Hello Professor and class,

Below please find my submission for this unit’s case study.
Provide an example of creative destruction you have witnessed during your lifetime and describe what the benefits and costs to the economy have been. Who was enriched and whose fortunes declined?
When asked about an example of creative destruction, all I could come up with is my experience watching the declining diversity, and availability of the mom and pop store being replaced with the super stores, such as Walmart, Target, Costco, etc.
The benefit:
This in the short term has been a great benefit for consumers who are looking for cheaper items of equal value to what the mom and pop stores used to provide. Since the new super stores are able to utilize the concept of economies of scale, which the mom and pop stores could not, to offer items that are made at cheaper places in the world, and therefore cheaper to buy.
The costs:
While this movement of stores is in the short term good for any place, in the long term this weeding out of the local stores has been so successful that it has hurt not only the local economy, by the superstores providing substandard wages with no benefits, but the national economy as well. This reliance of economies of scale, and having superstores wield power in their buying decisions has forced manufactures to ship jobs overseas in the effort to maximize profit, while maintaining quality. In cases such as Walmart, who gross profit in 2012 was $32.64 billion, (wikinvest.com, 2012) they are able to maintain and grow this profit by offering jobs in the US that are at the minimum wage, with no benefits which forces their employees onto federal assistance. This further burden the economy by forcing an increase in taxes on a population that is having a harder and harder time finding work that pays enough to survive.

Some positive change:
Now