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Originally posted by Optimist Prime
I think Wal-Mart is more dangerous for American Society than Communism and Al-Qeada combined. Although, I don't think communism is that big of a threat anymore. I think global warming, and the SOLS are way worse.
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I found this really interesting article. It's scary how powerful Wal-Mart is. This article is from 2003, and I'm sure Wal-Mart has only grown even more since then. I don't know what the solution is. Even if we could make everyone more globally aware (aware of the type of pressure Wal-Mart puts on its suppliers, aware that Wal-Mart is driving factory jobs overseas, aware that Wal-Mart has the power to very negatively affect other businesses, etc.), I still don't think it would make a difference. People are still going to shop at Wal-Mart because it's the cheapest. I think as long as there is no direct negative effect on our lives and lifestyles, most of us (Americans in general) aren't going to concern ourselves too much with global issues.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
"Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what
number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.
Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas."