How Wal-Mart is killing the American Dream

Everybody on Gods green Earth has been effected by Wal-mart by now. It is by far the worlds largest retailer. It did 244.5 billion in sales last year. To give you an idea about how big that is it sells more stuff in three months than its nearest rival Home Depot does in one year. It is far and away larger exponentially than Target or Sears or Kmart. The way it got there is simple. It provides its customers the lowest prices and the largest selections and the customers come in droves. What most customers who shop at Wal-Mart dont usually understand is that every time they make a purchase at the giant chain they are taking a small bite out of the future of their own country and here's how.
Wal-Mart kills good American jobs and replaces them with low wage ones that most Americans cant support themselves on. Whenever wal-mart locates a new store in a new location it has the effect of running all the other nearby smaller stores and chains out of business because they cant lower their prices enough to compete with Wal-mart and still make a profit. They have to close up shop and that costs the local economy jobs and it erodes away its tax base. In some cases these are little shops and smaller stores that have been in their communities for decades. These are the kind of people and places that Norman Rockwell used to paint, Small town America. When these people and places vanish it can devastate a community and in some instances leaves Wal-Mart as the only place in town to buy anything. The jobs that are lost are good jobs which are usually family run stores that have supported families for more than two and three generations in some cases and they are usually not replaced in the local economy. They are just gone.
Wal-Mart promotes low wage jobs both in America and overseas. The typical Wal-mart job is a stock worker or a checkout clerk. These jobs usually pay minimum wages with long hours and no health care benefits. That's what you get in America. In China its even worse. In order for Wal-mart to provide a tremendous amount of items for sale at very low prices it has to buy those items at low prices. You can check the items on the shelves yourself to see where they are made. The clothes and toys and everything else are usually from China. It buys them from China where in some instances the workers in the factories there have to work often 7 days a week for up to 15 hours a day and are payed in some instances as little as 9 cents an hour after their wages are deducted for food, room, and board, which their employers often provide and charge them for. They are provided with no benefits or health care and they are often not provided with any kind of safety equipment to work on the machinery in the factories where many of the toys and electronic equipment and clothing are made and colored with dyes and chemical lead based paints which are dangerous to inhale. Usually the workers in these factories are uneducated and poor and are not at all aware of the dangers. When a customer shops at Wal-mart they are supporting this chain and perpetuating it and usually they are not aware of it and have no understanding of it.
When wal-mart comes to town it kills all the small businesses and the American economy is overwhelmingly so made up of these types of mom and pop and smaller chain stores. The more Wal-Mart thrives the less there are of them as a result. In our desire as a nation of consumers to buy items that are inexpensive we are destroying the overall economic base of our own country and the long standing cornerstones of our own communities and we are replacing them with nothing.