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Today, I once again made the intrepid journey to my least favorite place - Walmart, or housewife hell as I often call it. I endured the same old guttural search for a spot to park my car, taking care not to run over the weak and weary of the world and finally coming to rest alongside a rusty 1989 Ford pickup and one of those nameless hulking SUV’s.

The same greeter smiled unconvincingly at me and uttered: “Welcome to Walmart!” as I winced imagining what sinuous path had led this poor soul to this destiny. Right then, I decided to write this post - right there, right then - for all the victims of Walmart’s insidious machinations.

My greatest friend, confidant and companion has repeatedly asked me why I hate Walmart so much. My full answer is far too long to put to page, but basically Walmart represents the fall of western civilization to me. Some of you are already saying: “Oh no, Phil has lost it now.” but I intend to elaborate and direct your attention just a little toward what I think is evidence in support of this view. I think a simple list will suffice to direct correct thinking about the largest employer in the world first. (partially derived from the Walmart the Movie site)

Workers or Slaves

• Walmart Wages - Walmart drives down retail wages $3 billion per year - in 2001 the average sales associate made just $13,861 or about $4,000 below the poverty level in the U.S.

• Walmart Employee Health Care - 5 percent of associates and 22 percent of their children are insured under some public assistance program. Reportedly employees are encouraged to seek public assistance. In my state alone (Georgia) there are over 10,000 Walmart employee’s kids on state assistance.

• Wailing of the Masses - Walmart currently faces lawsuits in 31 states over wage and hour abuses involving hundreds of thousands of workers - that is 100’s or thousands! If tens of thousands of them are legitimate - then their cry should really be heard late at night by us all.

• Slaves and Beasts of Burden - Walmart is settling a Federal allegation for $11 million claiming they used illegal immigrants to clean their stores (I have actually seen this).

• Women’s Rights Abuse - A class action lawsuit for discrimination against over 1.5 MILLION female employees.

• Walmart Sweatshops- Chinese workers are paid as little as 28 cents per hour, work 7 days a week and are subjected to inhumane treatment. Sometimes these workers life in community houses essentially equipped with a bed and a communal lavatory.

• Personal Observations - I am actually in amazement that so many of these ‘associates”, in my opinion, act so cordially and are so helpful. My overall impression of the average worker I talk to or see is that each of them have a look about them that cries: “I don’t stand a chance.” This is perhaps the most damning aspect of what this company is doing - reducing human beings to hapless smurfs without hope.

Walmart - Community Savior?

• $86 Million per year - The money Walmart cost taxpayers in California due to health and welfare assistance according to the UC Berkley Labor Center.

• $4.7 Billion Dollars - The adjusted reduction in retail labor wages since the release of the film: The High Cost of Low Price.

• $1.5 Billion Dollars- Estimated combined costs to provide ancillary support for Walmart employees including: housing, tax credits, title one expenses, free or reduced lunches, additional health care costs and low income energy assistance.

• $1 Billion - Subsidies that Walmart stores received nation wide. Individual stores receive low cost financing and incentives for just locating stores in cities and towns.

• $5.25 Million - Fines Walmart has paid for EPA violations in 12 states (or more).

• $50,000 - Walmart’s average charitable output per store to communities. The public assistance cost of each store is nearly 10 times that amount. This is totally discounting the loss of local small business infrastructure, social, cultural and “real” community these stores effect.

• $7.8 Million - The amount of revenue Walmart Supercenters sucked out of small/family owned businesses in their hosted towns in Maine - their first year of operation.

• 2 to 1 - The number of local grocery stores that close each time a Walmart moves in.

• Personal Observations - In every town I have lived in over the past 15 years literally dozens of vacant stores sit where once thriving specialty businesses once operated. In the town I live in now, no less than 15 stores are either closed or going out of business. Some of these stores are not even in direct competition with Walmart, but are dependent on traffic patterns.

