Say Anything Blog

From Daniel Weintraub via Damnum Cum Injuria:

We are supposed to hate Wal-Mart because the company is huge, nonunion, pays low wages and squeezes suppliers until they scream. The prospect of Wal-Mart invading the grocery business by opening 40 California superstores next year is the only thing that supermarket owners and their workers agree upon: It's bad...

Suppose you were shopping for a new lawnmower and went to your nearest hardware store to take a look at the selection. Say a buddy went with you. You see a mower you like for $299. Your buddy kind of likes it, too. So you approach the store owner with a proposal. If you buy two, will he sell them to you for $275 each? If the owner agrees, do you feel as if you have exploited him? Of course not. You saved a few bucks by using a little extra leverage to your advantage...

A recent independent survey determined that Wal-Mart's grocery prices are 17 percent to 39 percent lower than the company's competitors. And California's supermarket industry was a $46 billion enterprise in 2002. That means the state's residents stand to gain between $8 billion and $18 billion if Wal-Mart enters the fray and drives down prices here as it has every place else the company has been allowed to compete.

Those savings would go disproportionately to middle-class and low-income Californians, for whom supermarket purchases soak up a relatively larger share of family income. And those people will then spend those extra dollars on their other needs, creating jobs in other industries that did not exist before.

So for the sake of 250,000 grocery store clerks and baggers, and their employers, the other 35 million people in this state are asked to agree to pay billions of dollars more than they ought to for the necessities of life, and to deprive themselves of choices that could make their lives better. You don't have to be a Wal-Mart shopper to see that this is not a bargain that makes sense.

Nobody likes a winner. Look at the New York Yankees. They are the most successful and most profitable team in baseball. Year after year they manage to put excellent teams on the playing field while other teams struggle to find talent. Is the owner of the Yankees, George Steinbrenner, praised for his ability to run his team effectively and efficiently? Heck no, he's victimized by vague accusations of "cheating" and criticized for not resting on his laurels once in a while and giving another team the chance to win.

This isn't little league any more. If you want to compete you had better play to win.

Wal-Mart is the epitome of our capitalist ideals. As Mr. Weintraub states in his article, competition from Wal-Mart may spell disaster for competitors but in the end the average citizen wins. Cheaper products mean more money left in the pockets of consumers. Do you know what consumers do when they have more money in their pockets? They spend it. When did consumers spending more money become a bad thing?

Albertsons and Safeway would have us believe that 250,000 of their employees would lose their jobs if Wal-Mart were allowed to compete with them, but that figure is misleading. By opening forty new stores wouldn't Wal-Mart be hiring quite a few people to offset that number? Plus, with the lower prices, caused by the competition from Wal-Mart, consumers in California are going to have more money to spend in other places creating even more jobs. As was alluded to in the quoted article, why should the 39 million citizens of California have to pay higher prices for their groceries so a small percentage of grocery workers don't have to change jobs?

Hey, if I owned a grocery store I'd hate to have Wal-Mart move in too but when we try and stop free trade and capitalism from taking place we're all going to lose.