"Progressive Wal-Mart.Really." by Sebastian Mallaby

According to Sebastian Mallaby in his essay “Progressive Wal-Mart. Really,” the giant retailer might be helping Americans fight medical inflation, but, at the same times they are enriching shareholders and putting rivals out of business. Also, asserts Mallaby, Wal-Mart is against retailers who advertise campaign and confuse poor Americans about food prices. Since Wal-Mart discount on food is big enough to boost the welfare of American shoppers by 50,000 billion in a year. Nevertheless, most critics say that Wal-Mart has caused an annual loss of wages for American workers in the retail sector, but when it opened a new store, wrote Mallaby, they received twelve times more applications that needed for the low benefits and unattractive job they had posted. Even if Wal-Mart busted the union and still pays lower wages to its workers, the purchasing power of the wages remains the some quantity product at the Wal-Mart low priced shelves. According to Mallaby, if one really wants to find the real cost of Wal-Mart’s lower prices, that person should go to China to see how their workers sweat for pennies to keep Wal-Mart’s shelves stocked with goods. Even worse, many Chinese earned less than Wal-Mart subcontractors paid for their labor. Also, according to Mallaby, accusing Wal-Mart as a parasite on taxpayers is unfair because other retail firms have a slightly lower percent of workers on Medicaid plans. Wal-Mart says workers should be thankful to the company that keeps Medicaid people employed.
According to Mallaby, companies like Wal-Mart treat their workers poorly and maintain poor work environments because the company rulers are not saints. All Americans have to know that Wal-Mart is the center of a global technology that drives economy, and in these days of world crisis, the economy should be thankful for the $200 billion that Wal-Mart consumer gains annually.