Wal-Mart: screwing everyone, to bring you low prices
How does Wal-Mart manage to keep their prices so low? I mean besides outsourcing the US economy to China; besides shorting employees on labor to keep them from earning benefits; besides selling lower-quality, inferior products; besides employing people who are uneducated, elderly, or illegal immigrants, to keep their labor costs low?
I mean really… what lengths do they really go to, in order to save you 11 cents on a warped bookshelf made of particle board? Just how far are they willing to go to roll back the price of an obnoxiously over-scented candle from $6.29 down to $5.88?
What if they were to recoup their medical insurance expenses by suing employees who use their medical insurance to buy frivolous things like… oh, I don’t know… medical care? Gosh, now that would be a great way to pass on savings to shoppers.
Take the story of Mrs. Deborah Shank, for instance, who was permanently brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair after a collision with a semi truck. She was an employee of Wal-Mart - one of the lucky ones, with health insurance - and her insurance was used to cover $470,000 worth of medical expenses. Later, she and her husband won a settlement of $700,000 from the trucking company. After legal expenses, that settlement shrunk to $417,000, and went into a special trust to cover Mrs. Shank’s care.
Shameless, I know. But never fear, Wal-Mart is here to save us from the little guy. They sued the Shanks for the original $470,000, and a federal judge ruled in their favor. It’s good to know that the federal courts are looking out for us too. After all, why should we be forced to pay an extra penny for generic toilet paper when some villainous woman is hoarding hundreds of thousands of dollars?
