Week Thirteen Blog Entry: Is Walmart Good For America?

After watching this documentary, I do not think that Walmart is good for America. One reason for this is that Walmart is forcing smaller grocery stores and convenience stores to close. The prices are so low at Walmart that these other stores cannot compete against it, so they eventually go out of business. This is slowly leading to Walmart monopolizing the industry. This is also having a negative effect on the employees that work at the smaller businesses. The hourly wage that they made at the now closed stores is almost double what they would be paid to work at Walmart. A second reason that Walmart is not good for America is that it encourages production in other countries, such as China, rather than in America. The documentary talked about how China is selling their goods to America at a lower cost than it actually takes to make them. This then means that American production companies cannot compete with the Chinese ones because there is no way to make their prices that low. When one company filed a lawsuit against a Chinese company for doing this, Walmart actually supported the Chinese company instead of supporting the American business. A third reason that I believe Walmart is not good for America is the lack of ethics in the way that they conduct their business. Some of the entrepreneurs interviewed talked about the process that Walmart goes through when they decide which vendor to buy from. They bring a representative from each company into a room, and have them reverse auction to see who can offer the lowest price. This causes a great deal of stress to the representatives and is only done so that the Walmart Corporation can make more money. After everything I have learned about Walmart, I do not believe it is good for America.