America has always been a country where freedom has been treasured. Freedom is the most basic, valued principle that America was founded on. Whenever a threat looms, it is the cry and demand for freedom that pulls at the heartstrings of all Americans and moves them to action. Any threat to freedom is, in essence, a threat to America. This is usually interpreted as only a military threat, but there is another form the threat could take that is equally dangerous: an economic threat. This is why there are laws against monopolies – so that one company never has an unfair advantage over another. Freedom, equal opportunity for all. Enter the world of big box retailers. These companies are the biggest and most profitable there are to be found in America – the cornerstones of American economic prosperity. Some people, however, contest that the negatives of having a big box retailer in your town far outweigh the positives. Over the years and through many debates and conflicts it has become apparent that, no matter how beneficial big box retailers are to America, they have an overall negative effect on the American people.
Some of the negative aspects of big box retailers can be seen in the effects on the environment and economy.
Pollution has always been a big concern for anyone who has seen films or pictures from some of the Southeast Asian countries, where smog sometimes fills the whole sky of cities. Indeed, pollution is a terrible thing, but unfortunately it is a real concern for our modern times. There is always a price to pay for advancing, and in many cases that price is the creation of harmful substances to the environment around us, and sometimes even to us. One shocking example of this happened not so long ago right here in the United States, when one of the five great lakes, Lake Erie, was so full of pollution around Cleveland that almost all of the wildlife died and people could literally walk across the top of the pollution on the lake. Obviously, nobody wants anything like this to ever happen again. Fortunately, the lake was eventually cleaned up, but the damage was done, both to the environment and to the psyche and mindset of the American people. Some people see big box retailers as a cause of much pollution, and for some people that’s all they need to hear in order to be eternally opposed against big box retailers.
It seems as though these retailers should be welcome with open arms when they look into building one of their mega-stores in America’s mid-sized communities. Closer inspection, however, should make citizens think twice before opening their communities to these corporations. Job loss, negative impact on the local economy and the low wages these stores pay are just a few reasons why big box retailers do more harm than good to the communities in which they locate.
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...
A prior market firm used by Wal-mart (GSD&M) warned Wal-mart of the public image issues they were facing and had not addressed, even though they had been advised of them for over two years. GSD&M wrote in one review to the company that “sadly, after two years of empty rhetoric and ineffective publicity stunts, we now know that Wal-Mart has not only needlessly hurt its Associates and their families, but has pointlessly hurt the image and success that Sam Walton built.” (wakeupWalMart.com, 2007). Wal-mart has acted in a manner that blends with the theory of egoism. This theory “sets as its goal the benefit, pleasure, or greatest good of the oneself alone.” (wofford.edu, 1997). “Egoist use personal advantage…as the standard for measuring an action’s rightness.” (Shaw, 2008, p. 45). Clearly Wal-mart today is acting with interests geared toward their personal advantage and not considering the wreckage it is leaving all around them.
Exxon/Mobil, one of the nation’s leading oil producers, has its main refinery located in Beaumont, Texas. Each year, the residents of Beaumont/Port Arthur have to contend with the 39,000 pounds of pollution spewed each year by the Exxon refinery. Exxon’s emissions are 385% above the state refinery average. In 1999, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Committee (TNRCC) allowed the plant to increase their emissions, without allowing the public to have a say in the matter. Interestingly, 95% of the people living near the plant are of African American descent and are in the poverty range. Some believe that this, along with the lack of education in the area, allows Exxon to get away with such high emissions. Residents in nearby neighborhoods have been complaining of headaches, nausea, eye, and throat irritation for years. Since 1997, Mobil has repeatedly violated health standards in its emissions of two key air pollutants: sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, These “rotten egg” smells are so strong, one can smell it through a car driving past the refinery. After numerous complaints and one record of a refinery worker becoming unconscious because of the fumes, the EPA awarded Exxon with a $100,000 environmental justice grant in October of 1998. Hopefully, Exxon has put the money to good use and cleaned up their emissions.
When Wal-Mart establishes itself in a town, it makes its competitors to close their businesses since they cannot compete in the current market. There are several businesses that go out of business when this company sets up a branch in the town. However people don’t agree with this since customers are the ones who go to purchase goods from Wal-Mart. If there are people who should be blamed are the customers since they flock into the retail market to buy from them. This is the reason why these retail businesses are out of business. The reason that makes customers go to shop at Wal-Mart is that, there is ample parking, low prices and they also provide superior goods and services to the customers.Down town destruction started earlier before Wal-Mart was established. Wal-Mart is trying to bring with it new technologies that are aimed to cope with the current technologies. We ought to find new ways of doing things and this is exactly what is happening with Wal-Mart. For instance, Wal-Mart might be embracing technology to supplant it. Internet shopping might be some of the new business technologies that they are trying to embrace.
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.
