This Wespeak is inspired by the recent demonstration against Walmart’s so-called “war on workers,” organized by the ever-indignant United Student Labor Action Committee (USLAC). After about seven months of being here at Wesleyan, I am well acquainted with its left-leaning politics, and as one of the ONLY other non-leftist students in this school, I thought it was important to address USLAC’s absurd and ludicrous attack against Walmart.
While liberal USLAC members (as well as other leftist bureaucrats) claim that Walmart unfairly treats its workers by not paying them a wage which THEY claim to be fair, the reality of the situation is that every American citizen has the right to demand any wage they want, but they will only be paid what they can get (that is, what the free-market has concluded they are worth). Walmart workers VOLUNTARILY signed up for the jobs they have, at the wages they are paid.
Furthermore, Walmart is a wonderful prosperous beacon of capitalism (that’s right, I said it— c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-m) in a wonderfully prosperous capitalist country. And yes, that’s a good thing. Walmart hires tens of thousands of people, people that may very well otherwise be unemployed, and it otherwise is good for the economy. It provides goods that people want, at prices that even their lowly-oppressed-downtrodden-and-enslaved workers can afford. Walmart’s very success proves this point in spades.
USLAC, being just another freedom-loathing leftist organization (like EON!), has decided that it is really THEY (and only they) who are knowledgeable and compassionate enough to dictate the terms of “fairness” in business. The problem with USLAC, just like the left side of the political spectrum in general, is that it is in complete opposition to the principles of economics. But it does not require any knowledge of economics to realize that, as we live in a free country where the best ideas and products are exchanged only by the consent of those parties involved, the wage that workers are paid is in equilibrium—barring ineffective government interference— with the supply and demand for labor.
Business today is so underappreciated and scorned that it’s a wonder that businessmen don’t speak more forcefully in their own defense. It’s truly disgusting. The businesses that make life easier and better for everyone (while making a dollar doing it) are nothing but loathed by the majority of Americans today. It is groups like USLAC that completely ignore the service successful companies like Walmart provide. Instead, USLAC feels the need to profess some altruistic “love of the worker” and strive to attain the mythical “workers rights,” which do not, and have never, existed.
USLAC’S war against Walmart is class warfare in disguise. It’s a classic example of the have-nots wanting what the haves have— and the naively “sympathetic” leftists (most of whom are offspring of said haves) feel obligated or guilt-tripped in to take up their struggle. They use words like “compassionate” to describe their blaming all the worlds’ problems on rich businesses— because they do it to benefit workers. It’s OK to steal from the rich and give to the poor, because the rich have only gotten rich through oppression and corruption. Right. Nobody ever thinks of what our country and our civilization would be like without great, big, rich companies like Walmart who give people what they want, and employ massive amounts of people in order to do it.
USLAC needs to open its eyes (and minds) and see that Walmart is a great thing for workers. Both thrive on each other: workers need jobs in order to feed their families, and Walmart needs workers to handle the affairs of its business so it can turn a profit. It is a relationship based on mutual benefit. But the Left ignores its benefits and makes up excuses why corporations are the scourge of the nation. But it is only the Left that is its scourge.
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