Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Wal-Mart is constantly portrayed as a large, evil, and greedy corporation in Ruth L. Ozeki's My Year of Meats.  The book's main character, Jane, is a Japanese-American director that travels across the United States filming "My American Wife," an early morning show in Japan.  Every week, a new family is featured on the show and they show how to prepare a meal using different types of American meat (mostly beef).  The show is sponsored by BEEF-EX, a meat industry lobbying organization.  At point, she travels to Quam, her hometown and she

"found that all the local business from my childhood [have] been extirpated by Wal-Mart.  If there is one single symbol for the demise of regional American culture, it is this superstore prototype, a huge capitalist boot that stomped the mom and pops, like soft, damp worms, to death" (Ozeki 56).

This attitude towards Wal-Mart has been adopted throughout the book, with constant references to destroying American culture.  Jane is also a documentarian and she states that 

"to a documentarian, Wal-Mart is a nightmare.  When it comes to towns, Hope, Alabama, becomes as Hope, Wyoming...and in the end, all that remains of our pioneering aspirations are the confused and self-conscious simulacra of relic culture" (Ozeki 57).

The author has obviously put a cynical twist on the growth of Wal-Mart and their corresponding business practices.  I decided to do some library research and look more into the topic of just how Wal-Mart grew into such an immense power and what it means for the average American.  I first wanted to look the jobs that Wal-Mart creates.  This is a hotly debated issue and many contests and many actually argue that Wal-Mart destroys more jobs than it creates.

In the book The Wal-Mart Effect, authored by Charles Fishman reports the findings of a study conducted by Emek Basker, an economist with a Ph.D. from MIT.  She studied whether the arrival of Wal-Mart had a real effect on retail jobs in nearby areas.  According to her data, an average of 100 new jobs are added the first year after a Wal-Mart opens.  Although a typical Wal-Mart employees anywhere from 150 to 350 workers,when a new Wal-Mart opens, it is replacing other neighboring businesses, which means that 50 people are laid off.  In one year, that is a net gain of 100 jobs.  A few years after, retail employment drops and the net total drops to 50 jobs.  This is because the boom of Wal-Mart is dependent upon beating out existing retailers.  Within five years of a gran opening of Wal-Mart about four stores go out of business and 250 lose their jobs.  So within a time frame of five years, the opening of a new Wal-Mart only results in a net gain of about 30 jobs (Fishman 143-145).

This data points shows that all the new buzz and excitement surrounding the opening of a new Wal-Mart store may not be so enticing after all.  One would expect a greater positive impact on neighboring communities with regard to jobs.  Wal-Mart consistently promotes that it is a provider and active member for the community, but the evidence shows that this claim has no real basis. This a threat towards Wal-Marts ethos, their credibility in the eyes of the customer.

[library research / quotes]