 "Photo: Gonzaga University")
Since the beginning of the semester I've found countless things that I've needed. Plastic hangers, cups and plates and cleaning supplies are all staples that I need to find cheaply and quickly. Again and again, Wal-Mart has provided everything I need at execeptionally low prices in one convenient location.
Brady Smith wants us to believe that we're losing something by shopping at Wal-Mart (Wal-Mart's Cheap Ruins, Sept. 30, 2005), but her accusations are groundless. Despite being the nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart is not a monopoly. In fact, Wal-Mart holds less than half the market share in consumer staples.
Wal-Mart has, though, saved American consumers an estimated $20 billion last year alone. Why pay more for exactly the same product somewhere else, while Wal-Mart can give it to you for pennies on the dollar?
Wal-Mart has been scrutinized by the media for complaints of discrimination and other class-action lawsuits. We would have to assume that with over 3,700 stores nationwide that at least a few incidents would arise, as they would with any business. These incidents are isolated and do not reflect on the business as a whole.
In fact, Wal-Mart's employees are about 60 percent female, and over 40 percent of its managers, including professional positions like pharmacists and optometrists, are women. Wal-Mart also offers healthcare to all employees, with premiums starting at under $40 a month for individuals.
Most employees work full-time, which is especially notable in a retail industry where generally no more than 40 percent of a store's employees are full time. Even more notable is the fact that healthcare is offered both to full and half time employees.
Smith asserts that Wal-Mart costs American taxpayers money, as some Wal-Mart employees receive public assistance. In short, Smith is blaming Wal-Mart for offering help to impoverished people. Wal-Mart creates thousands of new jobs every year (an estimated 100,000 in 2005) and these jobs provide a wage to workers who might not be able to find a job elsewhere. When it comes down to it, do you think the impoverished would rather work at Wal-Mart, or not work at all?
Wal-Mart, in fact, has been exceptionally good to our nation. In 2005, Wal-Mart gave over $170 million in charitable donations. Wal-Mart has raised over $300 million for the Children's Miracle Network, paying for cancer treatments, MRIs and heart valve replacements. Wal-Mart donated $2.5 million towards tsunami relief in Southeast Asia, and has donated $17 million towards Hurricane Katrina disaster relief, not to mention the thousands of dollars worth of goods donated by local stores during the crisis.
In 2003, Forbes magazine named Wal-Mart one of the most philanthropic companies in the nation. Wal-Mart is not only an American institution, it is a haven for bargain seekers nationwide. Instead of condemning Wal-Mart for wrongs it hasn't committed, we should be praising Wal-Mart, both for their constant generosity as well as their low prices, always.
Robert Cowan is a senior at Gonzaga.
is a member of the 
1 comments
When one business or company dominates its area and squeezes out all its competition, the result is the consumer does not have a free choice, and inevitably the price of it's products or services will increase, and the 'Monopoly' increases it's profit. Although, sometimes prices stay low to discourage anyone from entering the market, profit still does occur. Not to be confused with a puremonopoly, where a company has control over the entire market for a product because of barriers to entry, a monopoly doesn't exist with complete control.
However, a monopoly is a philosophical process of direct competition leading to a puremonopoly, it is not in itself a purely dominating force. It is rather, the process of obtaining competitive grounds for a strive toward total control. To quote what you said above. "Why pay more for exactly the same product somewhere else, while Wal-Mart can give it to you for pennies on the dollar?" Do you know why you are getting the same product for pennies on the dollar? 90% of Walmarts products come from overseas (My mother went to buy an american flag on the fourth of July last year from Walmart and it had Made In China stamped on the bottom. How pathetic and un-patriotic is that. Needless to say she didn't buy it from them.) like China and India where they have sweat shops that pay their employees pennies per hour. So while Walmart may be provding millions of minimum wage jobs at it's stores here in America, it is also taking away millions of manufacturing jobs by having a majority of it's products coming from over seas. And the manufacturing jobs that we are losing out on usually pay a lot more on average than Walmart employees are making.