WAL-MART: Salvation or Destruction of the USA?

The activist bug bit me early this morning. I was checking back-links (websites which link to MadridMan.com) and found one which has a link to it. It was the La Charla blog, written by an American woman in the United States whom has some connections to Spain.

While I’ve never been a fan of BLOGS before (I finally broke-down and created this one) I realize there is A LOT of personal information out there on the internet. And upon seeing THIS ONE I started reading and learning. There, they had a link to a 1h37m video about Wal-Mart. The video discusses the retail empire’s questionable business practices and how it negatively affects the USA market economy. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retail establishment, the mother of all one-stop-shopping super stores, usually found on the outskirts of any US city or town.

I’ve been a Wal-Mart shopper and didn’t know too much about it except that it was famous for low-prices and large selection of products. But I’ve also been hyper aware of the world’s market and how more and more American products are bought in US Stores which are NOT made in the USA – but rather in China, Bangladesh, and other developing or underdeveloped countries.

Much in the same vein as Michael Moore’s 2007 movie SICKO! about America’s health care system, this video attempts to expose Wal-Mart’s true objective; Make Money at the expense of the American economy and working Americans. The video will likely urge more questions but the purported answers in the video will surprise you – although I don’t expect it will greatly change shopping practices as Americans search for cheaper and cheaper products “at all costs”.

The same thing is occurring here in Spain with the super-centers outside of the big cities. Most products are made in China. Luckily, if it is luck, it’s such a pain in the royal ARSE to get/drive to these shopping centers, find parking, get stuck in parking lot traffic jams, that it hasn’t made a HUGE impact…. YET. But these parking lots are always FULL FULL FULL and so that alone tells you something. Slowly, one by one, small Spanish “Mom & Pop” stores in neighborhoods are closing. The ones which are newly opening are….(?)… often opened by Chinese families selling Chinese-made goods. This is a wonderful thing for these hard-working Chinese families. But it’s a devastating thing for the Spanish economy as a whole.

Saludos, MadridMan