• Still more -The most damnable fallacy of “Walmart as champion of the community” is that the money spent there does not filter back into the community - a huge chunk of it goes to the Waltons and stockholders. Local businesses typically recirculate this revenue back through the local economy, but these monies now are diverted to this corporate cow’s blood sucking, idiot, money grubbing stockholders.

Quality Is Job One

Walmart had 10,000,000 items recalled for lead contamination in 2007 alone. Walmart’s products are far inferior to those we used to see on the shelves of local businesses. From steroid injected beef to frozen peaches and inferior electronics, the place is just riddled with either mediocre of sub-par seconds caused either intentionally or due to production/cost pressures.

Made in China is stamped on nearly every product on the shelves and has really come to mean “cheap” in it most derogatory connotation. Sure you can return anything and wait in line for half an hour, but how do you return a steak that tastes like shoe leather? The quality is simply not there, especially for anyone who really understands or has seen what quality is. The Web is strewn with complaints and horror stories about Walmart’s supposed quality.

Fabulous 5 of Forbes

The Walton’s, Alice, Jim, Helen, John T. and S. Robson have an estimated worth of around $100 billion dollars. They occupy the number 4 position (together) of the Forbes 400 richest people at around 18-19 billion dollars each - behind Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Paul Allen of Microsoft fame. I can never say enough about how little I regard these people. I mentioned slavery early on in this article, not to inflame old scars but to point out what these people are actually doing.

How is a human being more enslaved, via shackles and the whip or thru economic necessity? There is no effective difference when the end result is no hope or one so dim that even that plantation slave could have sought escape more easily. I know people who work at Walmart, they live in abject poverty - unable to do much more than give their money back to their employer in the same way workers did the ‘company store” in the 19th century. Beyond the cold stoic cruelty of sweatshops, child labor, ruptured economies and robber baron business tactics - there is a sinister and evil inhumanity in any employer however large or small who could either witness or turn a blind eye to this human sacrilege.

Conclusion

In my trip today I had that same epiphany I have had many times as I looked about the store. Staring up at the heaping mounds of virtually worthless crap stacked metaphorically to heaven’s gate, I could not help but feel ashamed. A whole country, and now a world so enamored with saving (seemingly for no one really ever saves anything) a few pennies or dollars at a human cost that surely evokes tears from God almighty. You may ask: “Well, Phil why do you even go there then?”, and my answer would be: “because there is no place left in town to buy freaking dog food! “

These people are the neo-taskmasters of a whole race of enslaved laborers and the moneylenders to a new society of careless, selfish, self absorbed, stressed out idiots. Convenience and the worst kind of economic propaganda are the tools that are destroying America - and soon the whole world. Hell, price has never even really been a consideration to me - quality and beauty have always been my determining drives - and I am no rich man. Walmart and the Waltons represent a world none of us ever envisioned as children. This type of business is about squeezing the sweat out of all people in an effort to supply essentially garbage to a faceless group of rats, conditioned to believe that cheaper is better.

Hell people, weren’t we all told that nothing good comes cheap? In the America I grew up in John Wayne would have sashayed up to the Walton’s private bunker with his ivory handle Colt 45 and demanded: “All right you money grubbin Son’s of butches, come on out and don’t make me come in after-ya.”

Postscript for a lady: The reason I hate Walmart (or anything like it) is that is represents everything I have deplored in my life. Cruelty, greed, mediocrity, falseness, unsustainable growth, cowardice, deceit, excess, inhumanity and the pursuit by a few to take advantage of the many. They do not simply demean employees and the hapless but also diminish our power to reason what true value is.

If we cannot tell a fine watch or refined workmanship from hurried - dread production of necessity, then we have lost something irreplaceable. The Walmart mentality propagates the idea that more crap will make us happy. I can literally hold a scrap of cloth in this store and feel the anguish of the person who made it - this is a detestable gift sometimes, to be able to see the end of things.

Note: Also, check out Charley Cray’s great article about the war Walmart is waging on America.