20 Shocking Facts How Wal Mart Might Be Destroying America

America absolutely loves Wal-Mart. 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country. But is Wal-Mart good for America? That is a question that most people never stop and ask.

Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways.

As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades. Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States. Unfortunately, about 85 percent of all the stuff sold at Wal-Mart is made overseas. What that is costing the U.S. economy in terms of lost jobs and lost revenue is incalculable. But Wal-Mart is a perfect example of where our economic system is headed.

Our economy is becoming completely and totally dominated by highly centralized monolithic predator corporations that ruthlessly crush all competition and that will stoop to just about anything in order to cut costs. In the future, will we all be working for gigantic communal entities that funnel all of the wealth and economic rewards to a very tiny elite? That sounds very much like how communist China works, and red-blooded Americans should want no part of that. America is supposed to be about free enterprise and competition and working together to build up this country, and Wal-Mart is destroying all of that.

The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you....

#1 The average U.S. family now spends more than $4000 a year at Wal-Mart.

#2 In 2010, Wal-Mart had revenues of 421 billion dollars. That amount was greater than the GDP of 170 different countries including Norway, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates.

#3 If Wal-Mart was a nation, it would have the 23rd largest GDP in the world.


#4 Wal-Mart now sells more groceries than anyone else in America does. In the United States today, one out of every four grocery dollars is spent at Wal-Mart.

#5 Amazingly, 100 million customers shop at Wal-Mart every single week.

#6 Wal-Mart has opened more than 1,100 "supercenters" since 2005 alone.

#7 Today, Wal-Mart has more than 2 million employees.

#8 If Wal-Mart was an army, it would be the second largest military on the planet behind China.

#9 Wal-Mart is the largest employer in 25 different U.S. states.

#10 According to the Economic Policy Institute, trade between Wal-Mart and Chinaresulted in the loss of 133,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2006.

#11 The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in a single hour than a full-time Wal-Mart associate makes in an entire year.

#12 Tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and their children are enrolled in Medicaid and are dependent on the government for healthcare.

#13 Between 2001 and 2007, the value of products that Wal-Mart imported from China grew from $9 billion to $27 billion.

#14 Sadly, about 85 percent of all the products sold at Wal-Mart are made outside of the United States.

#15 It is being reported that about 80 percent of all Wal-Mart suppliers are in China at this point.

#16 Amazingly, 96 percent of all Americans now live within 20 miles of a Wal-Mart.

#17 The number of "independent retailers" in the United States declined by 60,000 between 1992 and 2007.

#18 According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart spent 7.8 million dollars on political lobbying during 2011. That number does not even include campaign contributions.

#19 Today, Wal-Mart has five times the sales of the second largest U.S. retailer (Costco).

#20 The combined net worth of six members of the Walton family is roughly equal to the combined net worth of the poorest 30 percent of all Americans.

All over the country, independent retailers are going out of business because they cannot compete with Wal-Mart and their super cheap Chinese products. Often communities will give Wal-Mart huge tax breaks just to move in to their areas. But what many communities don't take into account is that the introduction of a Wal-Mart is often absolutely devastating to small businesses....

A study of small and rural towns in Iowa showed lost sales for local businesses ranging from -17.2% in small towns to -61.4% in rural areas, amounting to a total dollar loss of $2.46 BILLION over a 13-year period.

When we buy stuff made by people working for slave labor wages in China, we destroy good paying American jobs and we make America poorer. This is a point that I have tried to make over and over.

Wal-Mart often tells one thing to the public and then does another thing in private. Sadly, the truth is that Wal-Mart does not care about U.S. manufacturing jobs. Wal-Mart just wants to get products as cheaply as they possibly can, and most of the time that means getting them from China.

Just check out this first-hand testimony from an 81-year-old retired apparel manufacturer....

I was president of the Southwestern Apparel Manufacturers Association. There was ameeting sometime between 1985 and 1990. Walmart had contacted our organization and asked if they could meet with us at our beautiful Apparel Mart we had here in Dallas, which has now been razed, because all the independent merchants don’t exist that used to come to it. Two people from Walmart came down and they said they were going to be sourcing goods from overseas and we would have to meet those prices for consumer products and to get ready for it—we are going to be sourcing the world. Walmart was the only company that came out and said this.

It was sort of shocking: I was selling them some merchandise at the time. On the back of their trucks it was saying 'Bring it Back to America!' They had the big 'keep it in America' program going at that time on the big signs in the stores. Meanwhile when I reminded the buyer of that, she told me, 'that is just for domestic consumption, we’re going to buy at the cheapest we can anywhere on earth.'

As I have written about previously, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

We are losing millions of good jobs that cannot be replaced. If you can believe it, the United States has actually lost an average of about 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Last year, the U.S. trade deficit with China was the biggest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world, and Wal-Mart played a huge role in that.

In fact, Wal-Mart has actually been forcing some U.S. manufacturers to pack up and move overseas. The following is from a recent article by Amy Traub....

Walmart’s market power is so immense that the even the largest suppliers must comply with its demands for lower and lower prices because they cannot afford to have their goods taken off its shelves. Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Walmart’s demand for low prices.

Unfortunately, the vast wealth that Wal-Mart is sucking out of our communities is not put back into our communities. The profits are funneled out to Wal-Mart executives and shareholders. We may enjoy the low prices, but very little of the money that we give to Wal-Mart gets recycled in our local areas.

In the old days, you could actually support a family selling electronics or running a general store. But you can't support a family working at Wal-Mart. The vast majority of the jobs that Wal-Mart creates are very low paying. Large numbers of Wal-Mart employees are actually on welfare, and this is part of the reason why we have seen such an explosion in the number of the working poor in America.

