Most of America and many other countries have heard of or have shopped at Wal-Mart or Sam’s-Club. They have very friendly people and great prices. What you may have not heard about them is there numerous lawsuits involving racism, backed health care and no overtime pay. Even after over two thousand lawsuits people still seem to come back.

Sam Walton’s idea of capitalism and greed began in 1962 with the opening of the first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas.

By 1987, Wal-Mart had earned over 15.9 billion dollars and had over 200,000 employees. Now Sam Walton’s store has grown bigger than he ever expected having grossed over a trillion dollars.

One of Sam Walton’s many ways to hurt others and make money from it, is his zoning strategy. His zoning strategy is placing his stores on the outskirts of small towns. Many of these towns rely on their family run businesses which help the town make a steady income. Wal-Mart comes in and drops their prices lower than those of the family run businesses, thus hurting the income of the town. They buy in such bulk that they can sell 50 to 60 percent more than they paid for it.

Iowa is an example of a state that has been destroyed by Wal-Mart. In 1983 Wal-Mart came into Iowa, and has left a path of destruction. In communities of five thousand or less, 7,326 stores have closed in a ten-year period due to Wal-Mart.

Another tactic is opening a Super Wal-Mart. A Super Wal-Mart is a regular Wal-Mart but with add-ons like a supermarket, an auto service center, a bank branch, a shoe repair shop, a video rental shop, a pharmacy, and a restaurant. Everything included in the Super Wal-Mart makes up just about every part of a typical small town’s business commerce. Along with putting these close to small towns, they will also close about two or three Wal-Marts in the area thus leaving towns destroyed.

Scarlett Rabelais, the owner of about eleven hot dog stands set up outside of Texas Sam’s-Clubs, loved selling hot-dogs. From 1987 to 1991 she sold hot-dogs. She was allowed to sell them outside of the store if she gave Sam’s-Club ten percent of her earnings. When her business started to make some money Sam noticed and decided he would like to buy her company. Scarlett said no, and Sam ordered the vendor off its land. To Scarlette’s ninety-two employees, mostly elderly or handicapped, this job was the deciding factor of being on Welfare or not.

During the early nineties, Wal-Mart came out with a new campaign. This campaign was promoting Wal-Mart buying only American made clothing. Their slogan, “We buy American whenever we can,” was seen all across America.

A radio station in Texas decided to have a contest. They would pay someone five hundreds dollars to whoever could list the different countries they have seen in Wal-Mart. They found out that over 85 percent of their inventory was made up of 50 different countries, half of which were countries where child-labor is used.

In Bangladesh, the Beximco Company has young women making Wal-Mart shirts 13 hours a day, seven days a week and they're paid 10 cents an hour!

Health care is almost non existent with Wal-Mart employees. Over 425,000 employees, most of them women, are not provided with health care. Only thirty eight percent of Wal-Marts employees have health care – compared with the national average of people with health care which is about sixty percent.

An executive bragged that Wal-Mart is able to shift the cost of insuring its employees to taxpayers - admitting that many Wal-Mart workers get their health care benefits from state or federal government programs.

Rip-offs are another thing that can be found at Wal-Mart. In a campaign to boost consumerism, Wal-Mart stated that they always have the lowest prices.

An ad for Wal-Mart, they stated that a Sony Digital Camera was cheaper than the same product at a Best Buy in Texas. Many consumers found out that this was false and that Best Buy was pricing it for eight dollars cheaper.

It was this way for many items also. Other items included TVs, a camcorder, a DVD player and a CD player.

Over the past forty-two years Wal-Mart has made it from a small business to a shopping empire leaving a path of destruction behind it. They have lied, destroyed towns and ruined lives. They are an empire that will be the end of our economy.

All I ask of you is that if you choose to shop at Wal-Mart, just know what you are choosing, and know what you are choosing to give up and what you may be allowing to be destroyed.