walmart movie

After months of seeing crystela's blog and me not having anything to blog about I now have something worthy of spending my time writing about. A coworker of mine said I should watch "Walmart-The high cost of low prices" because Walmart is evil and after I see it I will think walmart is truly satin. Well, I just watched it on TV and now feel like shopping at Walmart more.

Is that wrong? I feel like this movie was obviously bias against Walmart but also poorly done.
First problem I saw was the issue of subsidies. They were saying how horrible it is that cities and towns give walmart money to come to their city and how that money could be used to pay for schools and education. Well, as far as I know the state pays for schools and not the city so that argument is dead in my book. Second, would you rather have them open outside your city so you get the traffic and stuff but not the sales tax. Subsidies and tax rebates are how governments compete for companies to open in there town, that brings not only sales tax but also jobs. Don't tell me that walmart doesn't pay a living wage! Write your elected officials to raise the minimum wage.

The movie also claims that walmart is ruining the local grocery stores. They say Safeway and Albertsons are suffering because of walmart. Please, grocery stores did the same thing to the mom and pop markets in the 70's and 80's. I guess what goes around comes around.

The movie also interviews a factory worker in China. She makes a claim that its so labor intensive to build toys for walmart...But, at the same time admits to lying to work inspectors that check their working conditions, saying that they are treated humanly. Hmm, you had an opportunity to speak up and lied, well then go back to the family farm you said you missed.

Then they quoted the Bible about how money is the root of evil and the love of money is bad. I think we have laws in this country about how publicly traded companies have to make as much money for their share holders as possible, if they don't they can be sued. That's one reason the CEO's, CFO's and the like have officers and directors insurance. I mean, its like whats the purpose of a business, its not to be nice and pay the workers extra.

The movie discussed how walmart does not care on the community's view if walmart should be built in their town. They interviewed people involved in the inglewood, CA protest against walmart and also the Chandler, AZ protest. They both prevailed and stopped walmart from building in their city. They said it was a like David and Goliath and how it was a miracle that they stopped walmart because Walmart has some demonic power to overcome the peoples wishes and build anyway. In the next scene they list a seemingly endless list of other cities that also said no to walmart. So, I guess it wasn't so much David and Goliath as they wanted you to believe, since there are all these other cities

I really am not a big Walmart supporter. I think it does have negative effects for sure, but I just had to write this because of how bias the movie was. If you haven't seen the South Park episode with walmart, it was really funny. http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154596
That links to a clip and then you can watch the full episode too. Anyway, off it go to Walmart.