That explains the temperatures in the stores. Corporate hears “winter” and they crank the heat up, never mind that every person walking in the the door is dressed for -20 weather. Or the fact that Calgary gets Chinooks, so you don’t need cranked up heat every day in winter.
I’m getting my information on WalMart from a 30 or so year veteran, too - she’s about five years away from retiring, so she’ll probably just stick it out. She has some benefits over regular WalMart employees, though - she was grandfathered from when Wal*Mart took over the Woolco stores in Calgary, so she has a better deal than a lot of her co-workers. They really don’t value their long-term employees, though, from everything I’ve heard, too. It’s all about the disposable employee there.
Am I the only one who gets ill at Wal-Mart? I’ll be perfectly fine before the trip, and then I’ll go in and after about 5 minutes, I’ll get sick to my stomach. Like–run to the bathroom as fast as I can regardless of where I am in the store sick to my stomach. I’ll also get a horrible headache, right behind my eyes. Add narrow aisles, an overwhelming size, and huge lines of people, there is no price that is worth that experience. I suspect it’s some sort of weird psychosomatic thing, but I don’t really care what the source is. I just don’t want to get sick like that again.
And the only Target around here is like thirty minutes away. It’s really nice, and I like it a lot, but I don’t like driving down there.
My local Smiths (Krogers in other parts of the country) has pretty much everything I need anyway.
Hmmm…I used to be puzzled about why, when going to Lowe’s on Sunday mornings I often felt the need to take a dump. Unwonted gastrointestinal stimulus from the overwhelming number of hardware and lumber options?
Then I realized it was the caffeine from morning coffee kicking in.
You say what you want, but those monks know how to make quality paper.
Band Aid brand is going to be the same quality whether on a Wal-Mart shelf or the corner grocery store. I am sure Band Aid is produced overseas with cheap labor and U.S. exported recycled plastics. Americans don’t really have many options when it comes to every day staples. Wal-Mart was the trend setter for dumping all production off shore. Production standards have been lowered to the point that items actually pose a serious threat to consumers, especially toy collectors.
Where are the Wal-Marts in /near Van. I only really knew of the one at Capilano mall when I lived in N. Van. I hated when Wal-Mart had good sales, my mother in Law would come in from Burnaby… (usualy she was always at costco)
I tried boycotting my local walmart here in northern ont and succeeded for a year or so, and still prefer Zellers or Great Canadian Superstore when I can. But sometimes I still end up there. In general though, I find shopping carefully for items I can get better deals elsewhere. (I’d rather buy a 70 dollar comforter on sale for 40 from another store, than a 30 dollar one at walmart. better quality and so forth.) Two for ones at Safeway (which is expensive…but not for buying loss leaders etc) are better than any grocery deal at walmart
Much of what I’m about to say won’t matter to people who live in big cities, but that’s not WalMart’s target audience, anyway. I live in a small town in Montana, and I’ve watched the bad things WalMart has done to other small Montana and Wyoming towns.
The nearest WalMart is about an hour’s drive from here, and there are (unfortunately) quite a few people who live here and drive to that WalMart to do their shopping.
They are hurting this town, and they either don’t care or haven’t taken the trouble to educate themselves about it.
Wal*Mart doesn’t advertise in the local newspapers and radio stations, donate to local charities, or sponsor local events. They don’t buy furniture and fixtures from local craftsmen, have signs made at the local sign stores, or print their fliers at the local print shop. They don’t carry the locally-made chocolate and beer; they don’t sell locally-grown beef and pork; they don’t sell garlic from the farm down the road; they don’t sell books on local history or books by local authors.
They may hire some locals, but overall they’ll destroy more jobs than they create. Why? Assume the total amount of money spent in the community stays the same or goes down when WalMart moves in. On the average, WalMart has one employee for every $150,000 in annual sales. Since there isn’t more money being spent, other stores will close. On the average, those other stores have one employee for every $100,000 in annual sales. If your local Wal*Mart generates $30M in sales, they’ll create 200 jobs. In the process of doing so, they’ll destroy 300 jobs, leaving 100 people out of work and the other 200 with lower wages and fewer benefits.
Anyone who has taken the trouble to read books like How WalMart is Destroying America* or watch the video WalMart: The High Cost of Low Prices* will learn what makes Wal*Mart different from other large stores: They have a business strategy that centers around destroying existing downtown shopping areas in small towns. They specifically build outside the existing town center to pull foot traffic away, and target specific stores that they need to destroy quickly with loss-leaders and predatory pricing. Target, Costco, and their ilk don’t mind killing a competitor, but that’s not a specific part of their strategy.
WalMart is fine and dandy for those of you who live in a place with a great, thriving economy, or in a town with no local character. Around here, we need to support our neighbors if we want to improve things. We need to focus more on exporting goods than importing them. I would rather spend $200 on a pair of boots made in Montana than $150 on a pair made in China or Mexico (or even Texas). Hopefully, the guy that made those boots will stop by and do some shopping in my town. Somehow, I doubt that the Chinese kid who made your WalMart shirt will be buying any American products in the near future.
I mostly just feel like I need a Xanax. I feel kind of freaked out if I spend too much time there so I only go there with a very specific short list of items I want, get them, and get out. If I managed to fill a cart with stuff and then encountered a long line at the checkout, I’d probably abandon the cart and leave.
