What Does Walmart Really Cost?

Walmart has long been a small business destroyer, a little city home-wrecker. Like a heat seeking missile these super stores land like bunker busters and devastate local economies by closing out the local businesses, hiring the newly unemployed for minimum wage with no health insurance, then when the locals have no money left and can't buy anything in these monster stores, they close them up and leave town.

And of course they're ranked as the number one retailer in the company this year, again. But that's America. Money talks, and common sense walks off into the sunset.

Check out this thoughtful insight from the Cranky Yankee. He starts:
"So you save a buck on some cheap goods made in China by virtual slaves. Apart from the hit our collective Karma when we allow worker abuse like that in order to enrich ourselves, the cost to the local community is higher than you might think.

The economic impact of a Walmart on the local and state are substantial and often under-reported. A Congressional report was released in 2004 that was commissioned by Rep. George Miller of California for the House education snd Workforce Committee. The report concludes that a Walmart with 200 employees will end up costing taxpayers $420,750.00 annually for things like public health care and housing assistance because Walmart employees can't afford them because of low pay and expensive healthcare benefits. These costs include --"

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