"He Couldn't Take it Anymore"--The Real Cost of those Low Prices at Wal-Mart

Recently a 58 year old employee of Wal-Mart set himself on fire in the store parking lot. A Wal-Mart employee reported the man just "couldn't take it anymore."

Although I don't know the exact reasons for this man's particular suicide, I do know that people are more apt to commit suicide when they are under a great deal of stress and feeling a great deal of despair.

You might say this man was lucky enough to have a job.

But America has been transformed into a place of "haves and the have nots". A formerly prosperous and growing American middle class has shifted into a large and growing working poor represented by a Wal-Mart workforce.

Wal-Mart has been notorious for low wages, working its employees off the clock, inadequate and costly health insurance, discrimination against woman, violations of child labor and the use of undocumented workers, anti-unionization efforts, and violations of workers safety.

But even if you don't care about the guy that lit himself on fire at Wal-Mart or the emotional trauma and exploitation of those subjected to the dehumanization of a "Wal-Mart" economy. You might be concerned about the cost of this "Wal-Mart" economy to your pocket book.

Sure you can buy some cheap plastic junk and some cheap groceries, but Wal-Mart has decimated American small business and has soaked communities of a great deal of their tax revenue.

"The subsidies Wal-Mart lobbies for run the whole gamut: free or reduced-price land, infrastructure assistance, tax increment financing (TIF), property tax abatements or discounts, state corporate income tax credits, sales tax rebates, enterprise zone tax breaks, job training funds and low-interest tax-exempt loans. The most deals and dollars were found in Texas (30 deals worth $108 million) and Illinois (29 deals worth $102 million)."

Also, when workers are being paid well below the living wage for an adequate living and mostly working part time. Then you have workers that are not able to pay much in taxes and must depend on the government for subsidies to survive.

In fact, those low Wal-Mart prices have helped bring about a transformation of the American economy into a what we see today.

The collapse of the American economy and its effect on the worldwide economy is directly related to the debt bubble created by an underpaid and often underemployed or unemployed American workforce that used credit to survive during a period of decline in real wages for the American worker.

Most of us are aware of the phenomenon of several workers in a household (mom, dad, and kids) struggling to make the household income of just one American worker in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Unfortunately, the American economy can no longer sustain the low prices of Wal-Mart and the other big box corporate retail stores which

When you have an underpaid and underemployed American worker then you have a consumer that can no longer afford to keep the American and world's economy moving and growing.

Sadly the abuse and dehumanization that came with the Wal-Mart economy has not only wrecked the American psyche along with their incomes, but it has also spread throughout the economy of the world in the form of our present collapse.

The real cost of the American Wal-Mart economy has rippled through the world in the form of an economic collapse.