Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Overall, my opinion on Wal-Mart is that it is good for America.  It allows more money for Americans because we are spending less on goods.  Wal-Mart makes it very clear to their suppliers and potential suppliers that prices matter the most.  They hold the upper hand when in talks with suppliers.  Wal-Mart is considered to have the retail power, when usually the manufacturer is in control.  Rubbermaid grew into becoming one of Fortune 100's "Most Influential Businesses" because of it's expansion into Wal-Mart.  When the cost of resin increased, a large amount of their products needed to be inflated.  When that occurred, Wal-Mart held no tolerance and pulled the products off their shelves.  Because of that, Rubbermaid as a company started to decline.  Ironically, the next year, Walmart was named one of Fortune 100's "Most Influential Businesses".  Although jobs were lost because of this, the benefits of Wal-Mart to America as a whole were still more prominent.  After the death of Sam Walton, new management came in and needed to fix Wal-Marts troubling economic position.  They started importing merchandise from China to create higher margins to recover the debts.  Wal-Mart started telling their suppliers that they need to move over to China where they could make their goods for cheaper so that they can stay in business with them.  Wal-Mart's overall goal was to keep product prices as low as possible.  Wal-Mart and China became a joint venture in trying to dominate the United States economy.  America would export about 3 billion dollars worth of raw material to China, and China would make goods with those materials and we would import about 36 billion dollars back into the United States.  While jobs were lost because of the lower cost of migrant workers overseas, jobs in other areas were gained.  Economists are even saying that the amount of jobs lost because of the Asian imports washes with the amount of jobs gained by them.  Wal-Mart, which has thousands and thousands of stores, employs millions of Americans.  While it is low wage work, it is still work and offers benefits to their employees.  Even though the book describes horrible working conditions of these migrant factory workers, Wal-Mart helps boost China's economy by providing 40 million migrant workers with jobs.  It is very low wage, even so to the point that they can't afford the goods they are making, but it's still a job that they can live off of.  Looking at this situation under the World Systems Theory, the U.S., which is the core country, depends on China, the periphery country to make economic gains.