“What is good for General Motors is good for America”: What does this statement mean? Can the same be said about Wal-Mart?

Introduction

Wal-Mart has been affiliated with low wages, skimpy health insurance, and poor remedy of workers--and not habitually without reason. A business memorandum in 2005 displayed that though Wal-Mart acquired $10 billion a year, 46 percent of its workers' young kids were uninsured or on Medicaid. The company now offers its employees a more affordable health plan (www.informationclearinghouse.info).

GM was simultaneously suspect of charge its vehicles too high for numerous employed Americans to pay for and so reduced that they endangered to run their competitors out of business. Sensible persons might wonder at the reasoning behind this type of accusation. The notion that charges could be both too high and too reduced defies logic. Nevertheless, our lawmakers have home made antitrust directions conceived to fight such practices. In fact, the antitrust code is fairly comprehensive in terms of the type of pricing schemes that are deemed to be in violation of the law (www.findarticles.com).

Discussion

Prices that are too low are advised “predatory.” That is, these low charges are perceived to be directed at forcing competitors out of enterprise so the “predatory” firm can monopolize the industry. Prices too high are considered clues that the offending firm already must have monopoly power—how additional could it enforce such a high-price policy? charges that agree those of competitors are examined as evidence of conspiracy—how additional could supposedly independent companies post the exact identical prices?

The discount chain--started by Sam Walton in 1962--is the nation's biggest company, with 1.9 million workers worldwide. Based in Arkansas, it has more than 4,100 stores in the U.S. and more than 3,100 abroad. In 2006, it traded $350 billion in merchandise and earned $12 billion in profits. Critics say that the cost of Wal-Mart's low-price business form is too high: that its insistence on buying from low-priced suppliers makes it hard for American manufacturers to compete, with the result that U.S. factories close and the occupations proceed overseas, in numerous cases to China. (About 80 per hundred of Wal-Mart's suppliers are founded in China.)

Another criticism is that affray from Wal-Mart places lesser retailers out of business and hurts downtown buying areas. Opponents have kept Wal-Mart stores from unfastening in New York City, San Francisco, and other built-up areas. Since there is no charge option left uncovered by antitrust laws, every enterprise in ...