They didn’t get to be billionaires by writing a lot of checks…BWAHAHAHAHAHA.
(actually, I’d like some clarifications on that too. According to my recall, Wal*Mart supposedly refused to deal with suppliers who refused to lower their manufacturing costs, which is something fairly hard to believe. For those that said they could not, they released a helpful hint of things you could do to decrease your manufacturing costs – including moving to China. That part I believe.)
WALMART is a low-end retailer, nothing wrong with that. My beef with them is that they tend, by their actions, to drive the market to the lowest quality/price point. Like the Chinese-made shoes mentioned, much of the merchandise is of really low quality, and cannot be repaired. So the solution: throw it away and buy a new one-which is not so great if you are poor. It also adds to the waste stream. There are no more American manufacturers of shoes-the Chinese have driven them out of business. Is that a good thing? WALMART makes their suppliers commit to reducing prices-and eventually they will fail (like the pickle manufacturer). On the other hand, my mother’s friend is retired, on a small pension. She buys her prescription drugs at WALMART, and saves about $120.00/month. So, for her, MALMART is a lifesaver. I wonder if WALMART will try to sell better-quality goods? They will have lots of competition.
Really. They sat them down and told them to continue dealing with Walmart would require setting up manufacturing in China. In case you don’t get it ,there is no job safe.
Not that I don’t believe it, because they told Warner Brothers the same thing (my friend used to sell WB stuff). They said, “Why press DVDs in America? It costs too much!” There is no bra manufacturing in the US either (well, there might be, but it’s getting pummeled by China). Should we be the world’s best bra and DVD maker? Is that really the way to wealth and prosperity? Is that what we want America’s brightest minds to be working on? (Don’t forget garbage cans).
Yes, and so what if Wal-Mart told them to manufacture in China? When China raises its standard of living, Wal-Mart will be recommending E.Europe, SE Asia, and Africa (hopefully). If a company cannot survive its competition, it doesn’t deserve to exist. Would you rather have protectionist policies that secures the jobs of the bra makers, DVD pressers, and the garbage can makers in America? You can make people work as much as create jobs for them.
Firstly, Walmart scoops up a huge amount of subsidies from the federal government, and yet more from state and local governments. More than any other retailer, in fact. Furthermore, Walmart uses eminent domain to build its stores and to force the shutdown of competitors. Hence any claim that Walmart succeeds by competing in the free market, or that everyone chooses to shop there, are absurd. If the laissez-faire crowd truly believed that government interference in the economy was wrong, then Walmart would be one of their worst enemies. Instead, Walmart is constantly their best friend. So much for that idea.
I don’t see why not.
Yes. Those who know history know that a large manufacturing base is they key to prosperity. The countries that focused on manufacturing in the 19th century (America, England, and Germany) quickly became the wealthiest in the world. But when England started to import far more than it exported, it lost its status as world leader. Japan became the leading exporter of manufactured crap in the 70’s, and rode that trend to prosperity. The United States has hung on to prosperity longer despite losing millions of manufacturing jobs, but that won’t last forever.
No, but it’s a fine occupation for America’s more average minds.
So what if they Wal-Mart tells them to manufacture in China. Then Americans lose many middle-class jobs while Chinese slave laborers are forced to work in sweatshops producing cheap crap. Bad for the people of both countries.
China has not raised its standard of living and probably never will. Right now western companies, Walmart chief among them, pay the Chinese ruling class to provide cheap labor. Why on Earth would that ruling class stop doing what they’re paid to do?
That, of course, is an opinion which many disagree with. Though policy makers have enforced this form of tyranny in America for the last generations (with some exceptions) there are signs that the American people are starting to get sick of it.
Yes. America has had protectionist policies for most of its history, even while giving the American people the highest standard of living in world history. There’s no reason why we should not return to doing so.
