Wal-Mart

Page 668, question 1.
We live in a free market economy. A capitalist market which encourages people to take risk in hopes of profits. Incentive is the motivating force which makes our economy outperforms the rest of the world, but what if this tendency to make a profit is taken away? Our standard of Living is decreased? The rich becomes richer, while the poor get poorer. Wal-Mart the retail giant is helping to propagate this ideology in order to maximize its profits.
Wal-Mart is largest retail store in the World and also one the biggest threat to the American Economy, Wal-Mart is exporting jobs to other countries to decreased the production cost, causes the local companies out of business, decrease employment, increases government welfare spending, and reduces standard of living by decreasing wages of its worker. Overall, Wal-Mart is one of many causes for poverty in this country.
Wal-Mart is a retail store that is aiming for customers, whose standard of living is well below normal. Less than 6% of people who shop at Wal-Mart have income higher than $100,000, and more than 23% of customers have income of less than $25,000, and around 20% of Wal-Mart’s customers don’t even have bank account. Wal-Mart is employing similar tactics as those used by Henry Ford in order to grow. Wal-Mart pays its employs minimum wages; therefore reducing its employs standard of living and making its employs shop at Wal-Mart. Most of the customers that shop at Wal-Mart are poor; therefore most of them depend on government welfare, as Wal-Mart is causing poverty by decreasing jobs and wages it is also increasing the cost of welfare for the American government. This leads to more taxes of American citizen. A congressional Study data shows that for every 200 people that Wal-Mart employs, the American taxpayers pay $400,000 dollars. Wal-Mart burdens public health care programs. Most jobs at Wal-Mart have little or no health benefits. Therefore, Wal-Mart encourages its workers to seek public assistance for their health care causing the taxpayers and the government to pay for Wal-Mart employs.
Wal-Mart has destroyed reliable jobs by exporting jobs to foreign countries for lower production cost and created fewer jobs with lower pay. It has also caused local business to close, decreased standard of living and forcing people to live in ghettos. No doubt that Wal-Mart’s prices are very low and it can help consumers, but the cost of low prices is very high.