The Morality of Wal-Mart: Having a Critical Mind

Synthesis Essay on Wal-Mart

Submitted to: Mr. Garrioch

By: Jiyun Sung

Student ID: 111163

For: English Composition

On: Wednesday, Mars 7^th, 2012

The Morality of Wal-Mart: Having a Critical Mind

Ⅰ. Introduction

Wal-Mart, starting from 1945 as a small ‘variety store’ selling cheap panties, is now the biggest retailer in the whole world. And it has its own reasons for that- actually one single reason: low prices. From the beginning, Wal-Mart’s sole goal has been keeping the price low, lower than any other competitors. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, scrutinized every step to minimize factors that might increase the final cost, and most of such low price is achieved by cheap labor. And this fact caused a great controversy among people about what kind of influence Wal-Mart has. Is it beneficial, since it can save people’s money by keeping the price low? Or, is it unethical because of the low, ‘under minimum living’ salaries of the ‘associates?’

To answer this question, I synthesized three sources: an essay ‘The Price of Pickles’ by John Lanchester, 2006, ‘Notes form the Presentation- an Ethics at Noon’ by Bob Brownstein, 2004, and lastly, an article ‘Does Wal-Mart Destroy Communities?’ by William L. Anderson, 2004.

Ⅱ. Body

           Firstly, the most important aspect of Wal-Mart’s morality is whether it provides proper salaries for the work, or, at least, ‘some basic level of material life for all people.’ As for that matter, Bob Brownstein directly states it does not, giving specific data for its support. An average Wal-Mart worker earns $8.00 per hour for a 32 hour work week, which is less than the Federal poverty level for a family of three. The essay by John Lanchester says pretty much the same thing, mentioning the numerous ongoing lawsuits accused of underpayment and underpromotion of 1.5 billion female workers. It is even worse in other countries- for example, a seamstress in Bangladesh gets between 13 and 17 cents per hour. However, the article has a different point of view: payment for services involves mutually agreeable exchanges. No one is forced to work at Wal-Mart, it is their own choice.

           But the notes argue that the existence of Wal-Mart lowers the area standards by putting pressure on local markets to lower the prices, thus making them to lower the wages, and in some cases, even force them to close themselves. This means, the workers have no other choice but to work at Wal-Mart. There is a mention of that aspect in the essay as well; citing the book ‘The Wal-Mart Effect’ by Charles Fisherman, the author describes an incident relating the title- a gallon jar of Vlasic pickles on sale for only $2.97. The result was immediate and obvious- people buying 200,000 gallons of pickles a week! No wonder other stock markets are under heavy influence of Wal-Mart. ‘Wal-Mart is so big and so powerful that it is in effect defining its own reality,’ from the essay. It is causing wage stagnation, spreading poverty and making inequality more severe.

           Then exactly how Wal-Mart influences the community? The article says, ‘Wal-Mart enters a geographical area, and people stop shopping at little stores in order to patronize Wal-Mart,’ which is very true. A lot of mom-and-pop stores go out of business, incurring more and more empty boarded-up buildings. What the author remarks about this phenomenon are simple: it is a free market, people shouldn’t interfere such fair competition. He asserts that the hardware owner simple chose to shut down business because they were not compatible enough and thus unable to make profit. He even mentions that Wal-Mart actually improved people’s quality of life by providing a wider variety of products at a lower price. And during the process, the consumers are guaranteed of free will. However, just not breaking the law is not enough. According to an economist Stephan Goetz, cited in ‘The Price of Pickles,’ the presence of Wal-Mart unequivocally raised family poverty rates in US counties during the 1990s, which implies that the damage Wal-Mart does on the local shop owners is greater than the amount people can save due to the cheap cost. In short, Wal-Mart does more harm than good to the local community. Again, in the notes of the presentation, the author gives statistical data. Wal-Mart grocery prices are 14% on average lower than where Wal-Mart competes. Through reasonable calculation (I will skip the specifics), it turned out that money Wal-Mart takes is much greater than the money people in the region can save. The look of the empty, deserted streets does not really look good either.

In addition, Wal-Mart affects not only the economy, but also people’s minds. The biggest retailer in the world has the power to ‘destroy other institutions based on relationships of human connection and solidarity’, according to the presentation. People abandon their neighborhood businesses or unions because of Wal-Mart and its 14% cheaper products. Wal-Mart’s motto, ‘Always Low Prices,’ has stroke people’s mind hard. It can be easily seen on videos of Wal-Mart on sale season common on the internet; crowd rushing in the door like a group of hungry monsters, trampling a woman in their desire to purchase a $29.00 DVD. Wal-Mart debases the important values in the society.

Ⅲ. Conclusion

           People should restrain themselves from shopping at Wal-Mart. Overall, William L. Anderson, the author of the article, advocates the principle of global capitalism. It can be easily derived from his mention of ‘purposeful behavior.’ As long as Wal-Mart acts within the boundary of law, things Wal-Mart do does not matter to him. It is a fair game. However, there are more important values in this society than free competition.

           In the essay ‘The Price of Pickles’, John Lanchester refers to the need of an ideological antagonist- in this case, Communism. Are we ethically superior to Communism? The society became a lot richer, but we haven’t improved morally from the point Communism collapsed; people simply sought their way to make more money. And Wal-Mart can be a symbol of such. What he tries to say is that we should not be so complacent- it is necessary to question our ethical backgrounds over and over again, considering Communism and ways to adopt its advantages. If people let Wal-Mart get bigger and bigger and do whatever they want- and they are already a great latent threat to our society-, things will get out of control. We should protect the lower class people, giving them the opportunity to change their social status by improving the salaries, health care, and other basic form of life supports.

           To achieve that goal, simply not buying things at Wal-Mart is not enough. The notes from the presentation mentions the specific methods, such as supporting local efforts to keep Wal-Mart out of communities, like Inglewood, and supporting legislation that levels the playing field and prevents Wal-Mart from forcing down standards for wages and benefits. What’s more is to have a critical mind on such inhuman policies of Wal-Mart and other extreme-capitalist companies and seek for new solutions. That would be enough.