Well, except that the competition going out of business is also a choice of the consumer. Its not as if more competition doesnt or cant spring up - unless of course the large business buys a few congressmen who then legislate all kinds of rules etc which do nothing but drive up the cost of entry for new competitors.
This is a big myth. IMHO, people in 3rd world countries work harder and longer (even in white-collar jobs) but the systems are corrupt and inefficient leading to lower productivity. You don’t become the wealthiest country in the world just through a work ethic.
Unless that big player has lowered prices on enough goods that the poor could otherwise not afford that it’s actually INCREASING choices, hmmn? I don’t think the mom working minimum wage cares a lot that she can’t get Gucci loafers at Wal-Mart. But if Wal-Mart’s prices are 10% lower than she could get elsewhere, that means that occasionally she can buy something she otherwise couldn’t. Yay for mom!
And in this era of internet shopping, complaining about lack of choices is ringing more and more hollow. Just last night I ordered some specialty cables and hardware that aren’t locally available. Took me ten minutes, and it’ll be here in two days.
And yes, Wal-Mart opposes unionization. And it SHOULD. Because it if has to pay its employees $15/hr, its prices will go up, and that will hurt the OTHER people who happen to work minimum wage jobs not at Wal-Mart. All unionization would do is transfer wealth from one group of poor people to another. And it would hurt Wal-Mart, which would cost jobs - jobs that also benefit poor people.
You cannot legislate wealth. There are no free lunches here. If you are willing to accept that it’s a great innovation to create a large chain of stores which can, through quantity buying, streamlined operations, and volume sales offer inexpensive goods to people who need inexpensive goods, then you have to accept that that concept only works if that company can hire low-cost labor.
And of course, the people who work there are free to seek jobs elsewhere. Wal-Mart has to compete in the local labor market, which is why it pays people in some areas double the minimum wage. And in other areas it doesn’t open at all, because the labor force would demand wages high enough that it busts the business model. That’s reality.
You’re right. The U.S. has become the wealthiest country because it has the most open markets. The lowest regulations. Capital is free to flow where it can do the most good. Low taxes act as incentives to keep capital flowing through the country, rather than being locked up in palatial estates and swiss accounts.
What makes an auto worker worth $25/hr? Is it his hard work? No. It is labor regulations? No. Unions? No. What makes an auto worker worth $25/hr is the immense amount of capital invested in a large corporation that allows him to magnify his skills and productivity. When a worker controls a $2 million dollar automated control station on an assembly line, he is fantastically more productive than if he had to do his work only with the resources personally available to him.
Leftists never credit this side of the capitalist equation. They focus on labor only. Capitalists, to them, are greedy bloodsuckers feeding off the work of others. But in fact, capitalists are the levers of the economy.
Unfortunately, the only way to keep less competitive stores in business, to make sure that the consumer has those choices, is to reduce competition. I don’t know how to do that in any way that doesn’t end up smacking the consumer harder in the long run. Keeping consumers from shopping at Wal-Mart doesn’t seem like a way to safeguard their choices. We would likely agree on that. So how to prevent Wal-Mart from undercutting others on prices? Well, we could have legal minimums for prices like there are in Ohio for alcohol and cigarettes so that K-Mart wouldn’t be permitted to sell my Kuwaiti-made jeans for 50% off like they did last week.
We could disallow businesses selling at a loss, but that means they get overwhelmed with items that could have been sold at a clearance sale but cannot legally, which means they either have to discard the item for a total loss or they have to store it indefinitely.
I think you always will end up with one of two outcomes, either businesses won’t have to compete (through protections), or they won’t be able to compete (because the competition is too fierce). I think the latter is always going to be preferable to the former when it comes to what serves the consumer better, though they can, in some areas, have the same result.
Unions are considered a civil right. A company opposing unions is one thing but actively breaking the law to oppose them is something else.
Not everyone can just quit their walmart job and work somewhere else. There are consequences to taht type of activity, the next job may not give as many hours, it may pay less, and it may take 4 months to find.
Walmart made $244 billion in sales in 2003 and it has 1.2 million employees. Lets assume a million of them are low wage employees making around $8/hr. That means that in order to give each of them an extra $5k a year that will cost walmart 6 billion extra a year, or an increase in prices of 2% in order to maintain their current economic status. I would be perfectly willing to pay $6.12 for a half dozen socks instead of $6 if I knew my 12 cents went to provide enough money for a million people to afford healthcare and education.
Your argument that low cost labor and streamline costs are united is inheriently false. Where I live there are 2 main grocers, Marsh and Kroger. I usually shop at kroger in part because they have a union. The employees start at $10/hr and get benefits, but their prices are teh same as Marsh’s. This could be similiar to walmarts situation where a union would only result in a 2-3% price increase. Labor costs are not the biggest part of a chain stores budget, they have tons of expenses like overhead, stocking, advertising, bureaucracy, etc. Assuming that the only way a company can stay afload is to screw over the unions is patently false, especially in a situation like walmart where low wage labor costs (not including advertising execs, CEOs, managers, etc) probably only make up 6% of their $244 billion budget (if you assume each of the million low wage workers makes $8/hr full time, which is a stretch).
