Anyone who knows me knows that I despise Wal-Mart. I wish I could have written something as wonderfully succinct as this but hey, someone did and that's what's important.
Wal-Mart is Georgia's largest private employer. Guess what? Georgia's PeachCare for Kids (a health care program for uninsured children) covers fourteen times (fourteen fuckin' times) more children of Wal-Mart employees than employees of any other company in the state.
The way I understand it, the people of Georgia, while saving money at Wal-Mart and padding the already soft pockets of the Walton family, are paying the same amount or more for their products that they would have paid a small business owner because they will be paying for the health care of these children with their tax dollars. This is a lovely little cycle, because the person paying the shitload of taxes resents the poor person who can't afford to insure their kid instead of resenting the asshole screwing both of them over. But think about it. The people at Wal-Mart are figuring out ways to exploit legal loopholes to make sure that other people do not get a fair break in life. And that's just Americans. We're not even going to talk about the copious amounts of jizz that Wal-Mart sprays on people in China and India.
Wal-Mart says that it can offer lower prices basically because of lower overhead. If they stopped with the slave labor, the underpaying of female employees, and actually offered their employees medical, dental, and health insurance, they would have to raise their prices. This would probably place them on the same competitive plane as any other retailer. If that happened, Wal-Mart would cease to be the economic monster that it is and a handful of people would not be disgustingly, obscenely rich. No, that would mean that lots of people had a better shot at being more comfortable. And what kind of crappy world would that be?!
It is easy to assume that ordinary people can't do anything to change how large corporations are ruling the world. But ordinary people are the ones who support those corporations. All a person has to do is go somewhere else or at the very least, do without a two-dollar bucket of pickles. It really is that simple. Wal-Mart is not the only corporate giant that is sucking the spinal fluid out of our economy, but it is (arguably) the biggest wolf sleeping in Grandmother's bed. It sells America's own bullshit back to itself. On one hand, I find that extremely ironic and amusing. On the other hand, speaking as an adult female who still suffers from the effects of severe malnutrition and inadequate health care as a child, my empathy for other children emphatically overwhelms any part of me that can remain detatched from such a wool-pulling.
This isn't even digging that deeply. You can find any number of crappy reasons why you shouldn't go back for seconds at the Wal-Mart Shit Buffet. And bring a shovel from aisle 10.
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Schizophelia Jones
