Watched a PBS documentary about Wal-Mart a while back. Wal-Mart pretty much started the job outsourcing and had driven a lot of companies out of business. One example was Rubbermaid, which used to be the name of a company carrying the same name, now it is just a brand under a different company. In the old days, if you are a manufacturer or farmer, you set your product prices and retailers will set their prices accordingly to make a profit. Wal-Mart completely changed that. Now, Wal-Mart sets the prices for manufacturers. If they don't like the price set by Wal-Mart, they will lose their business there. So, in order to meet Wal-Mart's low prices, companies have to find cheaper labors. That led to the massive job outsourcing.
There was an article about Wal-Mart's impact on our economy on Business Week. The article concluded with:
The best thing for a company is to do business with Wal-Mart; the second best thing is NOT to do business with Wal-Mart.
