America needs to be more like Europe (lazier and less religious, for starters)

[davenportavenger]

@xtisme

When it came in thats where I did 80% of my shopping anyway…which is kind of why those other places went out of business.

So you don’t think it’s worth it to pay a little more to support local businesses? I guess only us mega-liberals are willing to put our money where our ideals are and pay a quarter more for a pair of socks, simply to preserve our small-town charm. Only now I can’t even do that, there’s only one non-chain store in my town and it only sells food.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@continuity eror

So maybe Walmart isn’t a “true” monopoly, but it’s certainly a lot like one. Have you ever lived in an area where a Walmart is the only place to get certain items in a fifty-mile radius? Feels monopolistic to me.

Walmart also restricts the choices available to customers. You won’t find a DVD or CD there if the company feels it is somehow inappropriate, subversive, or too inimical to ‘family values’. You won’t find standard Levi’s there; instead they carry Levi Strauss Signature, a cut-rate mass-market sub-brand of Levis. Regular Levis were deemed too expensive to offer to Walmart’s customers. Now that may seem like a very prudent, cost-conscious decision that will encourage thrift, but it also takes away the customers’ choice as to how much they want to spend on jeans before they have a chance to exercise it. I’m referring, of course, to places where Walmart is the only store around.

[furt]

@continuity eror

Why does competition have to enter into it at all; why can’t we just be pleased for the people who choose non-lucrative careers because they make them happy?

Who says we aren’t “pleased for them?” But why should people who choose non-lucrative careers be surprised when they are non-lucrative?

I don’t care about becoming the next John Grisham; I just want to find a way to make just enough money to survive and also be able to do the thing I love, and not spend twelve hours a day locked in a job I hate. Yet you seem to interpret it as saying that I’m upset that I’m not making a boatload of money. There’s a huge difference between being a bestselling author and living on the street.

And there are hundreds of thousands of lousy writers, painters and interpretive mimes. Multiply that by $25K a year and it adds up really fast.

Maybe the arts are a bad example. What about teaching?

Good, I’m a teacher, too.

Nobody on the planet works harder than teachers, and arguably nobody’s work is as important as theirs.

Bullshit on the first part, arguably bullshit on the second.

Then why is it that when someone says they want to be a teacher, the first thing everybody says isn’t “it’s so admirable that you want to educate the future generation” but instead “you can’t make any money doing that”?

My experience is just the opposite. Usually the low salary adds to the admiration factor.

My point is that we don’t care how important a job is in the great scheme of things, we don’t care if someone likes their job and finds it (non-monetarily) worthwhile, we only care about the bottom line.

What mean “we” kemosabe? Are some people money-obsessed? Sure. But lots of others aren’t, including most of the people I know.

[Kimstu]

xt: *However, it did so because it had more things for less money than those local stores…so it ‘stole’ their business the old fashioned way…it was simple a better place to shop. Personally I don’t think this is a problem…certainly not for me as a consummer. *

Indirectly, though, you can end up with some negative consequences from WalMart type policies. For one thing, there are the chronic concerns about squeezing wages; you as a consumer might not mind low wages for WalMart workers, but you as a taxpayer are getting hit when a full-time WalMart employee isn’t paid enough to afford the company’s own benefits plan, and in fact qualifies for state or local Medicaid-type health care for the poor instead. WalMart’s aggressive anti-union policies make it difficult for workers to pressure for change by organizing.

Moreover, WalMart’s huge clout as the world’s largest company—doing more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined—means that it can easily undercut competitors (with disadvantages for communities as local businesses go under, and the profits that they used to plow back into the community get shipped out to WalMart execs and stockholders). In addition, it can squeeze its suppliers, setting its own rules on products and prices, in ways that are sometimes healthy for the companies it deals with and sometimes fatal.

