Dr. Mercola December 03 2003 4,371 views
Wal-Mart is the world's largest company--it does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway and Kroger combined. But, while they offer consumers low prices, the low prices don’t come without a cost.
Wal-Mart’s 21,000 suppliers are under high pressure from the company to provide cheaper and cheaper goods--and a lot of them. The only solution for many companies is to close down shop in the United States and use overseas suppliers. As written in the article, "One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market."
Vendors who do business with Wal-Mart are likely to experience an initial jump in sales but may have to face consequences to their brand and business later on.
It is American shoppers who ultimately gave Wal-Mart their power, but will we realize the consequences of these low prices before it’s too late?
Fast Company December 2003
Wal-Mart's acceleration is inevitable. The United States is on a rapid downhill trend that will devastate our economy unless we wake up. There is no way the world is going to stand by and tolerate our excess spending and earnings when they are earning so little.
Wal-Mart will make sure that many U.S. jobs go overseas. While that buys us cheaper products, it also presents a dilemma in that many will be forced to find new jobs. This is also happening in the high-tech industry. Much of the programming is shifting overseas--I did it three years ago. I hired four Polish programmers for my Web site for the price of one U.S. programmer.
My guess is that we need to shore up our savings in anticipation of an eventual economic decline.
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Dr Mercola,
Was your income so stressed that you were forced to hire Polish programmers to develop your website? On one hand you suggest that we support our local growers and farmers which is quite a bit more expensive, and then on the other hand you hire cheap foreign labor to save yourself money. The contradiction is outright obvious.
The first three years of the website I sold NOTHING and had paid $500,000 out of my own pocket to pay the bills so I did the best I could with the resources I had
This whole issue is a vicious circle. Why do we need cheaper products? Because we buy the spin of main stream media, who is of course, in bed with the big corporations. Before massaive amount of outsourcing our jobs, there were no cheaper products. We had manufacturing here in America and jobs paid well. We could fix or repair something if it broke, and or it iddnt break for years. I have had hot water heaters that lasted almost 50 years! Now there maybe will last ten or twelve! Cheaply made by design NOT to last. It's the whole "growth economic model" that makes a few at the top rich and the rest of us on the treadmill "race to the bottom" These kinds of business practices literrally at some point FORCE people klilke Dr. Mercola to do what he did. something has to give. I personally shopped for labor for a remodel I did. Who did I hire? A mexican for $16.00 an hour that did better work than the $50-100.00 dollar an hour white contractors with attitude, I am sorry to say. It's a sripal that got started with big biz wanting to be masters of the universe and now its leaked down to us little guys. I support local farmers when I can as well, and try to grow my own food. I know small business owners who CANNOT afford to pay their employees well and make a decent living themselves. AND the other part of the equation is our inlfated fiat dollar. It's a mess and it's all ruining our country. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and rail on the Dr. Try looking at Congress and the "Banksters" who started all this mess and are much more complicent in the evil empire that I am sure Mercola is. We the shrinking middle class are just trying to survive like everyone else.
Dr. Mercola,
I appreciate your honesty. You didn't have to tell the world you too, had fallen victim to the squeeze. Sometimes we do have to make compromises to get where we are going. If you hadn't made that one, we would not be benefitting from your knowledge today.
I'm an engineer at GE Transportation, and I've seen much outsorcing to Mexico, Poland, Russia, and India. It's cramping the income of the US worker who is still quite good in comparison, but with the loss of the creative jobs to cheaper labor, even the reknowned American creativity is losing it's edge. Offshore engineers are paid pennys on the dollar in comparison, and the big corps are using those resorces more and more. Much of the work is substandard and has to be redone, but that situation won't last forever. Hopefully, I'll be retired before I see the total collapse of our industrial base. I pity our children though.