In 1989, seventy five percent of Americans identified themselves as environmentalists, and the number has continued to grow since then (Walls 1). Environmentalism is now the most popular social movement in the United States, with over five million American families donating regularly to environmental organizations (Walls 1). Environmentalists today focus on what kind of world they hope to see in the future, and largely deal with limiting pollution and changing consumption rates (Kent 1 and 9). Modern environmentalists also have much different issues than those Carson’s America faced. With climate change becoming more threatening each year, protection of the natural world is needed more than ever. Pollution has caused the warmest decade in history, the deterioration of the ozone layer, and species extinction in extreme numbers (Hunter 2). It not only threatens nature, but also human populations, who already suffer from lack of clean water and poisoning from toxic chemicals (Hunter 16). Unlike environmental actions in the 1960’s, which were mostly focused on protection, a massive increase in pollution has caused efforts to be focused on environmental restoration (Hunter 16). Like in the time of Silent Spring, environmentalists are not only concerned with one country. Protecting the environment remains a global issue, and every nation is threatened by the
In 1945, Sam Walton opened his first variety store and in 1962, he opened his first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas. Now, Wal-Mart is expected to exceed “$200 billion a year in sales by 2002 (with current figures of) more than 100 million shoppers a week…(and as of 1999) it became the first (private-sector) company in the world to have more than one million employees.” Why? One reason is that Wal-Mart has continued “to lead the way in adopting cutting-edge technology to track how people shop, and to buy and deliver goods more efficiently and cheaply than any other rival.” Many examples exist throughout Wal-Mart’s history including its use of networks, satellite communication, UPC/barcode adoption and more. Much of the technology that was utilized helped Sam Walton more efficiently track what he originally noted on yellow legal pads. From the very beginning, he wanted to know what the customers purchased, what inventory was selling and what stock was not selling. Wal-Mart now “tracks on an almost instantaneous basis the ordering, shipment, and delivery of literally every item it sells, and that it requires its suppliers to hook into the system, enabling it to track most goods every step of the way from the time they’re made and packaged in the factories to when they’re carried out store doors by shoppers.” “Wal-Mart operates the world’s most powerful corporate computing system, with a capacity (as of late 1999) of more than 100 terabytes of data (A terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, or roughly the equivalent of 250 million pages of text.).
Big box stores are not bad, people just need to remember the local businesses need their support in order to keep helping the community these local owners are what builds strong communities so if you’re saving money buying from big box stores make sure to give back to your local businesses by spending it doing something fun locally.
Air pollution is not something new; in fact, air pollution has been even documented as far back as the 16th century. During the industrial revolution the sights of smoke coming out from factory were a sign of prosperity. This might have been prosperity in the economic point of view, but as we can see now, in the environmental point of view it was not prosperous at all.
Imagine that it is the end of a long week of finals, and you want to relax and enjoy your much deserved trip to the beach. However, when you get there, you immediately feel disgusted because the pearl-white sand is covered by trash, and your hopes are shattered. Although the United States isn’t an island, it has its share of beaches, and they are all familiar with pollution. Pollution is one of the largest causes of deaths worldwide. Since the United States is one of the top consumers of the world, it needs to give back as much as it’s taking in. Without a doubt, the U.S.A. is one of the top countries to live in, but the amount of consumption and pollution is outrageous and needs to be addressed immediately.
In modern society, humans constantly pollute the environment by using cars, technology, food packaging, and a countless amount of other products. Despite understanding how causing mass amounts of pollution can harm, often there are minimal attempts to correct polluting behaviors, at least until it poses an immediate threat to humans. The idea that the environment is suffering due to our mass consumption through instances of climate change and pollution, is not nearly enough motivation to stop the use of things that may be harmful. In order to address pollution in any respect, there must be an immediate threat to the health and well-being of humanity. Rachel Carson highlights this idea in her
Our planet is suffering from severe pollution, which ranges from contaminated air, water and soil as well. Humans are doing nothing to reduce the amount of pollution that is harming our earth. To understand how pollution works first you must understand that there are different types of pollution. The most common types of pollution and the ones that I will be focusing on which are the ones doing the most harm to our planet are air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and littering. In order to help out and reduce pollution in our planet people need to be more aware of what these problems are and about the severe damages that they are causing our planet. Before industrialization really jumped into place and had an effect on large cities, nature had its own way of cleaning up its own air and itself. Wind scattered gases, rain washed many substances and the rest dissolved into the ground; while plants absorbed carbon dioxide and made it into oxygen. With big cities growing more every time and with more towns that were becoming more industrialized a lot of more waste began to be released into the environment and the atmosphere and soon this was more than enough for nature to handle. In order to stop and reduce pollution people need to understand the damage that it is causing our environment and our planet as well. People need to be more aware of how they can help out and do their part in reducing these problems that are causing our planet to die slowly with people not even noticing it.
So for the past six years or so, I've been working at a local hardware store in my area. I’ve done almost every job you can possibly think of their, doing everything from running the register, stocking shelves, ordering, to customer service. Nowadays, I take my share in managing the store and helping out with the day to day business operations at the store. We are a small business, and it sure takes a lot to keep small businesses afloat in today’s economy. There have been other stores in our general vicinity that have closed for numerous reasons, yet we have remained strong over the years. It takes a lot to keep a hardware store going, and it takes a good group of people to do so. Over the next few paragraphs I’m going to explain what it would take to open a hardware store in the grand old state of Massachusetts.
Every other day a new industries are being set up, new vehicles on roads and trees are being cut to make way for new homes. All of them, indirect way lead to increase in CO2 leads to melting of polar ice caps which increase the sea level and pose danger for the people living near coastal areas. Pollution can have an impact in our health not only affects people with impaired respiratory system such as asthmatics, but very healthy adults and children too. Exposure to pollution for 6 to 7 hours, even at relatively low concentrations, reduces lung function and induces respiratory inflammation and, healthy people during periods of moderate