Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices is a documentary that shows the effect of Wal-Mart on the economy and on the society. Wal-Mart is seen as an all-purpose shopping establishment that supplies goods to the consumer for extremely low prices. This has been proven to be true. The Wal-Mart customers are, in fact, offered the lowest prices for goods. One may wonder then why is Wal-Mart looked at in such a negative eye. This film exploits those strategies and secrets that Wal-Mart uses to succeed, but only for them.
Wal-Mart is known to supply a majority of household goods that families and people need on a daily basis. This means that people do not have to go to multiple stores to buy what they need. They just have to go to Wal-Mart and they will find whatever they desire. When Wal-Mart does open up in a town, this causes gives all specialty shops competition. Now their customers do not need to go to different places, like those specialty shops, and can just go to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart also tends to offer lower prices than other stores. Wal-Mart causes many stores to go out of business due to this. This hurts the overall economy of the town. The United States runs on a system of private competition. This means that everyone is allowed to run their own business and supply what they desire. This is because competition helps with innovation. When two businesses offer similar products, they compete for consumers. Each business will use strategies to benefit the consumers, whether it is lower prices or better service. This makes the other business strive for better. This practice can go back and forth for a long time. Wal-Mart plays against this ideal negatively. Wal-Mart offers extremely low prices to the point where the competition cannot compete. This causes the competition to go out of business. Without competition, there will be no innovation and Wal-Mart will be able to charge and provide whatever and however they want to their customers. This can be seen as a monopoly in many people’s eyes, which is illegal in the United States.
One-way to stop Wal-Mart from doing this is to make it more expensive for Wal-Mart to invade a town. Even though Wal-Mart provides a lot of tax money to the towns, in the long run it might actually be detrimental to that town because the economy of the town will only be Wal-Mart. It might be difficult to stop Wal-Mart from coming into a town because of all the money and power it has, but a town might be able to regulate the presence of Wal-Mart. Towns should be strict on regulations and should try to make sure that Wal-Mart will not hurt the other business in town because the town needs them.
Another question that is raised is how is Wal-Mart able to offer these low prices. It would seem that Wal-Mart would be losing money if they offered such low prices, but they are actually successful. This is because Wal-Mart takes away from their associates. Wal-Mart does not pay its employees well and does not offer many benefits. Wal-Mart employees are forced to work an extremely high number of hours without being compensated. If Wal-Mart is making billions of dollars, they should provide their employees with more benefits or more pay. This documentary shows that many Wal-Mart employees go without a lunch everyday so that they can pay for bills and groceries; groceries that come from Wal-Mart anyway. Even though doing this can be legal, it is certainly not ethical.
This practice of Wal-Mart’s is hurting the society. They are creating an environment that lowers the standard of living for the employees. If the United States wants to be considered a country of wealth and opportunity, Wal-Mart should not get away with this. I think that if the government regulated the compensation to be fairer for the employees, then this problem might be fixed. This negligence of the citizens of the United States should not be accepted. Moreover, the employees should petition. Even though this might risk their jobs, more people will be aware of the situation and will be willing to help out.
I think that the high costs of Wal-Mart are not of monetary value, but a value of the environment it creates. The costs of low innovation and lower standard of living can hurt us in the long run. Wal-Mart may look extremely beneficial on the outside, but the business practices that it has on the inside create many long-term problems for the society. The biggest solution is to involve the local and national governments to show Wal-Mart how to work successfully while benefiting society. This may seem extremely drastic and undemocratic, but Wal-Mart is such a strong power that it itself has the ability to control many aspects of the economy. I think it would be more beneficial to the United States if the governments intervened to make sure that what Wal-Mart is doing is not just legal, but also ethical.