Brooke Lewis

Mr. Hamilton

Evaluation Essay

September 10th, 2008

                                        Wal-Mart Evaluation

        Robert Reich, in his article, “Don’t Blame Wal-Mart”, sets out to convince his audience that Wal-Mart is an enormous corporation “sucking business away from small retailers.” Certainly his audience is consumers of the New York Times (a large corporation in itself). Surely, the content of Robert’s article is not enough to prevent an educated adult from saving money at Wal-Mart.  The argument would have been much more efficient if all of Robert’s ideas were linked together and were all well supported.

        Robert’s first choice is somewhat far-fetched. Instead of trying to persuade his audience through reason, he jumps to the conclusion that goods from Wal-Mart are manufactured for fractions of the cost in China rather than in America. Where is his evidence to back this statement up? Basically what Robert is saying is ‘we are making innocent Chinese citizens do all of our dirty work’. What the author should be seeking is to establish an understanding of what is going on in China to the reader. If there were more examples with proven facts and actual research, his argument may be more credible.

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Robert goes on to claim that “Today’s economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities.” He obviously wants to present this as evidence to why you should not shop at Wal-Mart because they over-work and under-pay their employees. If what he is claiming is accurate, he should have then after lead to the opposite conclusion: that you should shop at Wal-Mart and buy cheap goods because it is a good way to save money. There is no convincing evidence to go along with this statement and it is puzzling to ...

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