Walmart Good Or Bad

Wal-Mart:
An All-American Success Story or a Greedy Blood-Sucking Corporation?

By: Kaitlin Horch

Advanced Placement Language and Composition
Mrs. Koch
11 February 2013

The date, July 2nd, 1962: the hot Arkansas sun pours over the crowd of people gathering around the grand opening of a new store on 719 West Walnut Street; the proprietor, a middle-aged forty-four year old man swallows the fear and anticipation welling up in his throat; questions plague his mind: will we make it; will I succeed for my family; what have I done? Flash forward fifty years and Sam Walton’s hometown “ma and pa shop” grew into a commandeering-capital corporation with a surplus of over ten thousand stores globally: I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Arkansas
Their prices are so cheap that some, including W. Michael Cox, a chief economist, venture to say "Wal-Mart is the greatest thing that ever happened to low-income Americans." Wal-Mart dedicates itself to providing the lowest possible cost to consumers globally. A 2002 survey done by the New England Consultant Group (Maich) proves that the average American family saves $600 annually by shopping at Wal-Mart. With these low prices, Americans can afford to pay for everyday expenses and costs, such as healthcare, which, ironically, Wal-Mart fails to provide for the majority of its employees. According to Wal-Mart, “full time” means a minimum of thirty-four hours a week, not the traditional and widely accepted forty hour workweek, therefore causing their employees to remain below or near the poverty line due to insufficient wages and exceedingly expensive insurance costs.
Another characteristic of Wal-Mart’s explosively recognizable personality is the detrimental damage it does to small, hometown communities. Local businesses, smaller chains of grocery stores, and family owned enterprises all fall at the deadly hands of Wal-Mart. We can see the damage in our towns: downtown Dubuque: main street littered with Wal-Mart bags fluttering over the doorsteps of closed stores. Does Wal-Mart really save us money or do they just eliminate our businesses, our livelihoods?
Ever since the late nineteenth century factories, big businesses, crowded spaces, and technological advancements cause degradation to our mother earth and shove carbon dioxide down tree-hugger’s throats. However, in recent years, according to Humes, Wal-Mart has truly taken steps to help the environment (“Green”). They currently use streamlined trucks for transportation, energy-efficient lighting and refrigeration, not to mention the $3.4 billion they saved by reducing packaging and recycling, most notably their efforts on laundry detergent, reducing bottle size to save plastic and water; perhaps the Waltons do earn their money honestly. Humes notes, “[Wal-Mart] has shown its suppliers... how to lower their carbon emissions and energy bills by 20% to 60%.” Another benefit of Wal-Mart is the fact that it donates its readily-expiring, “but still healthful foods” to nearby food banks. Suddenly, Wal-Mart doesn’t seem that bad.
Furthermore, according to Maich, the development of a new Wal-Mart generally causes an economic increase for the town and surrounding area. “Just 16 per cent of respondents said they had been hurt by competition from big-box retailers like Wal-Mart” when Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce surveyed local business owners in 2004. So, perhaps the proposed idea about Wal-Mart destroying local businesses is a rare occurrence, somewhat of a