Powerful, rich, and greedy; these are the characteristics that define one of the most soulless corporations in small-town America, Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the United States, with nearly 900,000 people working for Walton Enterprises. One of the most acknowledged keys to Wal-Mart's formidable success is its lower-than low cost of doing business. On a daily basis, people will come to Wal-mart to bargain for the best buy. Every aspect of Wal-Mart is straining to keep costs down, profits up, and growth exploding. Fourteen years ago, Wal-mart did not sell groceries. Now, thanks to their Sam's Club and Supercenters, Wal-mart is the nation's largest grocery chain; a worldwide giant that is so antiunion with 3,020 stores across the United States. Not one single Wal-Mart in America is unionized. Wal-Mart has indeed taken over the retail world. However, the question is vital, what happens when Wal-Marts come to small towns in America? When Wal-Marts come to small towns they destroy jobs rather than create them; the local economy suffers; downtown dies; taxpayers pay for the disaster; and then it moves on to plague other nearby towns.
             Wal-Mart profits well over $3.5 billion a year. Wal-Mart was a company that promised jobs and adequate benefits to small rural towns. However, Wal-Mart's low wages and inadequate benefits devastate wages and conditions for all working Americans. For every two jobs created by a Wal-Mart store, the community loses three. Furthermore, local businesses are destroyed and community living standards get lowered when Wal-Mart moves into the neighborhood. Wal-Mart workers make at least an average of $3 less than union supermarket jobs, $2 per hour less than all supermarket jobs and $1 per hour less than the average retail wage. For a single mother with a child that works in Wal-Mart, she would earn about $11,500 a year, working well over 30 hours.
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