I’ve had conversations on several occasions with liberal friends regarding Wal-Mart. Is Wal-Mart good for or is it a blight on the communities in which they do business? Almost without thinking, they will attack Wal-Mart because of minimum wage pay, non-union workforce, slave labor in China, and on and on. Hell, there are websites devoted to “reforming” Wal-Mart. I’ve been of the mind that Wal-Mart provides not only jobs but lower prices to poor families and I’ve recently come across a study suggesting that this is in fact the truth.
Wal-Mart over the 1985-2004 period can be associated with a cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities (goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index – All Items, which includes both goods and services. These estimates are in line with other researchers’ estimates of Wal-Mart’s price effects. This impact amounts to consumer savings of $263 billion by 2004, which is the equivalent of $895 per person or $2,329 per household.
I doubt that the average lower income family is nearly as upset with Wal-Mart as the rich liberals seem to be. For the rich libs, a couple of thousand a year is nothing, but for the working poor and those on fixed income, it may be the difference between a meal or two or shoes for their kids. Next time your liberal friends begin ranting about Wal-Mart, ask them when they last had to choose between food and clothing.
