Is Wal-Mart good for America?

Is Wal-Mart good for America? This is a question that someone asked the instructor in my Economic class. My instructor made it a debating topic among the student since many students seem to have different perspectives on this. Most students answered this question with a “no, Wal-Mart bad for America” but few other answered yes.

A few students stated that Wal-Mart is good for America. They argued that from buying stuffs from Wal-Mart, they have saved a lot, and so do many Americans. It is true that a lot of low-income families are really benefited from shopping at Wal-Mart. They save more money and get the quality of the products they needed. Also, with many Wal-Mart stores opened everywhere across the U.S., it’s also true that Wal-Mart did create a lot of job. These are points that some students came up with in saying Wal-Mart is good for America.

Most other students said no, and they came up with many arguments, which are very convincing. But it is all relate to Wal-Mart’s business model, and how it indirectly affected America’s economy. Most of us already known that Wal-Mart’s prices on their products are really low, but we never asked how did they keep their price so low and still gain profit from it. It is simple; they forced their suppliers to comply with their way of pricing products. Supplier will bid against each other to see who can supply product to Wal-Mart with the lowest price. And many of the American suppliers that want to continue to supply Wal-Mart with products have been forced to move overseas where they can get the cheap land and labor that they need to be able to sell their products to Wal-Mart at such low prices but still making profit; this takes many jobs out of America. In the long run, eventually there will not be any plants left in America, we will be importing more than export.

So what I think is that while Wal-Mart is creating a lot of jobs, they are indirectly taking a lot out of America; this would cause the unemployment rate to go up. In a long run, this might look bad for the American since all the manufacturers are moving their factory oversea for lower product cost in order to compete with Wal-Mart or to continue working with Wal-Mart. To answer whether Wal-Mart is good for America or not is up, i would say that it is not.