Walmart - Good or bad for America - Assignment Example

Wal-Mart – Good or Bad for America? Wal-Mart is hailed as a godsend for consumers; the low prices offered by Wal-Mart, some say, raise the standard of living for the average American consumers by empowering them to buy products they could not otherwise afford. However, with the rise in manufacturing costs in the US and the advent of the Free Trade agreements, Wal-Mart is making more and more of its manufacturing contracts with manufacturers outside the US, to countries where such costs would come to a fraction of the manufacturing costs in the US.

China is, perhaps, the leading market for Wal-Mart in this regard. Even though this practice helps keep the prices at Wal-Mart low for the consumers, something Wal-Mart states as its primary purpose, on the other hand, such trade practices result in jobs being taken away from the Americans and being handed over to others like the Chinese, thus lowering the living standard of the average Americans. Without stable jobs, the average American consumer would not be able to buy most of the consumer products, even if they were to be offered at such low prices as Wal-Mart does.

It is argued by some that American jobs are not lost – more are created in different spheres – as a consequence of this outsourcing. However, such jobs do not pay some nor do they come with the same benefits as manufacturing jobs. This is what “Creative destruction” (PBS) is all about, I agree with the statement that, in essence, while Wal-Mart is doing its best to make products affordable for consumers, by doing so it is, simultaneously, destroying the local US manufacturing market.