Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price Essay -- essays research papers

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price 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 dime from its thousands of suppliers, who are left with no profit margin unless they adopt the Wal-Mart model of using nonunion labor and shipping production to low-wage hellholes abroad." (The Nation, March 4th 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020304&s=hightower). Wal-Mart products are not less expensive due to virtuosity. The "misguided hippie punk" seems to labor under the delusion that Wal-Mart and other big box retailers are somehow the savior of middle and lower class Americans. The low priced products are produced in foreign countries under horrible working conditions and are sold by workers at Wal-Mart stores that are paid poverty wages. For more info go to the National Labour Committee website and read up on Wal-Mart (www.nlcne...