Wal-Mart has become the premier retail giant in the United States. With this transition from contender to champion, there has been an increasingly fervid debate regarding both the legality and morality of Wal-Mart’s stranglehold on the American consumer’s income.
Wal-Mart’s power has gone unchecked to a sufficient extent that it is unhealthy for trade and for the American worker. It should be separated as a monopoly not only to promote legitimate competition in the industry but to stem the progress of dangerous corporate practices.
What follows is an opinion that will not vilify Wal-Mart or its employees and executives, as that is not a useful interpretation of current events. It is not an evil corporation; it is just a corporation, and it behaves as any other in its position would.
Nonetheless, it has faults proportional to its size. And one should, in lieu of value judgments, pay attention to the good of society according to the concepts of antitrust enforcement. The traditional guideline with which we are all familiar is the concept of monopoly price control, whereby goods are abnormally costly for you and me.
This is certainly not the case with Wal-Mart, and I admit to shopping there quite frequently. College students of very modest income should do so without shame. After all, no one gains in the long-term from my paying more to a relatively inefficient company seemingly doomed to failure.
But there is another, seldom-cited application of antitrust concepts — as a bulwark against political interference from a corporate entity. In this way, Wal-Mart is in violation, as it has financed ballot initiatives and lobbied representatives nationwide to restructure zoning laws to allow for a massive recent proliferation of “Super Centers.”
This includes the manipulation of zoning specifically to bypass historical sites and zone near competitors to drive them out of business. Again, I find none of this egregious in any subjective way (it is apparently how you stay no. 1), but such a widespread employ of political influence is unquestionably dangerous.
As for the prices we all love so much, let’s explore the cost-cutting methods that keep the off-brand Cheerios so beautifully cheap.
My estimation of the most pressing danger of Wal-Mart is its treatment of more than one million members of the American workforce. Compared to the average unionized sales clerk, Wal-Mart employees earn an average of 40 percent less and receive scant health benefits. In fact, certain Wal-Mart stores threatening rigorous unionization by its employees have been closed by corporate management.
The attitude of many is that they should simply work somewhere else, but a big part of being the only show in town is that you’re the only show in town. If Winn-Dixie goes under, Wal-Mart wages start to look pretty good to its former crew.
But what is so often discarded (most recently by those who responded unfavorably to my treatment of minimum wage) is the fact that labor is not the only cost in business. It seems to me that Wal-Mart’s accumulating strength comes less from the exploitation of employees and more from fierce negotiations with suppliers, who are increasingly based overseas.
Wal-Mart’s annual revenues comprise approximately 2 percent of the GDP of the United States, but only about .002 percent of its global sales originate from goods produced in the United States.
What’s more, you can bet that the behemoth is watching hungrily the proposals of worker amnesty for immigrants.
In Wal-Mart, we have the makings of many American illnesses — an increasingly impoverished workforce, the movement overseas of manufacturing centers, and the institution of foreign labor.
This is a problem best solved by aggressive legislation, and these are, unfortunately, connections that the average voter has not yet explored when stocking up on Hungry Man. If this remains the rule, there will always be a Wal-Mart — always.
