Paper Topic:

`Is Wal-Mart Good For America?` PBS Frontline Video

For a retail chain to be able to dictate to suppliers where they are to produce their items in to be able to sell to Wal-Mart at a lower cost means that the retail chain has either a huge stake in the ownership of the supplier or buys so much from the supplier that it is able to dictate the price that it is willing to buy at and by doing so dictate where such goods are to be produced

In determining whether or not Wal-Mart is good for America , the basic

economic principles of any market must be analyzed . Every market is governed by two basic forces , supply and demand . Wal-Mart is able to control both these forces because of the immense size that it has . It controls supply by deciding what items it chooses to retail . It also decides the demand for the item by pricing competitively

In its early years , Wal-Mart provided jobs for most Americans because a majority of the goods supplied were produced in the United States . With globalization and the theory of a flat world , other countries have become more competitive industrially and have now taken those production jobs that were previously held by Americans . The outsourcing of consumer goods industries to other countries can be theorized to have been created by the Wal-Mart demand for cheaper products from their suppliers . The problem with this scenario is that it creates unemployment for Americans who are the main buyers from Wal-Mart . In to counteract this scenario , Wal-Mart must then reduce prices lower to meet the increasing lower income bracket of unemployed Americans who have lost their jobs because of the global production tilt to other countries . As this trend continues , it may be theorized that Wal-Mart will eventually strangle itself by driving the prices of...

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