For those of you who are considering to use this essay as a source, be careful! As I was reading this, I couldn't help but think that it is mostly emotion-based. In other words, it lacked solid evidences to support its claim. What I'm planning to do is look up for some primary sources, such as reviews of Wal-Mart associates, graphs, statistic data. But it's pretty straightforward, though, so it can be nice start. Good luck! :D
Is It Ethical to Shop at Wal-Mart?
Notes from Bob Brownstein's Presentation
To answer this question, we have to make some decisions about our values --- specifically we have to identify those values on which we will judge an economy and its institutions and actors.
I’m assuming that this audience agrees that economies are human creations. As such they are based on one set of values or another, and we cannot escape from making normative choices about how economies should function. Even supporting laissez-faire represents a value choice.
Having been invited to participate on this panel has pushed me to organize and clarify my own thinking about economic values… and after such reflection, I am willing to offer my own rough set of personal standards. Once I state what these standards are, we can then compare WalMart to these requirements.
I call my preferred economic model --- the shared prosperity system. It is based on the following major values.
- Depending on the level of economic success of an economic system, it should provide for some basic level of material life for all people. That is - a basic standard of living. This level will change over time and circumstance. Fifty years ago, we couldn’t give everyone access to a hip replacement. Today, we can. Our objective in setting this level should be to avoid suffering, pain, degradation, sickness, premature death, etc. The obvious components of the standard of living include food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc.
- The degree of inequality in society should be constrained. I derive this standard from two sources. One is sociological -- high levels of inequality yield discord, strife, and probably violence -- which are highly undesirable outcomes. Secondly, high levels of inequality violate a value of fairness because they negate the importance of that societal cooperation that makes the high rewards for some economic actors possible.In other words, my wealth is a result of what I do and what a lot of other people do. If too much goes to me, they’re being shortchanged.
- Many improvements in technological and material prosperity are a good thing; they alleviate suffering. You can’t make artificial hips available until someone figures out how to make these devices. Institutions that create such material improvements have ethical value.
- I value the preservation of non- market institutions. The free market is an expansionist institution. It has the capacity to overwhelm other components of a culture and substitute its amoral framework for a host of existing ethical standards. From an ethical as well as a sociological perspective, I view non-market relationships and values as important -- such as the relationships between parents and children, priest and parishioner, citizen and state, resident and neighborhood or community, friend and friend. An unrestricted market weakens or destroys these non-market relationships and institutions and, hence, has unethical effects.
Now, let’s look at Wal-Mart.
- Basic standard of Living.WalMart pays low wages and appears to aggressively seeks to keep wages down.
On average, WM workers earn an estimated $8.00/hour with a 32 hour work week. This equals $256 a week or $13,312 a year. The Federal poverty level for a family of three is $14,630.
In contrast, union grocery workers earn on average 30% more.Also, it is alleged that WalMart’s personnel policies are aimed at keeping wages low. Charges have been made that older workers are laid off to bring in younger and cheaper employees. Some 40 lawsuits accuse WM of a failure to pay overtime. Accusations have also been made of widespread sex discrimination to keep a class of employees - women - at lower wages.But WalMart is not just a threat to the standard of living of its own employees. It damages the standard of living of numerous others in the economy.To begin with, it pulls wages and benefits down in other grocery stores. It lowers area standards. In some cases, it forces the closure of better paying firms. Business Week estimates for every WM supercenter that opens, two other supermarkets will close.It pressures suppliers to make products more cheaply, putting pressure on wages, causing jobs to be moved overseas. Last year, it imported 12 billion in goods from China, 10% of US imports from that nation.Benefits -- Health Care:
2/3’s of WM workers can’t afford to participate in the company health insurance plan, which costs about 20% of a worker’s paycheck. Since 1993 WM has increased the premium cost for its workers by 200%, well above the rise in cost of health insurance.Again, the effect spreads to competitors. Witness the Safeway strike. The costs of the southern California grocery strike can be considered a response to WalMart. - InequalityWalMart is a major contributor to the creation of a US economy that is characterized by enormous numbers of people trapped in low pay, no benefit, dead-end service jobs.During the 19980’s and 1990’s, with the exception of the very top of the boom, at the same time that the US economy was generating great wealth, it was also producing wage stagnation or declining wages, unprecedented inequality, and spreading poverty. Structurally, That was frequently called the hourglass economy.Since then, with more growth of the bottom of the service sector plus the outsourcing of higher paid service and hi tech jobs, the hourglass is no longer accurate, and we’re stuck with trying to devise a new metaphor. I’ve started to use one -- the Victorian gown economy. It has a smaller group of high paying jobs at the top, a corseted, thin middle class, and an enormous hoop skirt of low wage, no benefit service jobs at the bottom.Within this economy, upward mobility both within generations and between generations is become increasingly rare.In a recent Business Week article, titled “Waking Up from the American Dream,” Business Week offers the following data: In 1978 --- among adult men whose fathers were at the bottom 25% of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23% had made it to the top 25% in their lifetimes. In the first years of he 21st century, this figure has dropped to 10%.BW attributes this to the “Wal-Martinization” of the economy.
- Increased material and technological innovation and productivity.WalMart doesn’t produce new technology or innovations that improve the quality of life. It takes business from existing firms by offering the same merchandise cheaper. That’s all it does.It does increase the wealth of shoppers by allowing them to buy things at lower cost. But the majorexpenditures of a family aren’t for WalMart items; WM doesn’t sell houses, cars, or health care.How much does it help a family economically to shop at WM? Assume a low wage worker -- earning 20k a year… and let’s assume 20% of gross income is spent at WM or places where WM products are sold. WM grocery prices are 14% lower where WM competes. Savings would = $50.00/month. Another approach: Take the figure of 20 billion in savings for consumers from shopping at WM per year. Divide by 110,000,000 households = 180/year. Multiply Times 5 to find the effect on WM competitors. The result is 900 divided by 12 = 75.We’re talking about savings of $50.00 to $75.00 per month.We could do more to improve the economic well being of low income WM shoppers, and avoid the negative side-effect by simply increasing the minimum wage by $1.00 an hour.
- Non-Market institutions.WalMart is both a cultural symbol and is an economic force that proclaims free market materialism uber alles. It destroys other institutions based on relationships of human connection and solidarity -- be they neighborhood businesses or unions. WalMart helps transform people into anomic creatures whose lives are dominated by the search for bargains -- at whatever social cost. The recent case in which a crowd of WM shoppers trampled a woman in their desire to purchase a $29.00 DVD illustrates the WalMart impact on values.The history of the last century has shown what we all suspected -- that the human species has extraordinary capabilities towards good or evil, nobility or depravity. WalMart fails the test as to whether it brings out the best in us.
Conclusion
It is unethical to shop at WalMart. However refusing to shop at WalMart is an insufficient response to its gross effects on the values of shared prosperity.
You could do more, such as:
- · Support local efforts to keep WM out of communities, like Inglewood.
- · Support legislation that levels the playing field and prevents WM from forcing down standards for wages and benefits.
- such as higher minimum wage and Living Wage laws
- such as laws requiring large firms to pay for health insurance for workers
Examples are:- AB2494 Lieber - large grocery stores must indemnify gov’t for costs of providing gov’t health services to the grocery store’s workers who lack insurance.
- SB2 on the ballot in November... large firms must provide health insurance to a million uninsured California workers, including WM employees.
- 26 April 2004
- Original Link