I’ll take the first definition for a thousand, Alex:
23 out of the top 30 countries with the greatest percentage share of income **are European**. Noticeable absent from that list? The American Dream. Canada, OTOH, ranks 23rd. Best stay put, Sam, unless you’re a greedy bloodsucker, your standard of living might very well take a dive in the US of A.
**Gap between haves, have-nots expands over decades**
**
Houston, we have a problem 
Complete strawman. No one is endorsing breaking the law. But **legally **opposing a union is precisely what every company should do, just as **legally **getting a union started is precisely what every group of employees should do.
If you meant that as a paraphrase of what I posted, it’s wrong. I never said that.
It’s one option, among many others.
Every system has some disadvantages for consumers. I never said capitalism didn’t. It’s just that it’s the best system we have for getting things into people’s hands.
No, the purpose of any business is to make money for the owners and investors. It does that by providing consumers with what they want. Providing goods is NOT the primary reason for a business. Perhaps it is in a socialist system, but not in a capitalist system.
True. But you have not demostrated that WalMart is this category, other than with a few anecdotes from posters here.
Not sure if I agree. There are corporate benefits to a union such as a better image for the corporation and lower turnover. They also increase productivity according to this study posted on the ALF-CIO site. Walmart is recieving alot of bad publicity for its union breaking tactics and if they had a union (and the 2-3% price increase that that would entail) maybe the decrease in turnover, higher productivity and increased number of people who shopped at walmart (i’m sure some people avoid walmart because it is union busting the same way I prefer to shop at Kroger since it is union) would make up for those who quit using walmart due to the 2-3% price increases.
WC: You can’t seriously expect us to accept the blurb (and that’s all it is) on the AFL-CIO website, can you? There is no info about methodology, most of the studies are over 20 years old, and the closest industry to retail in the study, banking, showed a 0% productivity increase. At any rate, you might very well know better how to run WalMart’s business, but forgive me if I tend to think the management there, with their proven track record of success, speaks for itself. Of course, your resume might be better, I just have no way of knowing…
Ford fought labor unions viruntly for a decade, then gave in and Ford company still survived. So I can’t just assume that because it is the company line to oppose labor unions that that would mean doom for the company.
Never said it would mean doom for WalMart, or any company.
I think unions are great. If I worked at WalMart, I’m sure I’d want to be in one. But that doesn’t make it necessarily good or bad for the company.
But Walmart’s union-busting isn’t legal. They expect employees to rat out their fellow workers at the first mention of a union, and fire them if they don’t snitch. Managers take their breaks in the same room as the employees, presumably so that they can overhear any talk of unionizing. When I first started, we had to watch a video on unions. The video said that attending a union meeting is grounds for a severe penalty or termination. Walmart doesn’t bring in lawyers to fight the unions the legal way, they just fire the troublemakers before they can shake up the system, using whatever trumped-up reason they can think of. Doesn’t it seem odd that no union has ever been successfully formed in all of Walmart’s history? (Well, there was one in Canada, but that’s an isolated case.) I believe that unions are a worker’s right, and just like people can hire lawyers to take away other people’s rights, Walmart has the right to do that. But they don’t hire lawyers. They use fear and intimidation to get their way.
Walmart’s presence in small towns also takes bargaining power away from the labor advocacy groups of other union-friendly businesses, such as Kroger. The old stores see just how replaceable people are, and just how little they’re willing to settle for, and then feel free to start using Walmart’s tactics, because where are the workers going to go if they quit? (And no, it’s not exactly easy for anyone to pull up roots and move to a more prosperous area, even if they’re being really abused in their place of employment.) So they’re not just hurting their own workers, they’re hurting people who are already in unions.
Here’s a really interesting site about the various lawsuits against Walmart.
Which of these tactics are illegal?
If I’m not mistaken, selling at a loss is forbidden in France, precisely to avoid the kind of issues you’re taking about (large companies getting rid of their smaller competitors, then rising their prices when they’re in practice in a local monopolistic position). Both clearance sales and regular sales are regulated. So it can be done.
I don’t know whether or not these tactics are illegal, but if joining an union or trying to organize one are legally valid grounds for termination, then there’s in practice no right to unionize. As any other right, it has to be protected by law to be meaningful.
And generally speaking, intimidation, though not necessarily illegal, isn’t a morally defensible tactic IMO.
I think we need a Godwin-type law about the probability of WalMart being brought up in threads about economics…
At any rate, this surely has nothing to do with the topic of debate, since WalMart operates in Europe: 92 stores in Germany and 276 in the UK.
Well first, short of skin color or religous beliefs, you can be fired for any reason, just as you can quit for any reason. If you want to restrict when people can be fired, then you must also restrict when people can quit.
Also, youre very close to not making any sense. Youre saying that intimidation isnt a morally defensible tactic, which tells me you agree with WalMart that its better if employees dont join unions. Yet you say this somehow in defense ~of~ unions, as if there were any other tactics besides intimidation that unions use. Youre kind of saying that WalMart is morally wrong for using ‘intimidation’ (which is a stretch) to keep employees from joining an organization the whole purpose of which is to intimidate.