweatshops overseas, while their non-union counterparts in the U.S. often cannot afford healthcare for their families. Wal-Mart has been the target of a flood of suits; it is currently the defendant in the largest sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit ever, a suit representing more than 1.5 million women.
When Wal-Mart comes to town, many small businesses invariably close, permanently changing the "civil fabric" of local communities. Worse, the company's bottom line is dependent upon soaking up of hundreds of millions of dollar in taxpayer subsidies extracted from cash-strapped state and county budgets.
I haven't finished reading it but if it's your cup of tea, have at it.
4 comments:
More on WalMart:
http://www.walmartmovie.com/
http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/
http://walmartwatch.com/
You should see what Walmart has done to my hometown.
On the same note, have you seen the newest Walmart commercial, where a hockey team goes in, with their own money, buys things, and then gives them to the needy?
And Walmart, which played no role other than profiting from the sale of these goods, is spinning it like they helped with charity or something? Walmart cares...enough to sell things to people.
It a dishonest, deliberately misleading commercial in a far more profound way than the usual "buy cheap things and be happy" dishonesty. It's only not a lie if lie is defined in the most political way possible. I hate Walmart. I'd boycott it if I ever went there.
I tried to explain some of this to my dad, a hard-working kind of guy who pulled himself out of abject poverty and into a much higher tax bracket. The issue he wouldn't grant me, the one he wouldn't budge on, was the idea of WalMart's taking advantage of their employees.
"If those people are willing to accept the job for those wages, then fine, they can have it. If they don't want it, they should look somewhere else," he said.
I don't really know what to say to respond to this. I mean, doesn't it really boil down to having or not having a job? Having a low-paying job or none at all? I tried expressing the idea that WalMart has an obligation to offer a living wage, but he wrote that off as some modern-day noblesse oblige, and insisted that, if people don't want to work there, they don't have to.
Help me, please! I need to know how to show him what WalMart is. (I seriously doubt the movie is playing anywhere in his area - Calhoun, GA)
Well, there's this.
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