Wal Mart : The High Cost Of Low Price

This article is written using an enlightened self-interest approach. The author describes Wal-Mart behaving in a way that increases its own benefits, with the outcome of their actions being the most important consideration. An example of this is the author’s notion that Wal-Mart’s low prices are due to “the exploitation of its workers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289), “systematic use of ‘maquiladoras’ in conditions of extreme exploitation” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289), and Wal-Mart’s threat to move production to China to obtain lower prices. In this article, the author implies that Wal-Mart’s actions demonstrate that they are not concerned with finding the most ethical behaviour; they are merely interested in the action(s) that most closely achieve their goal to remain the “biggest chain of direct sales to the consumer in North America”. (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 289)

Karen Olsson believes that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer company, under pays their employees for the amount of work they do daily. They do not offer good working conditions for their employees or enough medical benefits to support themselves and their families. Sebastian Mallaby says that Wal-Mart is not wrong for the way that they run their business; he feels as though Wal-Mart does their consumers a favor by keeping the wages low and offering “low prices” (620). It’s just business! They have to do what it takes to remain the world’s top retailer and continue to, “enrich shareholders, and put rivals out of business” (620). Karen Olsson and Sebastian Mallaby both address the topic of big

Environmental Studies is the academic field, which systematically studies human interaction with the environment in which we live in. It is a broad field of study that includes the natural environment, built environment, and the sets of relationships between them. Environmental studies takes into account many different factors that help provide an enjoyable, fruitful way of life, such as national policies, politics, laws, economics, sociology and other social aspects, planning, pollution control, natural resources, and the interactions of human beings and nature.

Sam Walton’s extraordinary business strategies drove Walmart to its success and their key focus was customer satisfaction. As part of their customer centric initiatives Walmart had set up a unique pricing strategy with their “Every Day Low Prices” EDLP (Karen Robson, 2013). They would offer customers their daily needs at the lowest possible price to drive Walmart’s growth in the United States (Karen Robson, 2013) . Their pricing strategy was different than other major retailers in the U.S at the time; this provided an advantage towards rapid success and expansion (Karen Robson, 2013).

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 of 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, come 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 has plays a dominate role in American economy, this “American”

Is Wal-mart the ideal store to shop it? Austrian economic and business professional Karen De Coster and banker Brad Edmonds believe that Wal-mart improves the lives of people in rural areas because it gives them access to a lifestyle that they would not have if Wal-mart did not exist.

Former bureau chief for the Economist, Sebastian Mallaby writes in defense of a large retailer in his essay, Progressive Wal-Mart. Really. Through his essay he explains that through the continual campaigns against the large corporation, Wal-Mart has been and still remains a benefit to working Americans seeking affordable goods. He elaborates on the crusade of Anti-Wal-Mart campaigns looking to paint the business as a detestable parasite, when all the company has done is keep costs low and earnings for its shareholders high while trying to defeat competitors, just as any company would.

Walmart employees, customers, and suppliers have seen their fair share of Walmart’s bad side. While Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, claims to make their employees feel like they “are working for them” and that they care Walmart has done such a horrific job with the way they treat their employees that one day, the workers decided to walk out and go on strike. They walked out on the grounds that they “were emblazoned with the workers’ grievances: poverty wages, miserly benefits, dignity denied” (Eidelson 1). They felt like they weren’t only taking a stand against Walmart, but also taking a stand for the younger generations to come. Walmart’s employees are getting treated unfairly and are underpaid. The CEO’s, Michael Duke, annual salary gives him more money in an hour than an employee who works full-time would make in an entire year. In Bangladesh, over 100 workers “died in a factory without outdoor fire escapes, NGOs blame Walmart for pushing deadly shortcuts” (Eidelson 1). Not only are the employees being poorly paid by Walmart, but they are paying their life to Walmart just to make enough money to barely get by. Walmart even made a pregnant employee work around chemicals that eventually made her ill. After a trip to the doctor, Walmart allowed her to be put on a lighter duty, so they made her a door greeter; however, they