This isn’t happening because WalMart is so competitive, but rather because it’s so big. Being orders of magnitude larger than any of your “competitors” changes the whole playing field:

“Clearly,” says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University’s J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, “Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been.” It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don’t change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas. […]

“People ask, ‘How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?’ Sure, it’s held inflation down, and it’s great to have bargains,” says [Carolina Mills CEO Steve] Dobbins. “But you can’t buy anything if you’re not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs.”

There is no question that Wal-Mart’s relentless drive to squeeze out costs has benefited consumers. The giant retailer is at least partly responsible for the low rate of U.S. inflation, and a McKinsey & Co. study concluded that about 12% of the economy’s productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s could be traced to Wal-Mart alone.

There is also no question that doing business with Wal-Mart can give a supplier a fast, heady jolt of sales and market share. But that fix can come with long-term consequences for the health of a brand and a business. […]

Despite being a publicly traded company, Wal-Mart is intensely private. It declined to talk in detail about its relationships with its suppliers for this story. More strikingly, dozens of companies contacted declined to talk about even the basics of their business with Wal-Mart.

Here, for example, is an executive at Dial: “We are one of Wal-Mart’s biggest suppliers, and they are our biggest customer by far. We have a great relationship. That’s all I can say. Are we done now?” Goaded a bit, the executive responds with an almost hysterical edge: “Are you meshuga? Why in the world would we talk about Wal-Mart? Ask me about anything else, we’ll talk. But not Wal-Mart.”

No one wants to end up in what is known among Wal-Mart vendors as the “penalty box”–punished, or even excluded from the store shelves, for saying something that makes Wal-Mart unhappy. […] “You won’t hear anything negative from most people,” says Paul Kelly, founder of Silvermine Consulting Group, a company that helps businesses work more effectively with retailers. “It would be committing suicide. If Wal-Mart takes something the wrong way, it’s like Saddam Hussein. You just don’t want to piss them off.” […]

Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of something and the cost. Its unending focus on price underscores something that Americans are only starting to realize about globalization: Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: “We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world–yet we aren’t willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions.”

[John_Mace]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Now that may seem like a very prudent, cost-conscious decision that will encourage thrift, but it also takes away the customers’ choice as to how much they want to spend on jeans before they have a chance to exercise it. I’m referring, of course, to places where Walmart is the only store around.

Sounds like they left you a great business opportunity. Open a Spectre-Mart which carries those brands and rake in the dough!

[Kimstu]

JM: Sounds like they left you a great business opportunity. Open a Spectre-Mart which carries those brands and rake in the dough!

This is the sort of reaction (though it’s probably at least partly tongue-in-cheek) that makes me wonder sometimes about the genuineness of some conservatives’ commitment to competition and consumer choice and so forth.

I mean, does it really not bother you that consumers wind up with less choice as a result of a massive box-store retailer undercutting all the other businesses in town? As long as there remains a theoretical possibility that a new business might be able to find a niche selling things that WalMart doesn’t carry, does it really not bother you when they don’t, and when the economics of competing with a mega-retailer makes it almost impossible for them to do so? Do you really have no better response than to say “Wow, sounds like a great business opportunity, hyuk hyuk hyuk!” (If it is such a great business opportunity, then why isn’t the market filling this niche?)

You seem to be coasting on an innate conviction that nothing can really have any negative consequences as long as the government’s not in charge of it. Must be nice to be able to repose on that kind of faith.

[John_Mace]

SoP: And of course you neglect to mention that EVERY store “restricts” the choices of its consumers, since no store carries all brands. But the real competition here is internet companies. You can get anything you want on-line these days, and chances are you can find a go-bot that will comparison shop for you.

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

This is the sort of reaction (though it’s probably at least partly tongue-in-cheek) that makes me wonder sometimes about the genuineness of some conservatives’ commitment to competition and consumer choice and so forth…

First of all, I’m not a conservative. But the real point of my comment was not to mock the poster, but to point out the folly of that statement. Declaring that a store has some sort of obligation to carry the brands you want is just silly. It helps sometimes to think about why YOU (the generic you) wouldn’t back a given business venture if you want to understand why other people don’t.