Wal-mart’s insistence on low prices has forced well-paying American factory jobs that you (or anyone without a high school education) could have had to China. You’re putting yourself and your class out of work. ‘Ugly buildings’ are the side arguments to wal-mart, the lazy thinking the OP is decrying. Think of them like the ‘we deposed a brutal dictator’ argument for the pro-Iraq war crowd.
I get the feeling that none of the Walmart supporters lived in small towns in the 1950s. Am I right?
I used to deliver groceries for my father’s store. Does Walmart do that anywhere?
At the time, our town looked like the one in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmie Stewart. Everybody knew everybody else by name. You knew which store to go to to get what you needed. Special contraptions could be ordered from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.
Would Walmart let a thirteen-year-old open a credit account for a must-have blue sweater set? Cox’s Style Shop did – with my mother’s approval, of course.
Would Walmart reopen for you so that you could get more fabric for your Easter dress? Beasley’s did. And Miss Ethel measured each yard by holding the fabris between her nose turned to the side and her outstretched fingertips. (That gave customers a little more to the yard.)
Would the owners of Walmart leave money in the trash where they knew you would find it just to see if you were honest – then give you the money to keep? I had the coolest Dad.
Would funny but nice old men sit around a stove in the back of Walmart and talk about their adventures in the wars or the Great Depression or when they were kids?
Would your children be safe playing in front of Walmart at night without an adult to supervise?
There is a lot more to life that just having the latest group of “things” in a convenient way. There is much to be said for quality, for knowing that the product that you just bought was made under conditions where the employee was treated humanely and given a decent wage for her or his work. It does matter to me that women at Walmart are given an equal opportunity to advance on the job and that they are paid equally for doing equal work.
The town that I grew up in is largely boarded up now. They’ve even built a by-pass around it. It reminds me of the ghost towns I used to see in B grade Westerns when I would go to the movie theater. That old building collapsed a couple of years ago. Just fell on itself and into the street. One of my friends brought me a brick that I keep on a shelf with my video tapes.
I guess that depends on what kind of stuff you want in life.
No, I live in a small town now. And none of these stores would do any of the things you claim, so I fail to understand how some idyllic and idealized memories are supposed to change my opinion.
Especially the “open after hours” thing. Sure, if you know people personally they might make an exception, but its pretty impossible to know enough people personally that coincidentally deal in all the stuff you might need after hours.
On the other hand, the majority of the time I go to Wal*Mart, I only do so because all the rest of the stores have shut down for the day and Wallyworld is 24/7.
No. However, your father didn’t have to contend with the EEOC, OSHA, child and labor laws, and a whole bunch of myriad rules and regulatory agencies designed to prevent such child labor exploitation, nor did he likely pay your full share of unemployment/FICA/etc taxes, nor likely needed an accountant (with a CPA) to figure out his taxes.
It’s a more complicated world today, and comparisons to old movies, while quaint, don’t really mean much.
Your town was small, as you noted. My town (Atlanta) was not. Point?
Now you can order them from the internet, much greater variety, at better prices. Point?
Not likely. Of course, if they did open up credit accounts for people barely in their teens for their “must-have’s”, other people would pillory them for it on the front pages and WM would have to close the accounts… so what’s the point again?
Er… Wal Mart doesn’t have to “re-open”. At least the ones around here. Why didn’t Beasley’s care enough about their customers needs to provide service 24/7?
Which destroyed her margins, allowing competitors to undercut her prices. Good going, Miss Ethel.
Uh… you want Wal Mart to act like your father? How is this even relevant to the discussion? 
Wal Mart has central heating, so no stoves are necessary. Many WM’s have restaurants… do old people gather there? I have no idea.
No more than they would be playing in front of Kroger. Again, what’s the point? My city of 500,000 is more congested than your small town of 10,000? What does this have to do with Wal Mart?
And what if one of those old men hanging around was a pedophile? Huh? HUH?? :rolleyes:
Well, why did you leave?
