Wal-Mart Cognitive Dissonance

From a Plain Deal­er Edi­to­r­i­al:

There’s much to crit­i­cize about Wal-Mart’s busi­ness prac­tices, but let’s be hon­est: Wal-Mart is already in this mar­ket. City res­i­dents reg­u­lar­ly trek to its sub­ur­ban stores. Why should­n’t they be able to shop clos­er to home — in stores that employ their neigh­bors and pay tax­es to sup­port city ser­vices — if they choose? A full-ser­vice Wal-Mart at Steel­yard Com­mons sure­ly will hurt some city mer­chants, includ­ing gro­cery stores. Any new enter­prise may hurt some­one’s busi­ness; that’s called com­pe­ti­tion.

This is not much more than an argu­ment for con­ve­nience, while at the same time stat­ing that there are local busi­ness­es already fill­ing the need. It also seems to be say­ing that if Wal-Mart hurts local busi­ness­es then that is good for Cleve­land. Right.

And in Sam Ful­wood III’s col­umn:

“Fight­ing Wal-Mart and keep­ing real jobs in Cleve­land was a top pri­or­i­ty for us,” he said. “Yes, they seem to have got­ten by us for the moment, but we’re still going to fight them.”

Nah, that bat­tle is like­ly over. Give Wal-Mart its lau­rels and watch the small neigh­bor­hood busi­ness­es die.

What is all this giv­ing up crap? What is all this spread­ing our legs for ubiq­ui­tous big box­es? “Oh, please, Wal-Mart, smack me around and treat me like a two-bit whore! Move in with me, I’ll pay for your every need, just give it to me good.”

Bah.

Thus ends my unusu­al burst of rant­i­ng.

6 thoughts on “Wal-Mart Cognitive Dissonance”

  2. I sure­ly hope Wal­mart weeds out all the small busi­ness­es that seem to be the sight of rob­beries and shoot­ings.

    Those places are real­ly good for the local neigh­bor­hood. You can buy beer, cig­a­rettes, your lot­tery tick­ets and a bot­tle of ketchup for $3.95 when it’s a $1.99 at Wal­Mart.

  3. Yeah, how dare Wal­Mart come in and hire 1000 peo­ple! How dare they pro­vide prod­ucts at low­er prices, rais­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing for every­one! They don’t pay what you think they should, so you’d rather see those peo­ple stay unem­ployed.

    Sor­ry, but I find the attacks on Wal­Mart to be noth­ing more than elit­ism.

  4. Matt,

    I can see where you are com­ing from, I thought the same thing a while back but then I checked out a few things like how can they offer such great prices? Well they force their sup­pli­er to give Wall-Mart price reduc­tions each time con­tract nego­ti­a­tions are renewed. It is as if each time you are due for a raise your com­pa­ny low­ered your salary. The result is low­er prices but the sup­pli­ers need to also make mon­ey so it starts a cir­cle of out­sourc­ing. lay­ing off, mov­ing plants over­seas. The jobs that are offered are retail jobs with an empha­sis on part-time work­ers, inad­e­quate ben­e­fits and low-wages. And part-time Wal-Mart work­ers are not eli­gi­ble for fam­i­ly med­ical cov­er­age and become eli­gi­ble for indi­vid­ual cov­er­age after two years with the com­pa­ny. Wal-Mart crit­ics con­tend its wages and ben­e­fits are so poor a big­ger share of its work­ers must rely on assis­tance fund­ed by tax­pay­ers. Now, that is mon­ey straight out of our pock­ets for fam­i­lies to take care of their chil­dren, these are Amer­i­can chil­dren of work­ing fam­i­lies. We are shop­ping our­selves out of jobs? Is that the lega­cy that you want for your kids?

  5. Hi Daniel­la,

    A thought­ful reply to Matt — but a ques­tion. Are you as opposed to Lowe’s, Tar­get, HD, et al that wish to locate in CLE? Your com­ments, please.

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