[clairobscur]

@pervert

Is it possible that older people are skewing the numbers? How long has the education requirement you described been in force?

Just checked it. Since 1959. And before that it was mandatory from 6 to 14 since 1936, and from 6 to 13 since 1882. So even people older than 70 should have attended school at least for 7 years.

[Kimstu]

JM: But the real competition here is internet companies. You can get anything you want on-line these days, and chances are you can find a go-bot that will comparison shop for you.

A very WalMarty response: “Stop bitching about how I don’t provide what you want, let’s talk about your buying what I have, instead.”

This “So what, just shop online!” diversion ignores the fact that many people don’t have online access, or just prefer to be able to actually handle goods before they buy them (especially in the case of clothing which needs to be tried on).

I’m perfectly willing to admit—nay, to celebrate—that modern high-tech vertically-integrated capitalism has a lot of real advantages for consumers. Why can’t you admit that it has a few disadvantages too?

JM: Declaring that a store has some sort of obligation to carry the brands you want is just silly.

What’s a store for, if not to carry the goods that consumers want?

The problem here, as I see it, is that if a retailer is big and powerful enough, and especially if it can squeeze out its competitors, it doesn’t have to work very hard at providing the type or variety of goods that consumers most want. All it has to do is provide goods that consumers are sufficiently willing to put up with, especially if alternatives are difficult to come by.

[Neurotik]

@Bruce_Daddy

Do you think this model holds for very small companies? There are 5 people in my company, president, 2 developers, an art guy and an college intern. We have large clients, brand names you would recognize.

I think it does. I work for a very small company right now - 7 people total, and we also have national clients that you would recognize. We each get between 4-5 weeks vacation. It works because we know the work has to get done, if vacation is coming up and a wave of work comes in, you do what you have to do ahead of time to get it done, be it stay late or work through the weekend. This is, of course, not to say that you are not equally as dedicated at your company, and I’m sure you are since I’ve not known anybody who worked for a small, white collar company who didn’t show the same sort of dedication.

But that’s how we work it at our company. Of course, we’re all sufficiently knowledgable about each others’ accounts and duties that we can pretty easily cover for each other while a person is away.

Actually, I need to amend that. Each of us employees gets 4-5 weeks paid vacation, the owner hardly takes any. He just had his first vacation in three years when he took off a week and a half to go to Florida last month.

[Lilairen]

@continuity eror

But this is exactly my point. Why do we only value (and I should point out that the word “value” in my last post doesn’t mean economic value, but rather something more akin to “estimation”) things which produce money? Why is it that someone’s income is considered a good indicator of their worth as a person (and that’s true, it is)? Why does competition have to enter into it at all; why can’t we just be pleased for the people who choose non-lucrative careers because they make them happy? I don’t care about becoming the next John Grisham; I just want to find a way to make just enough money to survive and also be able to do the thing I love, and not spend twelve hours a day locked in a job I hate. Yet you seem to interpret it as saying that I’m upset that I’m not making a boatload of money. There’s a huge difference between being a bestselling author and living on the street. So why do we look at it as if it’s two extremes: succeeding financially or not succeeding financially?

For what it’s worth, you’ll get the “No, what’s your real job” responses up until the point that you have the name recognition of a bestseller. (Patricia Wrede has mentioned getting that. She has something like twenty published novels, most of which are still in print.)

At that point you’ll start getting hack manuscripts from people who are convinced that bestselling writers aren’t actually interested in writing their own work or have pride in accomplishment, and that their dreck will sell a million and get a giant movie contract if they only get it on the brand name. (One of these guys was trying to sell his uncompleted manuscript on eBay recently. Big name authors only. Minimum bid in, I think, the five figures.)