There is one left in a small Massachusetts town that i visit (Avery’s General Sore, in Charlemont, MA). it has been there since 1880 or so. You don’t see any geezers hanging around there, its just a small store with limited selection of goods-what’s so special about these places? I have always wondered why American are so hung up about the past-i mean, do we envy the sweatshops of the 1880’s? or the dung-filled, filthy streets of that era?
I sometimes wish we could tear down all of the old buildings, and replace everything with my vision of the future!
Let’s talk for a minute about the benefits of Wal-Mart. I refer you to this paper from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some key findings:
Look at table 1.2. Grocery stores were gradually increasing their profit margins in the 1990’s. The cost of food production was declining, but grocery stores such as Safeway and Albertson’s were not passing the savings on to consumers. This is one of the competitive holes that Wal-Mart filled. As Wal-Mart grew, it forced other grocery chains to lower their prices back to the point where their profit margins were roughly equal to what they were at the start of the 1990’s. The left claims to hate corporations with excessive profit margins. In that case, Wal-Mart is your friend. It stopped those stores from gouging consumers.
Food prices at Wal-Mart are 8-27% lower than the average. Food is one of the major costs for poor families. On food alone, Wal-Mart is responsible for a significant improvement in the standard of living of the poorest members of society.
The existence of Wal-Mart has caused other food outlets in the area to lower prices by an average of 5%. So even if you don’t shop at Wal-Mart, you’re benefiting from having a Wal-Mart in your area.
The presence of a Wal-Mart has an even more positive effect for people, because it is like a ‘new good’ - it increases choices. The study found that in areas that have Wal-Marts, other large food outlets continue to exist, because some people prefer them for reasons of convenience or selection. Thus, consumers are given more choices, and can choose to only buy goods at Wal-Mart where they perceive the most benefit. Factoring this into the analysis, the study found that the poorest quintile benefits by a factor of 29% in food costs because of Wal-Mart.
I’ve been in that lowest quintile - before there was a Wal-Mart around. Food was the biggest part of my budget. Saving 29% would have been a big damned deal to me.
This is the conclusion of the study:
Most of the organized opposition to Wal-Mart comes from labor unions. So let’s be clear here - what the opponents of Wal-Mart really want is to stick it to poor people so they can keep their higher-than-average wages. They want their high wages, and they want poor people to pay for them in the form of higher prices for the products they need to survive.
And it’s not like Wal-Mart employees are hurting. Wal-Mart made Forbes’ list of the 100 best companies in America to work for - the ONLY large retailer on the list. Why? Because Wal-Mart pays on average $10 per hour, almost double the minimum wage. Because it has very good benefits compared to other jobs for workers with those skills. Because it has a policy of promoting from withing - 70% of Wal-Mart managers started as clerks on the floor. Because Wal-Mart is one of the most color/gender/age blind employers around - if you’re a poor 60 year old, good luck finding a job. But Wal-Mart will hire you. Because the working conditions are pretty good. Wal-Mart workers work in clean surroundings, doing light labor, often in intellectually challenging ways, and are offered a fair amount of variety in their jobs. Compare that to a McDonald’s worker, for example, who on average makes $2-$4 per hour less, and spends an entire shift in front of a sizzling open griddle flipping burgers.
Wal-Mart is single-handedly responsible for a significant reduction in inflation and an increase in productivity in North America over the past 10 years. This has helped keep interest rates lower, which has benefited the entire economy.
Furthermore, Wal-Mart is possibly the biggest contributor to the reduction of 3rd world poverty. By outsourcing many of its products, Wal-Mart has caused the creation of thousands of factories in the third-world, many of which pay salaries much higher than the national average in those countries. In essence, one of the things that Wal-Mart has done is to act as a conduit to connect the poorest people in the third world with the poorest people in North America, to their mutual benefit. The third world gets access to a new market, and the poor in North America get access to lower cost goods. The standards of living of both groups increase.
