Did you know that there is a relatively new nation forming, increasingly gaining power, and becoming one of the wealthiest on the planet? And no, I’m not referring to the United States.
I’m talking about that sickeningly colored grayish-blue box which calls itself Wal-Mart. This Wal-Mart Nation (a.k.a. “Wally World”) is a retail store that sells a variety of items; basically whatever a person could want.
As a kid, I remember going on daily errands with my mother to Wal-Mart. I would sit comfortably in the metal shopping cart, chewing on fresh, warm popcorn and sipping icy-cold Coke slushes.
Occasionally my friend and I would decide to stay up all night this past summer. In Oak Ridge, where I’m from, there is not much open in the wee hours of the morning; unless you want to include that scary isolated Shell gas station and the icky freezing-like Minnesota-winter Waffle House, smelling of cigarette smoke and greasy hamburgers.
Thus, Wal-Mart was the inevitable place we could eventually be found. We would roam the aisles and try on shoes, make-up, clothes; sometimes we even tried the food.
In 1962, Sam Walton created Wal-Mart. Walton wanted to try buying products in bulk and then selling them at competitive prices. Therefore, he would be attracting customers and still make a profit.
And so, he began his very first independently owned business: Wal-Mart. The philosophy of Wal-Mart was “Everyday Low Prices.” Those words held with Walton’s honesty and customers’ proven-to-be-true reality, became the driving force for billions of people in the world to shop Wal-Mart style.
Walton’s theory, buying in bulk to make it cheaper for the business owner and customer worked supremely well. So well, in fact, that today more than 3,600 facilities in the United States and over 1,570 units thrive in other various parts of the world: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom.
But I’m a bit apprehensive. Hundreds of privately owned and large well-known business chains have closed down or filed for bankruptcy.
Not only are businesses going down the tubes because of Wal-Mart’s invasion into already marked-territory, but also Wal-Mart’s average employee isn’t receiving adequate salary.
The employees are paid salaries that would place them below the poverty level. So when I say “adequate salary,” I mean income that would bring that person out of the poverty level and at the very least into the “lower middle class” socio-economic level.
Since Wal-Mart is the largest corporation, they can obviously be deemed the nation’s chief secondary employer, next to the federal government. Hence, Wal-Mart’s low wages are definitely negatively affecting millions of people.
It seems ironic to me that the world’s largest retail store cannot even give average hourly salaries to its workers.
On average, most Wal-Mart workers receive $9 an hour. Not surprisingly, Wal-Mart isn’t unionized, and strongly discourages unions at all.
I can hear the rebuttals, “Well, Wal-Mart is the cheapest and I’m a poor college student,” etc.
Yes, well, Wal-Mart may be the cheapest, but cheap for whom?
Cheap for the workers who stand on average eight hours a day and then go home to a roach-infested apartment and two hungry children?
Cheap for the thousands of children laboring at the sweat shops 18 hours a day and then unable to even buy some food because the bus fare takes up the majority of their paycheck?
Cheap for you, because you get that T-shirt at discounted price? Think about it.
I’m not asking you to cease shopping at Wal-Mart. I’m not asking you to start a lobbying group against Wal-Mart. I’m simply asking you to think about this.
Be aware of this. Research it, ask yourself questions, and then ask the main question: cheap for whom?

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