[XT]

@continuity eror

So you don’t think it’s worth it to pay a little more to support local businesses? I guess only us mega-liberals are willing to put our money where our ideals are and pay a quarter more for a pair of socks, simply to preserve our small-town charm. Only now I can’t even do that, there’s only one non-chain store in my town and it only sells food.

Well, appearently the mega-liberals weren’t either, otherwise the ‘local businesses’ would have stayed in business selling less stuff for more money than wally world did, no?

To answer your question, of COURSE I’m not willing to pay more for less…why should I be, exactly? Its not MY desire or responsibility to subsidize local business so they can remain viable…its THEIR job to come up with something to attract my custom or go elsewhere (or close up shop and hang em up). Obviously I’m not the only one who felt this way either…its pretty appearent that people vote for what they want with their pocketbooks. And the vote was overwhelmingly for Wally world in my old home town.

-XT

[Lilairen]

@xtisme

To answer your question, of COURSE I’m not willing to pay more for less…why should I be, exactly? Its not MY desire or responsibility to subsidize local business so they can remain viable…its THEIR job to come up with something to attract my custom or go elsewhere (or close up shop and hang em up). Obviously I’m not the only one who felt this way either…its pretty appearent that people vote for what they want with their pocketbooks. And the vote was overwhelmingly for Wally world in my old home town.

I’ve seen suggestions that Wal-Mart’s low prices are subsidised in part by the sheer number of their employees who can’t afford their health insurance offerings and thus get their health care on the public dime. (A friend of mine, who works in a clinic for the impoverished and uninsured, has a client who’s not only a full-time Wal-Mart employee, but whose standard of living, both income-wise and access to health care, would go up if she quit and went on welfare.)

[Bruce_Daddy]

@Neurotik

Of course, we’re all sufficiently knowledgable about each others’ accounts and duties that we can pretty easily cover for each other while a person is away.

That’s probably the difference, I’m a genius and everyone else is an imbecile.

[Sam_Stone]

Jeez, how come all you liberals are all about helping the poor, but you want to shut down a chain of stores that cater to the poor spectacularly well, simply because they offend your liberal sensibilities? Bah.

Wal-Mart is a great boon to the poor and lower middle class. You know how you get to be the biggest chain of stores in the world? You get there by appealing to a LOT of people.

You may think it’s no big deal to pay an extra 25 cents for a pair of socks from your snotty boutique stores, but tell that to the woman making minimum wage who has to buy socks for three kids. And pants. And jackets. And school supplies. And furniture. And food. The existence of a Wal-Mart in her neighborhood gives her an instant increase in her standard of living. Which is why Wal-Marts are springing up everywhere.

And you may like having your little boutique stores scattered around the city, rather than a big box out in the 'burbs, but tell that to the single woman without a car who has to haul her three kids around shopping with her.

Today, poor and lower middle class people can pack up the kids and head to one store and do ALL their shopping. Food, clothes, housewares. They get those goods cheaper than they have ever been. Wal-Mart’s aggressive pricing and low overhead operation is a DIRECT benefit to them.

Sam Walton has done more good for the poor and lower middle class than all you liberal do-gooders put together. He provides them with low-cost goods, gives them easy one-stop shopping, and employs them by the hundreds of thousands.

But oh, Wal-Marts don’t look nice! I hate looking at them when I drive by in my Audi!

[davenportavenger]

@Sam Stone

The existence of a Wal-Mart in her neighborhood gives her an instant increase in her standard of living.

Right at first, yes. But in the long run, it’s going to hurt her.

[Wesley_Clark]

@Sam Stone

Jeez, how come all you liberals are all about helping the poor, but you want to shut down a chain of stores that cater to the poor spectacularly well, simply because they offend your liberal sensibilities? Bah.

Wal-Mart is a great boon to the poor and lower middle class. You know how you get to be the biggest chain of stores in the world? You get there by appealing to a LOT of people.

