Wal-Mart founded in 1962 by Sam Walton is now the largest American retail corporation. With thousands of chains of stores and warehouses Wal-Mart monopolized the American retail industry. In addition, Wal-Mart is the second largest retail corporation in the world employing two million employees world-wide. As one of the most valuable corporations in the world Wal-Mart continues to improve their sales annually while offering some of the lowest prices available. Wal-Mart’s famous low price guarantee comes at a high expense of the environment, the small businesses, education, the rights and safety of the consumer, but most importantly their employees. Although Wal-Mart plays a dominate role in American economy, this “American” corporation shows little remorse in the actions they take that negatively impact people, because they are gaining a financial benefit.
Over the years Wal-Mart has established thousands of new warehouses and stores in cities and towns nationwide. Although, Wal-Mart promises to bring an economic gain to the areas that they are built on. The building of their infrastructure and the traffic it brings along with it comes at the expense of schools, which lose money due to the subsidy granted to Wal-Mart and not them. In addition, the environment is also harmed by the building process and the chemicals and pollution that the stores and warehouse manufacture. For example, in the documentary a certain Wal-Mart received numerous complaints regarding the chemicals and pesticides that they had stored in their parking lot from a Brettenville, Arkansas EPA officer and resident. These chemicals would wash into the rivers nearby, when it rained, polluting the drinking water of the town. The chemicals were not removed unti...
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...they depend on the opportunity to receive promotions without discriminations, they depend on the ability to obtain affordable health care insurance from their company, but Wal-mart has failed and neglected these families. Full time workers shouldn’t have to go on Medicare, WIC, and other government aid programs just to provide their families with the bare necessities. People should not have to worry about getting robbed or assaulted while shopping for groceries. They shouldn’t have to worry if the water is safe to drink, or what will happen to their family not that their business closed. In all, Wal-Mart is a selfish corporation, if not regulated it will continue to dominate and negatively impact the lives of many Americans.
Works Cited
Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Prices FULL MOVIE. Prod. Robert Greenwald. YouTube. YouTube, 06 May 2012. Web. 03 Feb. 2014.
Wal-Mart, a "Big-Box Retailer" employs more than 2.1 million associates worldwide and has two-thousand seven-hundred stores in the United States with many more in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Central America, Chile, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom, making Wal-Mart the largest retailer in the world. "Wal-Mart accounts for upward of 30 percent of U.S. sales, and plans to more than double its sales within the next five years" (Lynn 29-36). Why is Wal-Mart so successful, and is Wal-Mart actually bad for America?
Quinn, Bill. How Walmart Is Destroying America (and the world), And What You Can Do About It. Third Edition. Ten Speed Press, 2005. Print.
Mallaby admits Wal-Mart can treat their employees and other retailers unfairly, but as a result everyone can share in the 50 billion in savings that American shoppers consume annually. The pay that employees get is the price they must pay for low priced merchandise. Because of the minimal pay to employees, Wal-Mart strengthens its’ consumer buying power. Giving the American shoppers the savings they need, Wal-Mart’s has ultimately been them successful. Wal-Mart has potentially wiped out the middle class as an employer, but the employees can now work and ...
Walmart is bad for America, as some say. The Globalization essay that was handed out in class had many good points. It states that Walmart puts many smaller businesses out of service. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, "The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets," uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employmen...
In order to gain the success it has had, Wal-Mart has no doubt affected small businesses. But in the place of small business Wal-Mart has been able to do far more for Americans than small businesses could. It provides consumers inexpensive necessities for life, it provides work for those who would otherwise have none, and it has a stake in the global economy that benefits our own with trading. Wal_mart
Sellers, Jeff M. (2005). Deliver us from Wal-Mart? Retrieved July 12, 2005, from the University of Phoenix Library EBSCOhost database.
Wal-Mart represents the sickness of capitalism at its almost fully evolved state. As Jim Hightower said, "Why single out Wal-Mart? Because it's a hog. Despite the homespun image it cultivates in its ads, it operates with an arrogance and avarice that would make Enron blush and John D. Rockefeller envious. It's the world's biggest retail corporation and America's largest private employer; Sam Robson Walton, a member of the ruling family, is one of the richest people on earth. Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way: by roughing people up. Their low, low prices are the product of two ruthless commandments: Extract the last penny possible from human toil and squeeze the last dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower).
Wal-Mart has branded stores in all 50 states and in over 27 countries. Wal-Mart started with humble roots in 1962 by Sam Walton in the small town of Bentonville, Arkansas. Within thirty years, the small local discount retailer grew to one of the largest retail companies in the United States of America. Now it stands as the largest retailer in the world. As the largest retailer, Wal-Mart has gained many detractors. In "The Case for Wal-Mart," Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds recognize how people “like to attack bigness” (632). Many believe Wal-Mart offers low wage jobs with few employee benefits, discriminates against women, and among many other issues, doesn’t give back to the community (631). In contrast to the constant barrage negative attacks, Wal-Mart proves beneficial to the community. Wal-Mart prides itself on being an equal opportunity employer to such a degree it has the most diverse group of employees anyone can imagine. Most Wal-Mart stores are the anchor that provides a steady stream of consumers to other much small businesses in the area. Beyond providing quality jobs for the people in and around the store, Wal-Mart brings convenience, lower prices, and help to those in need.
