In an effort to broaden students’ understanding of the impact Wal-Mart has on both the global market and local-level communities, the university sponsored a mock-debate between two well-known economic scholars on Nov. 16 in Carswell Hall.

Stephan J. Goetz, professor of agricultural and regional economics at Pennsylvania State University and director of the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, presented the case against the $406 billion corporation. Art Carden, professor of economics at Rhodes College, attempted to qualitatively account for the positive effects of “Waltonomics” and defend against Goetz’s attack.

With 7,870 stores worldwide, “Wal-Mart has the capacity to exploit the labor force, increase poverty and unemployment, force ‘Mom andPop-type’ stores out of the market and amplify environmental degradation,” Goetz said.

The company’s radio-frequency identification (EPC RFID) tag technology has the potential to slash checkout lane to cashier ratios down to 25:1 in upcoming yers, Goetz said, and displace increasingly larger amounts of job-searchers onto the streets while effectively eliminating errors and bypassing waste.

Goetz doubts the U.S. economy is ready to absorb the amount of released workers displaced into the unemployment arena due to Wal-Mart’s progressive agenda.

Wal-Mart’s entrance into a community is constitutionally linked with poverty, Goetz claims, as can be seen by various studies that illustrate how counties with a Wal-Mart have a disproportionately harder time reducing poverty rates.

In adjacent counties to those gaining a new Wal-Mart, citizens see more firms exiting the market than those entering the market resulting in a decrease in the amount of entrepreneurial efforts in the area.

The Pennsylvania economist holds that what is best about American capitalistic competition is the redundancy and resiliency seen in markets; but with predatory pricing, Wal-Mart has the unique power to drive out competitors and raise prices in a monopolistic fashion.

Evidence of this phenomenon can be seen in a dropping buying power index (a gauge of underpayment) for southern workers from five to eight percent in some counties.

Wal-Mart has gotten too big for our own good, Goetz’s argument suggested.

In response to Goetz’s attack on the Wal-Mart Corporation, Carden drew attention to four important ways of assessing the grip that the chain has on American markets: prices, income, society and employment.

Carden was quick to point out that “jobs are not the benefits of economic growth, but in fact, one rationally trades this for greater access to goods and services.”

The Tennessean economist supports Wal-Mart’s business philosophy and quoted research which found that zero net change occurs in small business employment when Wal-Mart opens a new branch in a community.

The company that employs 2.1 million workers world-wide is part of a market cleansing phenomenon called creative distraction, Carden said.

Wal-Mart knocks out some companies and makes room for other, more creative ones, to join the market.

What’s more, by driving prices down, Wal-Mart allows community members to increase their consumption of normal goods as well as increase their opportunities to take part in cultural activities like going to professional sporting events, symphonies and theater productions.

By offering such low prices, Wal-Mart is giving consumers the option of determining what to do with newly-uncovered dispensable funds.

Sam Walton has eliminated much more pain and suffering than Mother Theresa did, Carden said.

Carden mentioned common concerns about the company: that a company such as Wal-Mart, which sees more than 28 million customers daily, has the capability to sensor communities on moral grounds by effectively eliminating the consumption of certain products (adult magazines, CDs, et cetera).

Worries such as these are unwarranted and have no statistical support, Carden said.

It is dangerous to argue, “Wal-Mart can afford to pay higher wages and can meet the demands of the labor forces,” Carden said, because Wal-Mart holds an obligation to its shareholders.

“Think of Ford, Chrysler and GM; if you want to see Wal-Mart bailed out by government support in 20 years, unionize its labor force.”

The evils that many say Wal-Mart propagates are “the result of political incentives to which Wal-Mart merely responds,” Carden said. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”