You may think it’s no big deal to pay an extra 25 cents for a pair of socks from your snotty boutique stores, but tell that to the woman making minimum wage who has to buy socks for three kids. And pants. And jackets. And school supplies. And furniture. And food. The existence of a Wal-Mart in her neighborhood gives her an instant increase in her standard of living. Which is why Wal-Marts are springing up everywhere.

And you may like having your little boutique stores scattered around the city, rather than a big box out in the 'burbs, but tell that to the single woman without a car who has to haul her three kids around shopping with her.

Today, poor and lower middle class people can pack up the kids and head to one store and do ALL their shopping. Food, clothes, housewares. They get those goods cheaper than they have ever been. Wal-Mart’s aggressive pricing and low overhead operation is a DIRECT benefit to them.

Sam Walton has done more good for the poor and lower middle class than all you liberal do-gooders put together. He provides them with low-cost goods, gives them easy one-stop shopping, and employs them by the hundreds of thousands.

But oh, Wal-Marts don’t look nice! I hate looking at them when I drive by in my Audi!

This is all true, I have also read by George Will that walmarts low prices were a major reason why inflation has stayed so low in the US.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5304839/site/newsweek/

However I think people are more offended by how Walmart treats its employees. Walmart is, according to Martin Jay Levitt (an ex union buster), the most anti-union corporation he has ever seen. Walmart also, because they are a large bulk purchaser via walmart and sams club, forces companies to sell to walmart at low prices making these companies either go bankrupt or start moving jobs overseas to save money because they cannot survive. So yes you are saving $0.25 on a pair of socks but at the expense of a company which must exploit its workers (walmart is constantly under fire for labor violations), is viruntly anti-union and that forces some companies who provide products to walmart to move overseas in order to charge you that $0.25 less.

The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know

However their wages aren’t terrible, I worked in a bakery 2 years ago for $5.15 and $8/hr is still much higher than the $5.15 minimum wage and still higher than the desired minimum wage that some people are trying to push of $6.50. Alot of places pay at or under $8/hr for unskilled service labor, and they don’t even offer a healthcare plan like Walmart. But walmarts healthcare plan may not be that good, from what I can tell for a person like me walmart may only be underwriting about $40 a month for my healthcare insurance while I pay $30 on top of that. Thats not an amazing benefit.

[wonky]

@Kimstu

JM: Declaring that a store has some sort of obligation to carry the brands you want is just silly.

What’s a store for, if not to carry the goods that consumers want?

The problem here, as I see it, is that if a retailer is big and powerful enough, and especially if it can squeeze out its competitors, it doesn’t have to work very hard at providing the type or variety of goods that consumers most want. All it has to do is provide goods that consumers are sufficiently willing to put up with, especially if alternatives are difficult to come by.

To turn things around, if I went shopping on Rodeo Drive, would you be surpised and dismayed if I couldn’t find the brand of $20 jeans I usually buy at K-Mart? (My jeans are made in Kuwait. I found that interesting.)

I know I’m giving an absurd example, but I think it’s largely true that people at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are the ones whose choices are going to be limited most by geography. People on higher rungs don’t have the same reasons to bitch. If Wal-Mart doesn’t carry an upscale brand and someone wants an upscale brand, they can go find it. If Wal-Mart only carried upscale brands and someone couldn’t afford an upscale brand, they might be SOL.

Either way, no store can carry everything. If they carry a wider variety of qualities, then they are carrying a shallower selection within each quality–which means limiting the selection, again, to the people who can least afford to simply shop elsewhere.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@John Mace

First of all, I’m not a conservative. But the real point of my comment was not to mock the poster, but to point out the folly of that statement. Declaring that a store has some sort of obligation to carry the brands you want is just silly. It helps sometimes to think about why YOU (the generic you) wouldn’t back a given business venture if you want to understand why other people don’t.

My point was that consumers benefit the most when they have the widest possible selection in types, costs, and quality. Since it is true that no single store could carry all brands, it’s better for me, at least, as a consumer, if I have more than one store I can go to. When a big player drives everyone else out of business, customer choice is diminished.