The same old story happened again, this time in the south side of Chicago: A Wal-Mart got its way when it wanted to move its corporate interests into a neighborhood.

The battle against the labor unions crying for higher wages was settled with an $8.75 hourly wage for the future workers employed at the to-be-constructed Wal-Mart.

“Smith, an alderman in Chicago, presented posters at a City Council meeting showing that Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke’s $35 million salary, when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92,” according to ABC News.

Smith’s protest concerning how much the CEO makes compared to how little the average worker makes was met with the haggard and old, “He’s the CEO, so he deserves it,” defense from Wal-Mart.

“I don’t think Mike Duke needs, as the CEO of a Fortune 1 company, me to defend his compensation package,” said Steven Restivo, Wal-Mart’s director of community affairs.

That’s the way it is, isn’t it? The rich corporations bring their entitled attitude to the poor neighborhoods that are starving for work and smirk when people resist because the workers will be getting paid so little when it’s blatant it doesn’t have to be that way.

The community leaders essentially have no choice but to allow the corporation to come because they need the money so badly.

The labor unions can’t do much about it; they just aren’t as strong as they were two or three decades ago. Giant corporations pulled the rug out from under them years ago by exporting jobs overseas to be done for far less than in America.

But that’s the American way, isn’t it? You build something, therefore you get to reap the benefits of what you built.

Wrong, actually.

Not only is that not what’s happening when Wal-Mart takes advantage of poor communities desperately needing money, it flies in the face of American values.

America has a distinct tradition of industries valuing their community. Only recently has this sort of thinking that makes contrary behavior by titans of industries acceptable taken hold.

Benjamin Franklin is a shining example of someone who was extremely successful and extremely sensitive to the needs of his community at the same time.

He designed reading glasses and an extremely efficient stove and didn’t patent either so that they could be more readily available to the public. He still made a lot of money off of his designs, he just cared more about his community than he did about making the absolute maximum amount of money possible.

That seems to be the exact opposite of today’s corporations though.

The maximum amount of money must be made with the least amount of overhead cost. So, employees are paid less than $9 an hour while their head boss makes a little less than $17,000 an hour.

Giant corporations aren’t in the business of building communities, they’re in the business of amassing huge amounts of wealth. They aren’t concerned about the bottom-tier employee. Their entitled attitude doesn’t leave room to think of the myriad of little guys that make their wealth possible.

Stop shopping at Wal-Mart. Buy whatever you’re looking for somewhere else. If you can purchase something from a mom and pop store, do so. Keep your money in the community by giving it to locally-owned businesses that have a vested interest in seeing the community grow and thrive.

Trickle-down economics is for suckers.

Support people in your community so they can support you.