At this point, more than 40 percent of all jobs in America are low wage jobs and the middle class is rapidly disappearing.

If we do not support American jobs and American manufacturers they will continue to go away and the welfare rolls in this country will continue to explode.

There is not going to be any prosperity in this country without jobs. Unfortunately, most Americans simply do not understand how good jobs are being systematically destroyed in America every single day.

The path that America is headed on today is only going to end in complete and total disaster. We are being transformed from a wealthy nation into a poor nation. In the end, we will be dominated by a very tiny elite and everyone else will either be among the working poor or will be totally dependent on the government.

Our system is supposed to be about open, honest competition. But that is not what Wal-Mart is about. Wal-Mart is about crushing small businesses and manufacturers here in America and getting us all to buy their super cheap Chinese-made goods.

Shame on Wal-Mart. They are an un-American disgrace.

So what do all of you think about Wal-Mart? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....

Cops Attack Wal Mart Shopping Grandfather

After he regained consciousness, Newman was transported to a local hospital; after, he was charged with his alleged crime.

The Buckeye police chief has defended the actions of the officers and says that the cell phone footage doesn’t do justice to the entire incident; store surveillance cameras didn’t catch the event on tape. Because force was used in the arrest, however, an investigation will open up while the officer remains on the force.

NOTE: These imbeciles have opened WM to a nice law suit. It isn't considered "shop lifting" until the person has left the premises.

Society needs to shun these monsters. Go to the article to see the video of the poor man, knocked faced down, bleeding and unconscious.

Why Wal Mart Failed In Germany

First was the chanting. Arguably, what initially stuck in the craw of German workers was the mandatory chanting. Walmart employees are required to start their shifts by engaging in group chants and group exercises, a practice intended to build morale and drive home the importance of company loyalty. While performing synchronized calisthenics Walmart employees are required to chant, WALMART! WALMART! WALMART!

Apparently, this kind of happy horseshit didn’t go over well with the Germans. Maybe they found it too embarrassing, maybe they found it too regimented, maybe they found this aggressive, mindless and exuberant group-psychology too painfully reminiscent of certain rallies, like one that occurred in Nuremberg some years ago.

The second problem was the smiling. Walmart requires its checkout people to smile at customers after bagging their purchases. Plastic bags, plastic junk, plastic smiles. Walmart employees who refuse to flash a bright but insincere smile can be fired. But alas, in German society, merchants and customers don’t exchange reflexive smiles. In Germany, smiles are genuine; in Germany, smiles actually mean something. Walmarters grinning like jackasses at total strangers not only didn’t impress the Germans, it unnerved them.

And third was the ethics problem. Walmart corporate policy prohibited sexual intercourse among employees. This applied to all in-store romances: boyfriends and girlfriends, and husbands and wives (even if they met at work and fell in love). Apparently, the Arkansas-based company has no problem with screwing the environment, but objects to employees doing it with each other.

Although a German court struck down this sexual prohibition in 2005, Walmart’s bizarre ethics policy left a bitter residue; and that, coupled with the ritual chanting and the mandatory smiling, more or less poisoned the whole deal. So Germany is now verboten to Walmart. Presumably, they’ll open stores in Libya to take up the slack.

Wal Mart People Photos

Don't you just have to wonder if there are stores where people congregate without considering the effect their appearance will have on others?

Oh well, here are a few in all of their glory, proud to show their stuff!

Wal Marting The Oceans

Critics of Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world, have blasted the company for decades for being able to sell its products at cheap prices only by employing sweatshops, undercutting competitors, wielding its market power to cripple both competitors and suppliers, and flouting national and international health, safety, labor, and environmental standards. Anti-corporate globalization opponents have long regarded Wal-Mart as a virtual "Darth Vader" of retailers, as documented in the film, "The High Price of Low Cost."

The Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA), a national grassroots recreational fishing organization, this week slammed Wal-Mart's contribution of $36 million to ocean privatization efforts through "catch shares" programs and the creation of so-called "marine protected areas."

"Wal-Mart announced this week its efforts to help fund the demise of both the recreational and commercial fishing industry while also working to ensure that the next generation of sportsmen will have less access to coastal fish stocks than at any point in U.S. history," according to a news release from RFA.

Greenwashing Wal-Mart's image

However, in 2006 the retail giant hired Adam Werbach, former Sierra Club president, to "polish" its image. This latest Wal-Mart release is apparently part of a carefully orchestrated campaign to greenwash its image - and extend control over public trust resources.

The so-called "marine protected areas" established under the MLPA Initiative fail to protect the ocean from oil drilling and spills, water pollution, wave and wind energy projects, military testing, corporate aquaculture, habitat destruction and all other human impacts upon the ocean other than fishing and gathering. In an extreme case of corporate greenwashing, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association, served as chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that created these questionable "marine protected areas."

The release also said that targeted marine protected areas moving forward include Indonesia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico. It will be interesting to see if these marine protected areas, like California's MLPA Initiative, will disrespect and fail to acknowledge the sovereign gathering rights of the indigenous people of these countries and regions.

"The Walton family created this huge corporate entity that has threatened the vibrancy of our local retail outlets, and now they're essentially doing the same thing with our fishing communities," Donofrio said.

"Much like Safeway has done with their financial investment in the environmental business community, Wal-Mart apparently prefers customers buy farm-raised fish and seafood caught by foreign countries outside of U.S. waters, while denying individual anglers the ability to head down to the ocean to score a few fish for their own table,"