Notes From My Knapsack 12-11-05
Jeff Gill

What’s Up With Wal-Mart?

Bashing "Mall-Wart" isn’t new, but the latest rounds of piling on are a bit puzzling to me.
First, full disclosure. I own no stock in Wal-Mart, have never worked in one, and loathe going to them, as I have an active distaste for mob scenes of all sorts, whether sports-related or retail-generated. No matter how you slice it, big spaces filled with too many people make me edgy.
In fact, I grieve somewhat that the Heath facility will soon be super-sized into a Wal-Mart Supercenter, echoing its Newark North 21st St. cousin. But for myself only.
You see, I think of the older, smaller store as a third less crowded (it may not be, by the square foot) and twice as easy to get in and out of, and I want that because I go regularly, since I use things like toilet paper, light bulbs, and Starbucks coffee regularly.
So like 8 of 10 Americans, I shop at Wal-Mart. I don’t go there for groceries, which is the main development involved in becoming a "supercenter." I buy odd and strange things that places like Kroger and Ross’ Market provide more readily and at perfectly reasonable prices, given that I am buying unreasonable things (filo dough, dal tadka, couscous).
But here’s why, even as a confirmed Wal-Mart avoider in much of my own shopping, I want to stand up for Sam Walton’s modern successors.
A study out of New York University recently has shown that, for lower income shoppers, the impact on their food and staples budget can be as much as 25%, and that’s downwards. Yes, working at Wal-Mart isn’t a fast track to supporting a family, but most service industry front-line jobs aren’t, and little things like health insurance are actually more accessible at Big Blue (didn’t that used to be IBM?) than they are at most other hourly wage employers. You can get that key benefit, while your wages are certainly lower than at other grocery chains: but virtually all of that savings is passed along to consumers.
What do you think Wal-Mart’s profit margin is? Many folk say "30, 40, 50%, huh?" Try 3.5%.
What makes me, as a person deeply involved in poverty and crisis issues for our community, ready to take some flack on behalf of a store I prefer to avoid and could easily afford to not ever go to for paper towels, patterned or not, is what happens when you look at the real impact of a Wal-Mart type operation, and this is true for almost all of the deep discounters. The total savings to lower income families in the US of just this one chain (granted, the biggest of them all) in consumer spending is larger than the total of federal Food Stamp program expenditures. Poor people in America get more back into their budget by way of savings on the stuff they gotta buy (let’s leave DVD players out for the moment) than they get from the Earned Income Tax Credit. This is an over 50 billion benefit to lower income Americans.
So what is my point if I were to join one of the nascent protest movements or boycotts on Wal-Mart? That I can afford to be overcharged for shampoo and aspirin? That the poor should eat cake rarely from a local bakery rather than buy cheap cake mix, milk, and eggs in the Barn O’ Commerce? Sounds like reverse snobbery to me.
In a few weeks, I want to mock the myth of consumer choice, which the big box stores paradoxically do not provide, all their merry claims this time of year to the contrary. For now, I will ruefully appreciate the big changes in store down in Heath, suspecting as I do based on the hard facts that more Licking County residents who need a boost will get one, and I will have to edge through larger crowds to find my minty dental floss.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your shopping tales of woe or wonder to disciple@voyager.net.