It is easy, and reasonably accurate, to say that Wal-Mart is costing jobs in the US by importing and selling all those Chinese products. But, to be fair, and also to allow a correct interpretation, we must take notice of the fact that every other US-based producer or retailer that can is also buying as much from China as they can. If you walk through any retail store and look at labels, you will find that the majority of manufactured goods are imported from China. What is different about Wal-Mart is that they are reselling those Chinese goods for less than their competitors. And that is because, item for item it has found ways to minimize its total overhead cost of that selling. They pay lower wages, yes; but much of their reduced costs, relative to others who are selling the same Chinese goods, is attributable to their relentless drive for efficiency. And interestingly, this doesn't really much affect the economy: They spend less here per item, but they also charge less here per item. What happens in the US stays in the US! The net effect might be to lower GDP, but a side effect is to also lower recorded inflation. They are, indeed, paying minimal wages, but they are also charging minimal prices, so the net effect, is only to strengthen the dollar by minimizing the cost of both labor and the price of what that labor purchases in the role of consumers. In other words, Wal-Mart is largely driving a scale factor. My observation of other retailers is that they have minimized the number of retail workers, per physical unit of sales, to the same extent as has Wal-Mart. They differ in that their markup on the Chinese goods is smaller than their competition. So, if there was no Wal-Mart and their volume was distributed amongst their current competitors, people in the US would be just about as well off since the money going offshore to obtain the products would not really change much. Now to understand that, you have to understand that, while goods and services and labor are real, money is only an insubstantial substance for keeping score. If you understand that, they you understand why Wal-Mart does not really affect the overall national economy when compared to its competitors, although it does affect those competitors.

Walmart has a flow/flow setup in that the quarter profits don't necessarily ever need to add up.