Pepper Trail | Essays | The High Cost of Low Prices

THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICES

We Sell for Less. Every few miles of a long summer drive down the length of California, I passed a Wal-Mart big-rig with these words across the back. We Sell for Less. The humming of the tires and the hazy monotony of the Central Valley combined to make the Wal-Mart slogan a mantra for the open road, for the flat, heat-stunned landscape that was the only America I could see through my car windows. We Sell for Less.

Wal-Mart has been front-page news in my valley this summer. The nation’s number-one retailer plans to close its two huge warehouse stores and open two gigantic “supercenters” instead. One of them will go on top of the baseball field where our local farm team used to play. These plans have aroused both protests and anticipation. Some fear that the supercenters will bring choking traffic and force out local businesses. Others look forward to the chance to – what else? – buy for less. Both sides are right.

Wal-Mart towers over American retailing like Shaquille O’Neal at a middle-school pick-up game. Its sales in 2002 were $247 billion, which is more than Home Depot, Target, Sears, Costco, Albertsons, and Safeway combined. The corporation adds more than 20 new stores and supercenters around the country every month. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world, with over 1.3 million workers - not a single one of whom is allowed to belong to a union.

For all its superlatives, however, Wal-Mart is just one manifestation of a value system that touches every aspect of American life: the supremacy of price over every other consideration. This is the basic tenet of consumerism, and most of us rely on it without a second thought when making our buying decisions. But lately, I’ve begun to think about the high cost of low prices.

The relentless pursuit of low prices rewards economies of scale, helping the big get bigger. The resulting huge corporations are organized to protect their low-price supremacy by whatever means necessary: by moving jobs overseas, by suppressing unions, by fighting or escaping environmental regulations, by negotiating or relocating their way out of tax obligations. Many things that we, as individuals and as a society, think of as good, including decent wages, medical benefits, and clean air and water, are to these corporations simply costs – costs that must be cut.

		THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICES We Sell for Less. Every few miles of a long summer drive down the length of California, I passed a Wal-Mart big-rig with these words across the back. We Sell for Less. The humming of the tires and the hazy monotony of the Central Valley combined to make the Wal-Mart slogan a mantra for the open road, for the flat, heat-stunned landscape that was the only America I could see through my car windows. We Sell for Less. Wal-Mart has been front-page news in my valley this summer. The nation’s number-one retailer plans to close its two huge warehouse stores and open two gigantic “supercenters” instead. One of them will go on top of the baseball field where our local farm team used to play. These plans have aroused both protests and anticipation. Some fear that the supercenters will bring choking traffic and force out local businesses. Others look forward to the chance to – what else? – buy for less. Both sides are right. Wal-Mart towers over American retailing like Shaquille O’Neal at a middle-school pick-up game. Its sales in 2002 were $247 billion, which is more than Home Depot, Target, Sears, Costco, Albertsons, and Safeway combined. The corporation adds more than 20 new stores and supercenters around the country every month. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world, with over 1.3 million workers - not a single one of whom is allowed to belong to a union. For all its superlatives, however, Wal-Mart is just one manifestation of a value system that touches every aspect of American life: the supremacy of price over every other consideration. This is the basic tenet of consumerism, and most of us rely on it without a second thought when making our buying decisions. But lately, I’ve begun to think about the high cost of low prices. The relentless pursuit of low prices rewards economies of scale, helping the big get bigger. The resulting huge corporations are organized to protect their low-price supremacy by whatever means necessary: by moving jobs overseas, by suppressing unions, by fighting or escaping environmental regulations, by negotiating or relocating their way out of tax obligations. Many things that we, as individuals and as a society, think of as good, including decent wages, medical benefits, and clean air and water, are to these corporations simply costs – costs that must be cut.