Wal-Mart: Benevolent or Malignant?

I grew up during the BOOM of Wal-Mart. My family loved Wal-Mart. We shopped there for all sorts of stuff. We killed time there. We ran into our neighbors and friends there. I can remember when Wal-Mart broke into the grocery business. The Supercenter. The super-heros of retail. That's what we all thought, anyways. Wal-Mart has saved us a lot of money...and a lot of time. Sam Walton and his hard-working southern angels have somehow--miraculously--saved us.

However, we now find ourselves asking if the super-hero wasn't really the villain. Here is what author Charles Fishman of The Wal-Mart Effect says in response to the question, "What is the Wal-Mart Effect?"

It's an amazing question. It's hard to know even what kind of question it is: A political question? An economic question? A moral question? A values question? The question is really shorthand for a whole set of larger questions...Is Wal-Mart good for America or bad? Is Wal-Mart itself good or bad? When we spend our money at Wal-Mart, are we helping companies and the economy and factory workers along with ourselves? Or are we just adding drops of acid to the corrosion of the very system we value?

This, essentially, is the daunting question that Fishman sets out to investigate. And he does a remarkable job of engaging the reader with great stories and helpful information, without tipping his own hand one way or another. One thing I appreciate about the way he writes is that he does not allow us to consider only half of the issue. He doesn't just throw around popular rhetoric about this super-hero / villain. He gives you all you can handle about the positive and negative implications of this retail giant. No simple apologetic. Complex. Multi-layered. Just how we like our economic, moral, and political issues.

Maybe you are not impressed with Wal-Mart and its gerth. Maybe you are a Michigander and see Meijer competing pretty well with Wal-Mart. Here are some of the rather interesting tid bits from Fishman's book to wet your appetite and to get you thinking a bit.

• Back in the early 1990's, every bottle of deodorant was sold in a box. Today, you can walk into any store and see that deodorant now comes in the flesh. Wal-Mart told its suppliers to get rid of the box, saving 10M a year--half to you and half to Wal-Mart.


• Wal-Mart entered the grocery business in about 1990 and mastered it, becoming the #1 grocer in America and now the #2 grocer in Britain. They accomplished this in less than 10 years against supermarket chains that had been masters of their domain for over 50 years. The savings? 15% on average. That's $900/yr for an average family of 4.


• It's all based on volume. Sell more. Create the taste for more. The average person spends 2G's per year at Wal-Mart. Their profit is a mere $75.


• How big? Bigger than Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Costco, KMart, and Sears combined. Each year Wal-Mart sells more by St. Patrick's day than Target sells all year long.


• Wal-Mart is almost solely responsible for taking salmon from delicacy to affordable, common meal @ $4.84/lb.

One thing is clear. If I shop at Wal-Mart, I will save money. But is that my only grid? Is this the only filter I have for deciding what I buy and where I buy it? What about issues of justice and morality? Can we hear the cries of the factory workers here on US soil? Can we hear the cry of the ocean floor wasting away because of the fish farms? Will I spend more of my money because I choose to support a company that pays its employees fair-er wages?

What is my filter? What is my grid?

I'll explore some of these questions and issues in my next couple of posts. I'd love your questions and feedback.