“The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream” is certainly a critical look at the infamous multinational corporation, but its focus shifts away from the simple takedown we’re used to and into an anthropological explanation of how Wal-Mart came to be the nexus of the American dream. Nicholas Copeland and Christine Labuski describe Wal-Mart’s rise to ubiquity as a controlled process of normalization, convenient social interest, and an uncompromising vision of neoliberal capitalism. Copeland and Labuski take a critical angle, highlighting the most notorious of the public’s grievances against Wal-Mart and explaining them in terms of their anthropological and sociological consequences. However, little attention is given to a world after Wal-Mart. The final chapter offers the suggestion that the different groups that cite Wal-Mart as their victimizer may team up, but gives no solutions or advice as to where to go from there. The book seems to suffer from the very problems it intends to expose: Wal-Mart has made itself just too big and too symbolic for anyone, including the authors, to even conceive of what can be done to stop or reform them.

There is a new welfare queen on the block and this one is richer, bigger and even greedier than any account of the 1990s welfare queens that led to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which hampered the ability for the 90s narrative of welfare queens to become a reality. The new welfare queen is Wal-Mart and it is costing the American taxpayer a substantial sum each year. Each year Wal-Mart costs the American taxpayer $2.66 billion dollars in government assistance or approximately $420,000 per store. At this same time CEO Mike Dukes earn more money in one hour than one of his associates will earn in a year and Wal-Mart raked in 15 billion dollars worth of annual profit. These substantial earnings that the Wal-Mart elites have been raking in have come with the expense of hard-earned American taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize one of the richest corporations in the world. This is greed and should even be considered theft, as Wal-Mart can certainly pay their workers more an hour, but chooses not to. Rather, Wal-Mart chooses to steal taxpayer dollars to subsidize low wages, healthcare and other safety net programs for their employees. In this analytical paper, I plan to discuss the Wal-Mart issue as a whole and would like to delve into the corruption of Wal-Mart in Maine. The issue of Wal-Mart and its corrupt practices affects the entire country, but as we all know, what affects this country, also affects Maine and the Wal-Mart issue is no

Inequality.org reports on the controversy of Wal-Mart in two related articles, “The Wal-Martization of Everywhere” and “Low Road/High Road.” The first article claims that although “Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest private company, with $245 billion in annual revenues,” (Hellerman, 2004) there are reasons to be concerned with the success of Wal-Mart. One of the major claims related to class inequality in this article states that a typical employee earns $13,860 annually, which isn’t enough for a family of three to rise above the poverty line. The majority of the article focuses on some of the claims supporting Wal-Mart, more particularly an economists claim that “Wal-Mart is the greatest thing that ever happened to low-income Americans,” (Hellerman, 2004) allowing them to stress their income and buy things

Mallaby’s stance in the article begins with sarcasm and a very distinctive attitude. He makes comments such as “well, yeah” and “hello?” (Mallaby 620). He also provides extensive use of exclamation points and question marks that is intended to give off a mocking notion and make the Wal-Mart critics appear dim-witted. Mallaby then continues into the article, pointing out the flaws of Wal-Mart that critics enjoy harassing. However, with each example Mallaby gives, he provides a justification to the stance. For example, he agrees that Wal-Mart workers are paid dramatically less. However, “Wal-Mart’s ‘everyday low prices’ make the biggest difference to the poor” (Mallaby 621). By providing this information, he helps the reader infer that retailers need to make decisions between supplying cheaper items and providing their employees with exceptional wages. When comparing both articles, Olsson’s style of writing in her article did a better job of connecting with her audience because of the personalization in her editorial. However, Mallaby’s article had statistical evidence that made his article succeed in showing his readers that Wal-Mart is not as bad as some critics make it.

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

Whether it's a brand new 59” LCD widescreen television or merely a pack of gum, each purchase you make from a Walmart store inadvertently results in a higher price paid; both within your community as well as the greater world around you. Relying entirely upon you-the ever consuming scavenger – to fuel the bustling utopia of the manufacturing industry, exists Walmart. More importantly, Walmart relies upon the oblivion towards matters outside of our own lives that we as society generally project. However, by looking past our own greed in a world full of price cuts and sales, we can expose Walmart for what it truly is; an entirely corrupt corporation feeding off of countries' vulnerabilities and reaping the benefits.

Customers influence Wal-Mart by buying their products. However, Wal-Mart doesn’t provide arm security on the parking lots which has cause to many incidences such as shooting, raping and kidnapping.