It began years ago with a man and a dream. Sam Walton ran a store that would turn into a world wide empire. Over a number of years Wal-Mart has moved it's way into nearly every community in America, providing affordable goods to the masses. They are now practically a monopoly that no one can compete with.

When Wal-Mart got big, in an effort to keep prices down, they began giving out contracts either to American companies that had foreign operations, or outright foreign companies. Why not? The overhead for those companies were much lower than their American counterparts. The employees could be paid pennies an hour and had no benefits at all, basically slave labor compared to our standards. This is how they have kept low low prices.

It took a while, but this had an effect on these countries that had the factories that supplied the might Wal-Mart. Suddenly, these people had jobs, and money. They began to flock to the cities to get these jobs so they would not be starving in the rural areas like their families had for generations. Countries like China, India, Taiwan, and others were seeing a cultural shift in their populations.

Now that these people lived in the cities and had some disposable income, they started to need things, lights, hot baths, refrigerators, air conditioners, and CARS to get around the city with and travel back to visit home, take vacations, joy ride. Slowly but surely, more and more cars were being sold in these countries as a middle class began to emerge. Millions, perhaps a billion people now needed the energy to run these items and gas for their cars.

This goes back to economics 101, supply and demand. During the same time period, supply has not increased, or at least not at the rate of demand increases. Thus, it makes the oil prices rise as more and more people are bidding on a limited resource. Thus we have the situation we have today where in the last 8 years, oil has gone from under $20 a barrel to over $100 a barrel. A 500% increase in cost in less than a decade. We are now paying that cost as gas prices here in America have more than tripled in that time span.

So, yes, we can thank the mighty Wal-Mart for causing the oil crisis we are experiencing today.

Learn more about this author, Gerald Davis.
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