Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart?

I was going to write about the air show last Saturday where I got super sunburned, but there's no point without pictures, and since my camera is a piece of .... it doesn't take good pictures, I had to rely on my dad taking good pictures.  Since he's out teaching a geology field camp for five more weeks, I'll have to grab the pictures from him over the weekend.  So that's coming up.

I had a conversation recently with some friends about Wal-Mart, where I was the only one who was not of the opinion that Wal-Mart is evil.  It kind of threw me off, since this is the kind of conversation I'm used to having with my crazy liberal hippie friends at Missouri State and my former  coworkers at Barnes & Noble.  I love defending conservative principles, but it's unsettling to have to defend them against other conservatives.

I actually wrote and rewrote a long essay on why Wal-Mart isn't evil, but I think something short would be more effective, especially considering the vast audience of my blog.  I've got to say something, though, since hearing people rip on Wal-Mart bugs me about as much as people who support high minimum wage or who aren't at least irritated by overtime laws.  Why is it so cool to hate Wal-Mart?  Because just like buying recycled paper or poison-filled compact fluorescent light bulbs (or driving a Prius for that matter), hating Wal-Mart makes people feel good about themselves.  The problem is the way Wal-Mart is portrayed by liberals in government and media.  Wal-Mart is an amazing success story, and just like McDonalds, Microsoft and Halliburton is a whipping boy for all of Big Business.

It's true that after a Wal-Mart comes to a small town, many local businesses fail; but the missing factor in this story is the choice of the consumer.  What this means is that enough consumers decide that they can be better served by Wal-Mart than a local business that they change the way they shop.  This isn't the first time this has happened.  Cheap shipping provided by the invention of the railroad, combined with competitively priced mail order catalogues such as Sears Roebuck, threatened local retail business in the 1800s.  The invention of cars allowed people to travel to other cities for better products or better prices.  Shopping malls came in the 60s, and resulted in abandoned downtown areas, as the malls pulled consumers away from downtown stores.  Large retail chains such as Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Target appeared at about the same time.  These are all just new phases in the retail business, and like every other, stores that can adapt will survive and those that can't will provide a vacuum for new businesses that can.  Should we punish Wal-Mart for being more successful than small stores?  Maybe, if it was true that Wal-Mart was bad for a community.  If so, then the punishment should come from consumers, and not from government.

Government has tried (and continues to try) to stop the spread of Wal-Mart, and it always turns out to be a bad idea..  For example, in Chicago recently forbade Wal-Mart from opening any stores.  The result was that Wal-Mart opened a store just outside city limits in Evergreen Park in a very poor mostly black neighborhood, and received a record 25,000 applications for employment.  Most of these came from Chicago residents who were suffering from high unemployment caused by the city's anti-business policies.  Other residents were glad that they no longer had to drive many miles just to find prices they could afford.  What did Jesse Jackson have to say about this?  "It's Kool-Aid and cyanide. The Kool-Aid is the cheap prices. The cyanide is the cheap wages. The cyanide is the cheap health benefits."  Apparently 25,000 people were earning so little that even a job at Wal-Mart would be an improvement, had so little health benefits that even a Wal-Mart health plan would be an improvement.  The increased buying power that results from the lower prices is a benefit that is never factored into the story by the media.  The reason the government hates it is that a capitalist organization is succeeding where liberalism is failing.

A similar situation has happened in Vermont, which has fought for a long time to keep Wal-Mart out, and all the while Vermont residents take their business to Wal-Mart anyway, meaning a loss of tax revenue for Vermont.  Wal-Mart is a huge benefit to Evergreen Park, and could have been for Chicago.  Do they think that lower prices will mean lower tax revenue?  If so, they should think again; people don't spend less shopping at Wal-Mart, instead they get more for their money.  Even Rexburg suffers from this.  Wal-Mart has expressed interest in expanding to a Supercenter here, and met resistance from the anti-business city council (Walgreens has to struggle constantly against them as well), so we don't get a Supercenter.  Broulim's and Albertsons prices are such that when gas was $3/gallon (I need to revise this, now that it's $4) Kate and I estimated that if we planned to spend $90 or more on groceries the savings at Wal-Mart in Idaho Falls outweighed the cost of about three gallons of gas.  So Idaho Falls gets my sales tax money, instead of Rexburg.

What about quality?  Broulim's quality is the same as Wal-Mart's (especially produce, it's hit or miss whether the tomatoes will be rotten or perfect, and I haven't seen good avocados at Broulim's in forever), but the prices are higher, since it's a local chain.  Albertsons prices are even higher, but you get what you pay for.  $1.99 for a small avocado, but they're always excellent.  If I could afford to shop at Albertsons I would, but decent avocados for a decent price is better than perfect ones I can't afford.  Other than produce, Wal-Mart also has a much wider selection than other stores, and I rarely have complaints about the quality.

Of course there's still the complaint about local businesses failing, but the existence of Big Box Retailers is just another example of change.  We can never expect things to be static, we can only prepare for and adapt to change.  Small shops aren't capable of handling the needs of a large population, so instead they need to adapt to cater to the wants of small segments of population, those who can afford it.  Meanwhile, I'm glad I can afford anything at all, and it's only because of Wal-Mart.

Just a few more numbers before I end my rant.  A study by Global Insight (admittedly commissioned by Wal-Mart) estimates that Wal-Mart creates a net 210,000 jobs nationally and saves working families more than $2,500 per year.  That essentially turns a $20,000/year salary into a $22,500/year salary.  Another study done at the University of Missouri (not commissioned by Wal-Mart) estimates that in the short term a Wal-Mart adds 100 retail jobs at the county level, 50 of which disappear in the long term.  That's a net gain of 50 jobs, not a bad thing if you're having trouble finding a job.  The Washington Post stated that "Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion per year."

No one is forcing anyone to shop at Wal-Mart, no one is forcing anyone to stop spending money on local business.  The idea that Wal-Mart (or Big Business in general) is evil is a premise of socialism, and we conservatives need to stop accepting the premises of the left.  This applies to Wal-Mart, global warming (hint hint, McCain), minimum wage, the role of government, the list goes on.  If you actually read this, sorry about the rant!  Go ahead and tell me how wrong I am, and why I should hate Wal-Mart, too.  I'll try to find something more positive to write about next time.