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Despite its critics, Wal-Mart is beneficial to all
By: Chris Fisher
Issue date: 10/26/05 Section: Opinion


If the book "Chicken Soup for the Corporate Soul" was to be written, at least half the chapters would be about Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has done so much good in their pursuit of wealth. It's beyond me how rational people can still criticize them.

Even before Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart had trucks and supplies lined up ready for distribution. Wal-Mart contributed 30 million dollars productively. Mini Wal-Marts were set up and free supplies were given to those in need. It was the government who squandered time and money to do almost nothing.

An Oakland, Calif. Wal-Mart received 11,000 job applications for 400 openings before they even opened. The city, ravaged by another storm, anti-business policies, was badly in need of jobs.

Wal-Mart's average pay in that area is $10.82. The most moral thing they could do would be to lower wages and hire more people. But you won't find the anti-Wal-Mart mob advocating that.

Despite what the anti-Wal-Mart bigots tell you, Wal-Mart stores have a history of reinvigorating local communities, bringing new businesses to town and closing down greedy and unproductive local monopolists.

The anti-Wal-Mart zealots go through extreme measures to lie and mislead people. One pro-Union anti-Wal-Mart Web site claims of Wal-Mart labor: "Clothing sewn in China is usually done by young women, 17 to 25 year old (at 25 they are fired as 'too old') forced to work seven days a week, often past midnight for 12 to 28 cents an hour, with no benefits." Maybe I am missing something here: if the working conditions are so bad, then why is firing them a bad thing?

What the anti-Wal-Mart bigots won't tell you is that people engage in sweat shop labor because that is their best option. The best thing for these people is to buy more of their products and help lift them out of poverty.

Most criticisms of Wal-Mart depend on anti-market fallacies like this. Al Norman's book "The Case Against Wal-Mart" is so full of economics illiteracy, it was painful to read. Two questions destroy almost every argument in his book: "Why is that bad?" and "Is that Wal-Mart's fault or government's fault."

Of all the scummy things Norman did, he portrayed illegal immigrants as if they were the lowest form of life. Norman also criticizes Wal-Mart for hiring illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants, especially if they are working for less than minimum wage, are just in pursuit of a better life.

Even less than minimum wage is better than their previous situation. Wal-Mart should be praised for hiring illegal immigrants and by-passing self-righteous American laws.

I don't have the space to refute all Norman's other emotion based nonsense but basic economics reading would do that. If only Wal-Mart carried good economics books.


Reach columnist Chris Fisher at cfisher@usd.edu.