It seems to me that the left should be in love with Wal-Mart. The left claims to want to combat poverty in the third world and to help the poor in America, so why do they hate the company that has done more than anyone else at helping both groups?
In short, because there’s a third constituency on the left - organized labor. It has BIG money. It owns a lot of politicians. It’s good at the propaganda game. It knows which buttons to push to get the left riled up. But make no mistake - it’s just another special interest trying to keep its piece of the pie, through force if necessary. So remember that when you search your soul to find where your true values are - do you care more about helping poor people put food on the table and helping 3rd world people get out the baking sun and their subsistence farming, or do you care more about maintaining those $20/hr jobs for unionized store workers?
Let’s not forget the Blockbuster Video vs. Wal Mart fight back in the late 1990s, early 2000’s where BBV was pressuring the movie industry to price DVD’s to “rent” (i.e., at very high prices, pricing most movie consumers out of the purchasing market), arguing that people don’t want to own movies. WMT took the opposite tact, saying that they frankly would not stock a single $100 DVD but would be perfectly willing to stock hundreds of millions of DVD’s at $25/apiece.
The movie industry took a look at the numbers (3,000 BBV stores X 5 DVD’s per title X 100 ($1,500,000 in possible revenue per title)) vs (300,000,000 Americans X $25 ($7,500,000,000 in possible revenue per title)) and told BBV to go stuff it.
They haven’t been the same since.
I’m not going to get into the argument about Walmart, but I feel the need to remark on your “debating” tactics. I think you’re attacking a strawman here. The “smarmy rich suburbanites” aren’t complaining because they think Walmart buildings are ugly. :rolleyes:
I could also say something about ad hominen attacks from “smarmy non-suburbanites”.
No, they’re complaining because the poor are benefiting at the expense of their smarmy rich suburbanite lifestyles. 
I think you have it backwards. I’m pretty sure (actually, I’m certain) that their argument is that the poor are being hurt by Walmart rather than benefiting. That can be argued, but attributing false positions to your opponents is not constructive and does not help in combating ignorance.
You’re wrong. Most of the arguments I’ve read against Wal-Mart are centered around a decline in wages among UNION employees. McDonald’s employees’ wages are not under threat from Wal-Mart, but unionized stockboys making $15/hr ARE under threat. Wal-Mart pays about $10/hr on average. If it’s ‘driving wages down’, that can only mean that it’s lowering the wages of people who already make more than $10/hr. That is not ‘the poor’.
Most of the organized attacks on Wal-Mart are sponsored by labor unions. Most of the politicians who oppose Wal-Mart do so because they are pandering to union interests in their districts.
If it’s not the wages of the poor that are being hurt, then just how are the poor being hurt by Wal-Mart? Bear in mind that any effect you can possibly come up with has to offset the 29% reduction in their food costs they get from Wal-Mart, plus the savings they make on all their other Wal-Mart purchases, plus the convenience aspect of people who don’t have cars being able to do all their shopping in one location.
You’ll also have to consider the effect of all those poor people now having more disposable income - which provides new sales opportunities for other businesses in the poor neighborhoods. After all, the poor aren’t using their extra savings to vacation on the Riviera. They’re using it to maybe eat out more, or buy a new video game, or improve their homes/apartments, or fix their car, or get their kids new glasses, or finally get a tooth fixed, or whatever. Poor money tends to stay in the community.
So, make your case. How is Wal-Mart hurting the poor enough to offset all these benefits? Or to define it better, how does a Wal-Mart moving into an area hurt someone who is unemployed and on social assistance, or who is already working a minimum-wage job?
For a great, quick, on-line review of Wal Mart - check out the LA Times piece:
It talks about union guys shopping there for the prices.
It talks about US manufacturers dumping employees and moving ops to China to keep the prices low.
It also talks about how much lower the prices are in comparison to union grocers.
It discusses emergency room visits by uninsured Wal Mart employees.
A good read, with a fair amount of facts.