Walmart Southpark Show

Southpark did a great show on the evil Wal-Mart.

I will never set foot in a Wal-Mart.

This super center retailer represents the worst in us. Our destructive and ignorant desire for material possessions at the lowest cost.

We then become walking manifestations of that idea.
Low prices = Weak souls. Weak communities and strong corporations.
Cheap prices = Cheap cultural values.

Low prices = Low wages and growing gap between rich and poor.

Our destructive capitalistic system is a cancer.

I am all for value - but look at the cost on the other side of the equation. God is Wal-Mart. God is the local hardware store that could not compete with the low cost god.
God is us -selling our culture for some cheap trinkets.

God help us. God leave us alone.

-Jon

This was a very interesting article about the pickles. I wonder how many chronic Wal-Mart shoppers would even take the time to read it, much less care. We have a real talent in this country for looking at half of any cause-and-effect equation, while pretending the other half doesn’t exist. There’s a funny moment in that South Park episode you mentioned when Stan asks his dad how “Wal-Mart’s” prices could be so low. His dad says something lame like “economics”, but then admits that he has no idea and doesn’t care.

The Wal-Mart sales equation represents a half-blind approach that we take on every level in our country. It’s no different with the whole “taxes bad” mindset. We clamor for more and more tax cuts. The surest way to get

elected to any office is to promise them, and it’s political death to tell people ”We’ll have to roll up our sleeves and find a way to pay for all this”. The legislators very cleverly give a small break to poor and middle class taxpayers, while giving a huge kickback to their wealthy masters. Then, the poor voters all say “We like you; you cut our taxes,” never thinking it through that more of the tax burden is ultimately being shifted to them and their children.

It’s a shame thinking has fallen out of fashion. We’re so much easier to manipulate when we don’t use our brains.

-Billy

Wal-Mart Southpark show comments:

I love for a monster company to be from NW Arkansas:
1. Good people
2. Arkansas needed the jobs and income in this region to feed their families and get health care
3. If you can't compete globally; then America loses jobs, companies, and our way of life --it is that simple.
4. If you can't compete globally; then gas/energy prices go up -- which eventually creates more harm to the environment

The companies that you shop at -- all wish they had Wal-Mart people/expertise/leadership so they could be as efficent at bringing the goods to market.

God? Wal-Mart will go away just as TG&Y (once king of the buy-all-at-one-place-store) did.

By the way, a corporation is just a piece of paper: People (as in regular folks from all over the world) run the company and try to bring the best of everything to People (as in regular folks from all over the world).

-Brian, Walmart lover