Does Walmart make life better

Answer 1

Absolutely! It's not intuitive to some people, but Walmart makes life better for all of us.

How do I know this? Because if Walmart made life worse for all of us, it would never exist; the market would never have allowed it.

People will claim I'm a cold-blooded capitalist for not taking into account the low wages Walmart pays their employees. Think about it, the people that work there must not think its too bad because I don't see them leaving to work at the unionized chain King Soopers; besides, Walmart hires a large number of the elderly and the disabled; people who would have no luck finding jobs anywhere else.

What of the Jobs Walmart destroys? Is it not terrible that Walmart comes into a community and competes with all the mom and pop stores? No not really. That's the rule of the free market, if the mom and pop stores can provide a service Walmart cannot, such as more personalized service and/or an "expert opinion", then the market will reward that; however, if the small store cannot bring anything extra to the table, then there is no use for that store anymore. Not to mention, Walmart adds a place where people concentrate, which allows proximal service businesses such as restaurants to benefit greatly.

Isn't Walmart going to become an evil Monopoly? Not at all, it is true that Walmart now is the largest company company, but in the early 80's Sears and K-Mart were the big players, now both have a decreasing revenue less than that of Target. Why? People preferred to shop at Walmart over those other stores, and if another one comes into the field that provides a better price for more, then it will take over Walmart.

Say you still don't believe me, and all I am is a cold-blooded capitalist, then answer me this: is it a good thing that Americans are spending a much smaller fraction of their wealth on necessary goods like food and clothing and a larger fraction on 'luxery' items like Xbox's, computers, TV's, DVD's etc. than 50 years ago? Unless you feel spending 80% of our income on living expenses is a good thing, thank Walmart and all the other large retailers for driving down the cost of living to make all of our lives better. Whenever Walmart comes to town we all get pay raises relative to our cost of living.