Walmart: Good or Bad?

Wal-Mart: Good or Bad?

Wal-Mart has long been a staple in our economy. The store has allowed us to perform most of our shopping in one convenient location, thus cutting down the amount of time required to perform our shopping compared to going all over town to shop for what we need on day to day basis. Lately, people have been arguing whether Wal-Mart is actually beneficiary or not to the economy, and about the way it treats its employees. One such group calls its self the Wal-Mart Watch and they are a group of widespread individuals that share common views on how Wal-Mart is harmful to the economy and how badly it treats its employees. On the other hand there are people who practically beg Wal-Mart to come to their town and build a shopping center.

Wal-Mart is one of the world’s largest companies, and it has a GDP larger than more than 175 countries. If Wal-Mart was a country it would have been ranked 22nd in the world as a result of its high GDP putting just behind Belgium, Sweden, Turkey, and Australia and just ahead of Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Denmark. Comparing its sales to other retailers, its annual sales were greater than the combined sales of Target, Sears, Kmart, JC Penney, Safeway and Kroger. In terms of employees, only the United States Government employs more people, and its workforce of 1.7 million people is greater than the combined workforces of Ford, GM, IBM, and GE (Wal-Mart).

In many cases, the Wal-Mart Corporation has been asked to build a shopping center in a town in order to bring down local business prices and provide more jobs. In Miramichi, Nebraska, a local woman and her friend were planning on driving an hour and a half to another town just to save a few extra dollars and they decided to start a petition to get Wal-Mart to build a shopping center in their home town. Finally, Wal-Mart opened an outlet in Miramichi, and not only did it create new job opportunities and instilled new life to the towns commercial district (Maich).

Ryerson University