The True Cost of Walmart

http://news.yahoo.com/really-costs-walmart-comes-town-143801034.html

What It really Costs When Walmart Comes to Town

This article about the great negative impact that new Walmarts often have on local communities really caught my attention, since it reminded me of a documentary, Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, that I viewed a couple of years ago. I remember that this documentary revealed several problems that Walmarts introduced, including its low wages, monopolistic nature, lack of environmental protection policies, and poor treatment of workers. This documentary, with its numerous facts and interviews, really worked to change my opinion on this large corporation from a lack of interest in their affairs to almost downright disgust with their whole operation.

This article reintroduced the same feelings that I had after watching the documentary. It focused mainly on the fact that most Walmarts that are introduced into an area cause the community to lose millions of dollars in revenue. This sharp decline in revenue is due almost entirely to the lower wages that Walmarts provide compared to the local businesses that they overtake (about a 3 dollar per hour decrease). In addition to these lower wages, the article also introduces studies that assert that communities with Walmarts are much more likely to have more hate groups than a community without one. This occurs since this megastore puts smaller companies in the community out of business, companies which previously had served as “pillars of the community”. While Walmarts can benefit communities that were previous unable to supply enough products to satisfy consumer demand, this article states that in reality there are very few communities that cannot provide for the consumer.

I definitely agree with the arguments that this article is making, since I really believe that in order for a community to succeed, competition is required, not a single monopoly. Walmarts may appear to have lower prices (and, technically, they do), but there is a much higher price that communities have to pay in the presence of these stores, and that is the millions of dollars caused by lower wages.