Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, hope-curdling retailer in the known universe, moving upward of $300 billion in cheap mass-produced slurm every year via more than 5,000 landscape-mauling eyesore stores stretching all the way from Texas to China and Argentina and South Korea and Mexico and your backyard. Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle
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Wal-Mart breeds poverty in 3 ways.
1) Mom and pop stores go out of business. Retail workers who used to work there end up working at Wal-mart where they make less money and have little or no benefits.
2) Mom and pop stores give to such things as pee wee hockey, and little league. Wal-mart doesn't contribute to such things. They have 3 foundations. The WWF or the Wal-mart Foundation. The WFF or the Wal-Mart Family Foundation. And the last is the Wal-Mart Pac or Political Action Committee. The Wal-Mart Pac gives mostly to Republicians who tend to support big business.
3) Wal-mart destoys a local class of entrepreneurs. By doing this they destroy local leadership. This is a much more subtle effect. A St. Louis business journal article said that "A study focused on the effects of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates found that an estimated 20,000 families nationwide have fallen below the offical poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion." Read it for yourself. www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2006/05.
Does Wal-mart breed poverty? Absolutely! UNFORTUNATELY, the pro Wal-Mart folks don't beieve any of this. Perhaps they should go to work there for about 6 months and that's if they last that long. The average Wal-Mart worker QUITS AFTER 3MONTHS. Some great business, huh?
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