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The Pros And Cons Of Wal-Mart

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Since 1962, Wal-Mart has lived by founder Sam Walton’s core strategy: “the lowest prices anytime, anywhere.” The first Wal-Mart originated in Rogers, Arkansas and within five year, twenty-four stories has since popped up around the nation. Today, according to the Wal-Mart Corporate website, there are more than 11,000 stories in over 27 countries worldwide. The company also employs over 2.2 million employees throughout all of its stores and sees an average of 200 million customers a week. Even though Wal-Mart produces thousands of jobs each year and maintains consistently low prices, the public’s view of the company as a whole is a less than desirable one.
Through its commercials, Wal-Mart tries to portray itself as an All-American wholesale …show more content…
But even these companies will not help. In the same year that Wal-Mart announced it would be donating $3.7 million nationwide to Feeding America, Egan states “Their humiliating wages force thousands of employees to look to food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of welfare. A sign appearing at a Wal-Mart in Ohio last year, asking people to donate food so that the company’s employees “could enjoy Thanksgiving,” was a perfect symbol of what’s wrong with the nation’s most despised retailer” (2014).
While Wal-Mart may be slashing prices of its goods, its costing buyers more money than its worth elsewhere. According to Egan, “By one measure, done by House Democrats last year in looking at data from Wisconsin, the average Wal-Mart superstore cost taxpayers $904,000 a year in various subsidies, or more than $5,000 per employee” (2014). One example of this is in California in December of 2013. According to an article on workplacefairness.org entitled “The Good, The Bad and

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