When Documentaries Are Actually Worthwhile

I recently watched a documentary entitled "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price", which has immediately jumped to the top of my list of films which I will recommend that everyone I know should watch. Although not a neutral or remotely unbiased insight into the United States' largest and most profitable corporate enterprise, the film gives details that unimaginably small numbers of consumers actually realize when they decide that Wal-Mart (or just Walmart* as the company has so ingeniously decided to call itself as a way to "modernize" its nametag) is THE super, massive, universe of a store at which they, the consumer, must purchase every single item that he/she may need. I know I may follow the same tone as the writers of the film, but that is only because I personally agree with every opinion they present on the matter, which is in short: The Wal-Mart Corporation, from it's managerial levels in area stores to its CEO, Lee Scott, engages in unbelievable practices that push the boundaries of morality and the legality of corporate practices to their respective breaking points.

I can only begin to describe the abhorrence that I and many others feel when we hear of the countless acts of negligence and inhumanity shown by what I like to call "Executive Wal-Mart", not only in their attitude towards benefitting public interest, which are egregious in their own right, but especially in their attitude towards their employees.  I swear to God himself, I have never heard of a corporation, whether it be domestic or international, that treated its main workforce - the heart and soul of a company and the reason it makes money - as poorly as Wal-Mart does to its regular hourly employees, both full- and part-time. Well, at least not since I learned about the widespread appeal of slavery to Southern Plantation owners before 1865, a fact I learned when I was in about second grade. One example that I find to be particularly alarming is the fact that in Georgia in 2005 when the film was made, 10,261 children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state-funded "PeachCare for Kids", which is essentially a state run, Medicaid-based healthcare system. Now lets face it, 10,261 is not a high number by population standards. However, when you consider that at the time the film was made, eighty-one percent of Wal-Mart employees who required public assistance chose federally funded systems such as Medicaid over Wal-Mart's own offered health insurance plan, this figure, which only represents CHILDREN in one state, becomes that much more disgusting. Not only does Wal-Mart force their employees to survive under the poverty line by paying them, well, shitty wages, they don't even offer sufficient health insurance to cover the wage difference, and we know they wouldn't even consider doing it to help their employees' families.

There are probably thousands of examples I can give, but I won't do that. Instead, I recommend everyone just watch the documentary. Hopefully, someone, somewhere takes hold of the message I am sending in this particular blog posting. Please, for the sake of our economy, if you can afford NOT to shop at Wal-Mart, please choose somewhere else. And I make that request with the addition of the admittance that I am a college-student who survives on shitty wages and can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart when I am up at school in Binghamton, because it is a place where the effects of Wal-Mart have literally destroyed the local economy and made its supercenter the only affordable place to buy necessities. I understand that many people, not only college students, face these same problems and are attracted by the "low" prices that Wal-Mart offers us. However, I implore the general public, PLEASE, PLEASE avoid shopping at your local Wal-Mart as much as you can, because as the title of my recommended documentary suggests, there is an exceptionally high cost behind those low prices, even if those costs cannot be measured in monetary figures. If you are doubt, or feel that there may be some basis in these claims, please rent, or download or do whatever and watch the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price". I promise it will make you think twice about unnecessarily shopping at any Wal-Mart run facility.