Wal-Mart has become a household name with many positive attributes but they have been riddled with a large amount of negatives. Their motto of “Always low prices, always” have created soaring profits at the expense of their employees. Most Americans loves the convenience and low prices offered by Wal-Mart. Do Americans know what it actually costs for Wal-Mart to keep prices so low? With thousands of lawsuits filed each year it is a wonder why Wal-Mart refuses to change its practices. It is fairly safe to say that Sam Walton would not approve of how his company has been completely changed from its original intent by such a large margin. Employees are no longer happy working at Wal-Mart and to make matters worse the employees can no longer afford to work there. The average Wal-Mart associate earns about $1000 less t...
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
During the last 20 years, Wal-Mart has moved into many areas wiping out all the stores around causing people to loose jobs, slashing the tax base and causing many more disturbing problems to neighborhoods so people should stop supporting Wal-Mart for many of these reasons. Always low prices, does this sound familiar? Well this would be the slogan of the world’s most controlling company; Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart grew over the years into a 256 billion dollar company after making its name across the world in 1915. The major problem with Wal-Mart is that it maintains its own mini-economy. Some people believe Wal-Mart supports the American economy while most others hold that Wal-Mart’s global outsourcing will and has damaged the economy over time. When comparing these two opposite points, Wal-Mart has and is continuing to be more destructive than constructive to our economy. It has left employees with little to even no healthcare at all, destroyed more jobs then it has even created and it has also dishonored our environment. The second most common job, cashiers, are suppose to earn just about $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week which was said in a 2003 analysis. This only brings in yearly wages of only $11,948 (Wal-Mart Wages and Worker Rights 1). It is incredible that their employees can support themselves with making such low wages."With its low price focus, Wal-Mart may appear to help the U.S. economy. But, the reality is that with its poor wages and benefits, massive China sourcing and tax avoidance, Wal-Mart makes its workers and the communities where it operates poorer."-David Nassar.
The Wal-Mart Corporation is a multi-billion dollar low-cost retail organization, consisting of 6400 stores and 1.8 million sales associates worldwide. Wal-Mart’s influence on the retail world and the enormity of their corporate size is unparalleled. Wal-Mart can easily report sales of $312.4 billion dollars per fiscal quarter and net profits of $3.8 billion dollars. Wal-Mart promises her customers "Always low prices. Always!" and upholds this motto by providing low prices to her customers and high return on investment to her stockholders. One way that Wal-Mart has managed to maintain a competitive edge over other low cost retail giants and provide low prices is by cutting wages and by not offering too many company benefits to their employees. Full-time employee working at Wal-Mart only make $8 an hour, while only 45% of the workers can afford to be covered by health insurance. Wal-Mart also increase part time employees from 20 percent to 40 percent so that they do not have to cover all of their employees for health insurance . Although Wal-Mart may not provide excellent benefits to her employees, it successfully performs as a legitimate business operating in a capitalistic society. Wal-Mart upholds the primary fiduciary duty to satisfy her stockholder and follows free the market libertarianism model, which states that a business should not interfering with the free market. In a free market Wal-Mart has a direct responsibility to her primary stockholders rather than the employees of a company.
Wal-Mart, the multi-billion dollar corporation and the second largest employer in the world, is the most controversial corporation in the world. Wal-Mart stands as a global powerhouse and affects countless individuals around the world. This company is constantly receiving criticism from unions, human rights groups, small towns and small businesses. There are accusations of Wal-Mart treating workers poorly and driving small businesses out of business. However these accusations are false and over exaggerated. Wal-Mart offers families and low income individuals quality products at affordable prices. Their workers are paid competitive wages and are treated with respect. Wal-Mart opens their stores in rural and under developed areas. Wal-Mart improves the lives of the folks who live rural area and improves their lifestyles.
Walmart has had a long-standing presence in America society since the middle of the 20th century, seen as a place to get everything done, Walmart has become a fixation in our society. From grocery shopping, to changing your oil and even filing your annual tax returns, Walmart is always there, everyday. Started by Sam Walton in 1962, it began as a small operation catering to a small Arkansas community. It was started on principles very similar to small local businesses in small towns. Today Walmart has gotten a different, darker reputation. On the surface, Walmart may seem like the solution to everyday issues. Low-income families are attracted to the low prices, and people who work odd hours benefit greatly from the 24 hours a day that many Walmarts are open. Lately, Walmart has also managed to be publicly recognized as a store that sells many of today’s green products, including organic food, environmental conscious cleaning products, as well as, paper products made from recycled paper. However, underneath all this, Walmart has a different side. Exploitation of its workers is widespread amongst Walmarts who do not belong to a union, especially in the United States. Wal...
Wal-Mart has been the center of employee wages exploitation and for years they have been practicing the same labor abuse throughout the nation in order to save their labor expenses and maintain profit. Weldon Rich Olson, a former W...