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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Wal-Martizing America: Money as Our God I caught this little article in the Washington Post this morning entitled "Wal-Mart Throws an Undercut at Target." Apparently, Wal-Mart is enviable of Target’s wealthier demographics (Target shoppers are estimated to have a median income of $60,000, Wal-mart the soul of moneywhile Wal-Mart customers tend to hover in the $40,000 range) and is aggressively scoping out Target’s prices in higher end items and then undercutting the prices. Wal-Mart’s tactics in an attempt to dominate the marketplace with the lowest prices, get a little more aggressive every year. Be forewarned, this is going to be a bit of a rant. I won’t shop Wal-Mart, no matter how low their prices are or how many upscale products they add to their merchandizing mix. It’s been years since I’ve stepped into one of their stores because I’ve know for some time now how Wal-Mart’s low prices are partially a result of their miserly treatment of employees and partially a result of their dominating position with vendors to ensure that they can undercut competitors’ prices. Wal-Mart is certainly a well-organized machine whose close observation of the bottom line has positioned the company as the dominate force in retail in the world and is now decimating the grocery business. But I can’t help looking at their policies and overall strategies as an indication of a Scrooge-like meanness that has overtaken America in which executive profits are behind all business decisions. This meanness ensures that the top tier of executives profit from a lack of fundamental humanity, while ordinary people continue to fall behind in quality of life issues. But what most people don’t understand is how the success of Wal-Mart has pretty much decimated the quality of life for a lot of lower income people, even those who don’t work for Wal-Mart. It began when Wal-Mart, because of its size, began to demand and get lower and lower warehouse prices from vendors, many of them overseas, cutting out American distributors completely so they could undercut all competitors when it came to price. Wal-Mart, not the actual manufacturer of goods, sets the prices they will pay. The results of this are two-fold. In order for American based manufacturers to provide Wal-Mart with goods at their price and still make profits, they had to begin to cut costs in their operations and the first cut is always in human resources. Manufacturers found that the most cost-effective way of lowing people costs was to off-shore their facilities to third world countries where salaries and benefits are a small percentage of American salaries and benefits and where environmental and work-place safety regulations where minimized. With this kind of cost-cutting, America began to lose a substantial amount of jobs, jobs that once supported the vast middle-class in this country. Jobless rates rose and those who were unemployed found that replacement jobs were at lower salaries and less benefits. The brilliance of this is that once a family loses its decent salary, the only alternative is to shop at places like Wal-Mart that offer warehouse types of prices. Wal-Mart’s mis-treatment of its employees is well known, though they claim to be invested in the welfare of their employees and argue that their benefit system is top tier for the retail industry. What is not understood is how Wal-Mart’s competitors have had to follow suit in order to stay in business. In the grocery store strike several years ago, the unionized employees of Safeway and Kroger and numerous other chains, found that salary levels and benefits were cut to enable those chains to stay competitive. The settlement also established a two-tier employee system, with new employees finding their access to health care substantially limited. The easiest way to get around giving employees health care and other benefits is to stop hiring full-time and instead staff with mostly part-time employees who have to wait longer for benefits and can be shut off from health care if they are not given enough hours in a month. What is worse is that Wal-Mart is seen as a model of how to do business. Cut your suppliers to the bone so they are forced to outsource overseas. Move from full-time to part-time employees so that you can keep salary and benefit costs low. Undercut your competitors and drive them out of business. Profits will rise and success will be proclaimed, but the inhumanity will be hidden in the name of doing “good business.” transit material for productionAnd the truth is, the soul of money rules the world and most of us are merely consumers and/or transit workers who don’t seem to matter, as Jungian psychologist, Wolfgang Giegerich would contend. He writes in an essay published online: "The economy is no longer there for the well-being of humans, but humans are there for the well-being of the production process and count only to the extent that they are needed for the advancement of production. It is expected of people that they accommodate to what the production process demands; they have to display the highest degree of mobility and readiness to retrain for new jobs. In this way it is brought out into the open that from now on humans, as a maneuverable mass or as transit material, have to be subservient to the objective needs of the production process, which is the only thing that really has a raison d'être because it is authorized by, and of course in turn subservient to, the supreme value of today, that of maximizing profit in the context of global competition." I think what is bothering me most this holiday season, is the level of meanness in the America, exhibited by companies such as Wal-Mart, but also shown by our own government’s indifference to the suffering of people, even their own. It seems that increasingly, people only matter, as Giegerich is saying, as “transit material” for the production process. Those who aren’t productive enough are the fillers of society. They get left behind in the disasters. Their pleas for betterment go unanswered, by the government, by businesses, by each of us walking into Wal-Mart looking for a bargain. Their homes aren’t going to be rebuilt in New Orleans. They won’t see an increase in the minimum wage. Their children will join the military because other opportunities are limited, and they will become the sacrifice of a nation that can’t bother to give them the right armor. All that matters is maximizing of profit. In such a view of life, myth is dead. The gods are dead. All that lives is money. Do I think that Wal-Mart initiated this decline? No, but their aggressive policies of maximizing profit and killing off competition represents an example of how America is going wrong and will ultimately decline. Are their alternatives? Certainly. Look at Costco, the fifth-largest retailer in the U.S whose philosophy runs counter to the Wal-Mart model. While Wal-Mart pays an average of $9.68 an hour, the average hourly wage of employees at Costco is $16. After three years a typical full-time Costco worker makes about $42,000, and the company foots 92% of its workers’ health insurance tab. Costco’s fundamental business idea is that treating their employees, giving them health insurance will and ensuring that they have a fair share in the profits they help generate. Executives don’t gouge the profits either. The CEO of Costco’s annual salary is $350,000, compared to about $5.3 million awarded to Wal-Mart’s CEO, Lee Scott. Ultimately, we have to decide whether we want to live in this world mythless and godless, with no respect for the humanity of others.
Poster Comment: I have no problems with money, but as St. Paul said, "The love of money [correct translation: lust] is the root of all evil."
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: All (#0)
I believe in the free market, but not corporations, which are State creations.
#2. To: YertleTurtle (#1)
I second that !
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