Wal-Mart, Target, Oh My

Here in Arkansas big signs festoon our world, explaining how Wal-Mart saves money for American families.

Some signs explain just how much money Wal-Mart saves American families -- this many dollars a year, or this many dollars per family since 1965, or this many total million dollars for the American family, blah blah blah.

These signs make me want to throw rocks, given that I have students who work at Wal-Mart, like the student in my office yesterday, or the one last year.  Wal-Mart signs them on, works them, usually, 30-35 hours a week -- refusing to work around their school hours (the one last night was telling me how she could not make it to our night class, despite the fact that she was not supposed to have to work nights, because her supervisor wanted her to stay late to do inventory.   "I'm getting paid for the extra hours, but..."  "Did you tell her you had class?"  "Yes, but she says I either stay or I quit.") or students who are worked at physically destructive jobs until their bodies are wrecked and then fired when they can't do the job anymore, told they "can't" file workman's comp -- of course they don't have health insurance, they can't afford it on Wal-Mart wages -- and set adrift. 

Not to mention this, which is even worse in my mind.  Wal-Mart might be selling us cheaper - slightly cheaper -- milk and blue jeans, though frankly their blue jeans are crap; but they are doing it by destroying the country.  They're wrecking the infrastructure.  What good are cheap jeans when no one has a job, when all the chickens are raised by farms like Tyson farms, when everyone's wages are so low that the government (that would be, in fact, you and me, folks) has to step in to provide supplemental health insurance and food stamps and housing?

You realize, in fact, that you and I, in the form of taxes, are making it possible for Wal-Mart to pay those low wages?  That, in fact, our taxes are a kind of grant to the Wal-Mart heirs?  Talk about socialism!

I used to shop at Target, so that I could avoid giving any money to the Wall...but now!  Now Target has started giving its money to Anti-Gay candidates.  So how can I keep giving my money to them?

So now where can I shop?

It's not like Pork Smith has any independent stores left, thanks to the Wal.  

I guess I shop online.