I was looking around for a blog topic on the internet and came across an article comparing the positives and negatives of Wal-Mart. Apparently there's alot of bad things about Wal-Mart, "Suppliers claim that its persistent pressure to lower prices has led to bankruptcies, closed plants and lost jobs. It imports so much product from China it's been blamed for the growing U.S. trade deficit there. It's been accused of sexual discrimination, gender discrimination, child-labor violations, anti-Semitism, employing undocumented immigrants, denying overtime wages, dodging taxes, excessive pollution and, of course, general thuggishness." Numerous books have been written to exploit the dark side of Wal-Mart rarely seen by the public. There was a popular documentary made called, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" that effectively alerted the public to the deceitfulness of Wal-Mart. I think a corporation as massive as Wal-mart, that employs over 2.4 million people, could not possibly avoid unethical conduct at all times in everyone of its locations. It is simply too big. Does that mean that Wal-Mart is a dysfunctional company? Is management the problem? What should be done to correct the problems? Would shutting Wal-Mart down solve anything, or would another company rise up and act the same way? People also complain about Wal-Mart shipping large amounts of product from sweatshops overseas, "It imports so much product from China it's been blamed for the growing U.S. trade deficit there" which is indeed a problem. It makes me seriously question our nation's code of ethics. Our we so dependent on the low price and convince of Wal-Mart that we will continue to ignore this issue? If more people were educated on the defects of Wal-Mart would fewer people shop there? In this time of economic recession can we afford to challenge a giant like Wal-Mart? BLOG Y'ALL
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/why-you-should-hate-wal-mart.aspx
http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/809/ (relevant and hilarious)
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I actually saw a little bit of the movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" this weekend, and Wal-Mart happened to be featured in the part of the movie that I saw. The movie talked about how major companies like Wal-Mart (as well as many other huge brand name companies) were issuing Corporate-Owned Life Insurance policies (also known as "dead peasant" insurance) on their employees without their knowledge. So, every time an employee died, the company would make money. Not only is this immoral in itself, but it also forces companies to estimate the amount of deaths that should "ideally" occur in their employees. What are they going to do if they don't meet these goals?
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