Walmart's Effect on America

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Walmart sells many items at ridiculously low prices. They are able to offer low prices on their items due to an incredible mark-up on imported products. Especially in today's economy, the buck is the big winner. Everyone wants to save money, and they can do that by shopping at Walmart, where many items are the lowest price in town, even if it's only by a few pennies. But consumers aren't helping their fellow countryman earn his own living by buying these imported items. Consumers are giving their hard-earned money to Walmart to go back to China to buy more items. (Smith & Young, 2004). Walmart has created new jobs for people when they open new stores, but they are underpaid jobs. Many of the positions are part-time, therefore, they are positions without benefits. By shopping at Walmart, Americans are supporting China. When Walmart opens new stores, they often cause the closing of other stores, and upset the balance of prices in the neighborhood."Critics believe that Wal-Mart opens stores to saturate the marketplace and clear out the competition, then closes the stores and leaves them sitting empty." ("Store Wars," n.d., Big store, business practices section, para. 1).The low prices may be great for the economy, but that's about all walmart is doing for America. For people who work at Walmart, in order to make ends meet, they usually have to work at two different jobs. Their significant other usually has to work, too. Not enough money and too much stress lowers the quality of life that people have, and their standards of living also drop, as they are forced to get by with cheap, low-quality items (Nickels, McHugh & McHugh, 2010). Walmart has changed how the retailer and the manufacturer negotiate prices. The manufacturer used to be the one to tell the retailer, "I can make this for you for this much." But Walmart has become so big, so important, that now they

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