Communist-Mart

For quite some time now I have been promising a blog about my opinion on Wal-Mart. I've had to gather my thoughts and frankly they're so scattered and many I'm not sure I can put them all down coherently. I tend to try and make my blogs humorous in nature, but this one is entirely serious. I hate Wal-Mart. I know I know. I'm a raging conservative which should mean that I LOVE Wal-Mart. I just want you to know that I've researched the facts and I fall down on the side of democrats and unions on this one. It kills me to type it, but Wal-Mart must be stopped for the good of America.

I will try to keep my points simple and to the point without rambling. There really are three reasons that Wal-Mart must be stopped. First they're killing our economy. Second they're not saving us money like they think they are, but are in fact costing us more money than we realize and lowering our quality of life. Finally, they treat employees unfairly. For a company that makes $6.6 billion dollars a year in profit they pay their people precious little. Without any more delay let's get this party started.

1.) Wal-Mart is slowly killing our economy. Wal-Mart (here after known WM or Communist-Mart) claims to buy American. They only buy American when it's convenient for them though, or in fact the cheapest product they can buy. It plays itself out a couple of different ways in the store. Clothing at WM is sold at the cheapest price possible and here's why. Let's say that WM wants to do business with Bugle Boy jeans. WM offers to use 100% of Bugle Boys factories at 100% ouput for 3 years. They will carry everything that Bugle Boy can make. Bugle Boy jumps at the bit on this one. Because 7.5 cents of every dollar spent in America will end up at WM. A pretty impressive stat and a pretty impressive slice of business.

So Bugle Boy agrees. They sign the deal and WM then tells them they have to use 70% dye instead of 100 and then go with a 100 thread count instead of 200 in order to save some money. They also must take only 6% of the profit instead of 10% Bugle Boy is reluctant and agrees as it's 100% of their factories for 3 years. 3 years goes by and what happens? Two things. 1.) Bugle Boy gets a bad name for making crappy jeans that rip and fade thanks to WM. 2.) In order to make jeans cheaply and make some profit still they close the majority, or all, of their American factories and begin making jeans overseas in China where there are no labor laws and kids can work 130 hours a week. So now it's time for Bugle Boy to renew with WM and they say instead of making 6% of the profit they have to give all but .2% to WM. Bugle Boy says no way we won't make any money, but if Bugle Boy leaves their product will die since it now has such a crappy name. WM wins and keeps getting all the profit or Bugle Boy dies ... just like Arizona jeans, Route 51 jeans, and many others before. They kill the company. And that's just clothing.

For example recently Levi jeans has been under contract with WM. They had to create a whole new line of jeans to actually sell them there. As these were horrible jeans it ruined their brand name effectively. What happens to be a more crushing blow is that in the last year they announced the closing of their last two factories in the States. A company that had sixty factories in the country before now has none. 2,500 more Americans lost their job. So yes a WM opens more jobs when a store opens, but over the course of 10 years Levi has closed 60 factories eliminating 75,000 jobs. Where do these jobs go? Only to the fastest growing economy in the world - China. Communist China were Levi can go and and have someone work 130 hours a week to make jeans. WM imports $15 billion a year in goods from China. So reason number one is they close American factories and give money to what could be eventually our biggest competitor. This doesn't even explore the fact that they force the hands of other companies to do as they wish. Vlasic pickles for example which make the least profit off whole pickles are asked only to sell those at WM ... in gallon jars making one cent profit per jar. Eventually this kind of hand forcing by WM drove Vlasic pickles into bankruptcy. But as mentioned Vlasic and others can't afford to not use WM as WM makes in two months what Home Depot and other stores do in a year. They are the largest company in the world right now. You can read it for yourself here if you like

2.) That was my longest point so bear with me. Point two is that WM is costing you much more money than you think. The average hourly worker at WM makes only $18,000 a year, and many more in fact are part time employees. This means they don't qualify for WM's poor health care benefits and often times have to mooch off medicaid. Not only that, but many of WM's employees make so little they qualify for welfare. Granted everyone qualifies for welfare these days since the system is horrible. But if you're saving 20 cents on toothpaste because you shop at WM, you really aren't. Your tax dollars are also going to help pay these employees eat and generally live. Now granted if WM disappeared tomorrow we wouldn't have lower taxes, but we can fight that fight after this one. I'm tired of my money paying people that could be making enough money if their employer wasn't greedy. For a company that makes roughly $6.6 billion a year in profit their employees should not be qualifying for welfare. That's just poor leadership and management and frankly I'm tired of them taking my money at the register and on April 15th. Call me crazy but I like having my money spent the way I want to spend it. Not paying the employees of a company that provides low end products for me. It's a long report but feel free to read it on your own time

3.) Lastly and briefly since this blog is already getting a little long. WM treats it's employees unfairly. I hate unions. I hate them with every fiber in my body because they make things run inefficiently. But WM fires anyone who tries to even talk of starting a union. This is a little unfair. They shouldn't act like a communist nation or company run by a dictator. If employees want to raise new ideas or discuss things then they should be able to. I believe if WM is running things well people will decide a union is a poor idea. Also WM on average pays women employees with the same qualifications and in the same position as men an average of 6.4 percent less. I have the newspaper with this fact in it if you'd like to see it. They treat their women poorly. Now you know I don't discriminate against women. I think they should have the nicest kitchens money can buy ... just a joke ... but this is poor. They don't allow discourse amongst their employees and they treat women unfairly. The company doesn't give good health benefits, if any at all, and when they do employees often have to give 60% of their salary in order to qualify for said "benefits." Not the type of treatment you should expect from your "All-American" company. Not to mention the people they drive out of business like Mom and Pop stores and other companies like K-Mart. WM has effectively squashed all the other competition by strong arming businesses.

It's a great idea, but one that has been executed poorly. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about low priced goods. But I also like freedom of choice. I want to be able to choose if I want my rap CD censored or not. You don't get this choice at WM. I want to be able to choose whether my tax dollars go to a certain store or not. I want to be able to choose the high end jeans over the low end jeans. This is not possible at WM. I don't want to walk into WM and see it enabling people to continue being poor. I want to see people make smart choices and save money. It's not always easy and WM tries to portray the image that it is. They're slowly not only sending all of our jobs overseas, but they're also strengthening a potentially dangerous economy for the US in years to come. All these combined has helped me make the decision not to give my dollar to Wal-Mart. I choose to shop at Target, Giant Eagle, or even Marshalls or Best Buy. It's ok if my life is not the most convenient life possible.

I will say two things. This was a long blog so take your time and read it over. If you have more questions feel free to ask me. I can go into more detail, but this one is too long as is already. Secondly WM has done some good. They've run an efficient, timely, and large business. They are almost the poster child of capitalism and have done some good things. For my taste though they've done too many bad things along the way. That's why I'm taking a stand and this time it means not shopping at Communist-Mart ... even if it is the liberal thing to do.