How Wal-Mart Is Negatively Affecting The U.S. Economy And People's Wage

Depending on what a person’s job is, what they will be paid will vary. Usually high-stress, skill-requiring jobs will pay more than an unskilled worker’s job. However there are many cases where various people will have the same type of job, but certain jobholders will earn higher wages and receive better benefits than others. A classic example of this is in the case of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart employees do many of the exact same tasks as employees from other retailers do, but the difference is they are not paid as well. What makes things worse is that Wal-Mart replaces higher paying jobs with its reduced-wage jobs and with its low prices, other retailers just can’t compete and unfortunately if do the same, they won’t make profit. It becomes a lose-lose situation for all that is not Wal-Mart, but what needs to be realized is that while everybody loves Wal-Mart’s so-called “rollback” prices because it spares their wallets some misery, it ultimately adds to the U.S.’s misery. Wal-Mart might seem beneficial to people on a small scale, but on the grand scale it is damaging to the U.S. economy and damaging to its employees’ wages and benefits.

Many people love to shop at Wal-Mart because they know they are in for lower than average prices and the fact that they will be able to buy more for less, but how is that Wal-Mart is able to do this and still be so successful compared to other large retailers? One reason may have to do with the fact that many of the products that are found within their stores are imported from foreign countries and are ultimately results of cheap labor. If all the consumers are buying foreign products then where does all of their money go to? Certainly not to the U.S. economy, but back to the foreign country in which it was originally manufactured. Many products that are found at Wal-Mart, one may notice that if they check where the product was made chances are the majority of the time it was made outside of the U.S., primarily in China. Although it may seem understandable that it is less costly to have these products manufactured oversees rather to have us make them ourselves at higher costs, overtime the profit numbers go up and eventually the original manufacturers are seeing more and more money come to them. The U.S. continues to buy products and outsource jobs to other countries when we should be making our own products and keeping jobs within the country. The U.S. is at an all-time high national debt of roughly 14 trillion dollars (U.S. National Debt Clock) so the last thing we need to be doing is give any more of the money we don’t have to foreign countries to just help their economies continue to boom as a result of our continuous importing. In economic terms, if America continues to take the easy way out and rely on other countries to be the producers, our economy will continue to decline and we will eventually be at the mercy of countries such as China.

While companies such as Wal-Mart are negatively affecting the U.S. on the macroeconomic scale in terms of benefitting other countries’ economies, on the microeconomic scale, it also negatively affects its employees when it comes to their wages and benefits. Many people will be perfectly content for the time being working at alternate retailers because they will receive fairly decent wages and benefits; however, once a Wal-Mart arrives near the vicinity, it is only a matter of time before those workers eventually kiss their former jobs goodbye and must become part of the Wal-Mart task force. It seems as if there is love-hate relationship when it comes to Wal-Mart’s shoppers and their employees. The shoppers love Wal-Mart’s rollback prices, but the employees dread their rollback wages and that’s exactly what one gets when they work at Wal-Mart. Ironically enough Wal-Mart’s slogan is “Always low prices. Always,” but in actuality it seems to be something much different when it comes to their employees. To prove this an image was created in opposition toward Wal-Mart’s wages in which their yellow smiley face mascot fitted in pirate attire is slashing away at higher wages with a sword until he reaches lower ones. The caption underneath the image then reads Wal-Mart’s famous slogan, but slightly contorted: “Always low wages. Always.” To make matters worse, small businesses with better paying jobs than Wal-Mart unfortunately are unable to compete with Wal-Mart and to put it as a figure of speech, get swallowed up whole like a python devouring its meal. With all the other jobs replaced by Wal-Mart, those looking for employment have no choice but to settle with Wal-Mart’s low wages and benefits which over the years, just as the image indicated, have actually seemed to have decreased.

Even with evidence of how damaging Wal-Mart is to the U.S. economy in plain sight, several people argue how it is actually beneficial in certain aspects. For example, in an article entitled “Shopping for a Nobel,” the way in which Wal-Mart is portrayed as a national benefactor is argued by saying that it helps people living in third world countries come out of poverty by having them sell their products to Wal-Mart. As a result of this, the low pay they would normally receive for their work, somewhere around the lines of $2.00 a day, would be replaced with up to $13.00 if they became apparel workers (575). As noble of a deed this does indeed seem to be, this kind of thing is exactly what is responsible for the low wages Wal-Mart’s employees receive. The U.S. needs to help itself first and other parts of the world second. What many people fail to realize is that we live in the United States of “America” not the United States of the “world” and that sometimes while we are too busy helping other countries when they are in need of assistance, we are unable to save ourselves from our own problems. The Bible verse Matthew 7:3-5 puts it this way, “3 Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” It is not until we get ourselves out of the economic hole we have dug ourselves in that we can become the world’s superhero once more.

Either way a person looks at it, Wal-Mart is neither entirely negative nor entirely positive, but if it continues to do things the way they are currently doing them, more negative will be the result to come. It is not Wal-Mart as a whole that is negative for if they just changed from selling foreign products to domestic products, our economy might be able to slowly, but surely recover. All that needs to be done is for Wal-Mart to break the cycle of its old methods and embrace change, change for the greater good.