Live Bitter For Less

 "They pay low wages, then the taxpayers pick up the tab for food stamps and Medicaid. They need to take care of their people. They need to be responsible to their workers."   *
                          
Vanessa Ferreira

The way we shop today comes with a hefty price tag. Gone are the days when locally owned, independent retailers played on a level playing field. I can recall numerous independent stores that used to populate downtown New Albany. Business for those shop owners may not have been as easy as one might think in retrospect. I didn't know any of the store owners, so I can't speak from first-hand knowledge about their financial situations. I do know that they began to wither and fade away as strip shopping centers and the malls began to assert their dominance of the American way of commerce. And I know that coincident with that displacement of local retailers by national chains, several things happened: small towns across the United States became mostly hollow shells, barely resembling their former bustling pasts, American-made goods were displaced by cheaper foreign-made products, community-focus became unfocused as more and more daily tasks were undertaken not downtown or in a neighborhood store, but out the road.

The arrival of Walmart is problematic in any community. It comes as a wave to a listing boat. Now well into the third or fourth decade of big box stores, small towns are filled with under-served customers. So, as the Walmart arrives many of the up-to-that-point survivors witness the disappearance of their remaining customer base. More business goes out the road.

Walmart's dominant size affords it a domineering role in the nation's commerce. Small manufacturers are not able to satisfy the endless appetite of the chain. So, to fill the mega-retailer's shelves production is shifted to near-slave wage production mills in China. American jobs don't go out the road, but across the sea, and meaningful environmental regulation goes out the window. This becomes a cost we all (those of us who derive our breaths, and our drinking water from the common atmosphere) must bear. And why do we bear this cost? Low, low prices of course.

Ms. Ferreira's words quoted above point out that we're all Walmart now. As Sam Walton's six heirs enjoy the sweet of low prices, we enjoy the bitter of helping the chain keep those prices low. As the hyper hypnosis of hype settles in to the nation's consciousness, and we marvel at the power of Black Friday as the steroid of choice for our economy, we should heed Ms. Ferreira's assessment, "They (Walmart) need to be responsible to their workers." I would add, so we don't have to be.

Since we are all responsible for keeping the giant afloat, I say, let's unionize the crew and let, as Henry Miller might have called it, the cosmodemonic seller pay its own bills.

A responsible retailer of Walmart's heft may not be able to undue all of the ill-effects it has loosed on the country, and unionization may not be the most direct step in that direction, but at least it's a start.

And at Walmart stores around the nation on Black Friday the giant will be challenged by union organizers and protesters supporting the union cause. A responsible step we can all take is to step away from Walmart and support those who are supporting our workers at Walmart.
*    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/21/walmart-strikes-black-friday_n_2174166.html