Oddly, Costco doesn’t bother me, and I can spend some time browsing around. But not at Wal-Mart.
You mean that the people in those towns choose to shop at Wal Mart over other businesses. So what? If people don’t want to patronize a certain business, why should the be forced to do so?
And what’s wrong with using your money to support organizations that are helping to popularize the ideas you believe in?
So if the economy is doing poorly it makes sense to force consumers to buy goods and services at higher prices?
You really don’t understand much about economics, do you? So you would willingly impoverish yourself by $50 because of some vague sense of loyalty to someone who happens to live near you? The person who lives near you making those boots is inefficient. It is not the best use of money to pay him more when you can buy the same product from somewhere else for less money. If you buy the cheaper pair of boots you have both the boots and another $50 to spend. That’s good for the economy. It rewards those who are efficient and forces those who are inefficient to move to a more productive line of work.
And as far as buying from elsewhere, you do realize that we live in a global economy, right? I’m sure that even in Montana there are a lot of products that are sent overseas. I’m sure that a lot of your products are also sent to other states or even other parts of the state. And Montana depends on tourism pretty heavily, too. What if I took your short-sighted attitude and said, “hey, I want to see Glacier National Park, but when I go up there and check into a hotel the Montanan that I give my money to will likely never buy anything from Maryland, so I’m just going to take a boat tour of the Chesapeake Bay”?
The comparative advantage you give up by your localist attitude makes both you poorer and makes others poorer.
Yeah, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for small ma and pa stores. People in business are out to separate me from my money and other than that, they don’t give a shit about me. So I don’t give a shit about them, nor think I should. That’s business.
I’m always mystified by people who think that somehow it’s noble to sacrifice the wealth of your family in order to give more wealth to someone else’s family. Why should I pay higher prices so that someone else can make more money? It’s not as if the small businessman is lowering his prices out of concern for me. Instead, if he does lower his prices it is because he wants to increase sales. The small businessman is doing the same thing as Wal Mart or any large corporation does. It’s just that the small businessman isn’t as efficent at it. Why should I reward his inefficiency?
Neither the buyer nor the seller are operating on altruism. That’s a good thing.
Of course not. It’s a free market economy. If you had taken the trouble to read my post in detail, you’d have noticed that I didn’t advocate removing this choice from people at all. I merely stated why I personally dislike WalMart and why WalMart hurts towns like mine.
No, it’s you that doesn’t understand. Looking at pure economics on a global scale doesn’t factor in quality of life. I could live better economically if I moved to a city and shopped at Wal*Mart. I could simply ignore the poor people living around me (screw 'em, they’re obviously not efficient). If I did own a house, I could annoy my neighbors by letting the yard go to seed (lawn care isn’t the most economically efficient use of my time) and dumping my old car on the lawn to rust (it costs me less than taking it to a dump–economic efficiency again).
If I want to live where I do, where there’s beautiful scenery everywhere, I know most of the people I pass on the street, and I don’t have to lock my house, then I feel an obligation to help support that community. If I live here and shop at Wal*Mart, I’m nothing but a leech, expecting others to keep the shops going downtown so that when I am in a hurry or I do need a salesperson that understands the products, they’ll be there waiting for me.
I’m not impoverishing myself by $50 by supporting an inefficient local. I’m keeping a way of life going that I quite enjoy. Sure, the Mexican assembly line is a more efficient way to make boots, but the road to your kind of efficiency is the road to the Soviet Union of the 1970s. It was more efficient to have specific states focused on specific industries, and it led to sameness, supply problems, and the eventual collapse of the economy.
Oh, take your strawman to someone else’s Burning Man party. Tourism and products sold at a Wal*Mart have dramatically different economic structures.
“Global economy” is a handy phrase for people to throw out when they don’t understand that “economy” starts in your household, moves to your community, then to your nation, and then to the world. It’s the interaction of all of these economies that makes up our reality. If those who don’t care about the concept of community would just get the heck out of towns like this, then they could go and be “efficient in the global economy” and we could keep a thriving community going as a part of the global economy in the long term. See?
Pay attention here; this is important. I am not saying (and never did say) that I believe in localism to the exclusion of nationalism or a global economy. Believe me, there are enough short-sighted people buying cheap Chinese shirts that I pose no threat to their economy. But if nationalistic problems arise in the future and trade with China is interrupted, I certainly hope someone other than me will have kept some alternatives alive. And in the meantime, I’ve helped to keep a thriving economy going locally.
How on earth can you feel that I’m making people poorer when I pay $50 extra to support the bootmaker down the road, when others are spending $1,000 extra to support some French or Italian designer? What’s the difference? They’re spending 10 times what I’m spending and doing nothing whatsoever to support their community or country. Go get on their case instead.
On edit, I read your last post, Renob. You should have a chance someday to see that people can and do care about their neighbors sometimes, and that communities like the one I live in exist because we do actually think beyond the narrow confines of our own pocketbooks. Maybe your cynical and selfish attitude would persist beyond that, but I somehow doubt it.
You know, it almost sounds like you live in an Amish community or something, where communism does work on small scales. It just doesn’t work on large scales, where most of us live.
Fair enough. But too often people with your attitude decide that they want to enforce this attitude on their neighbors and try and use the government to keep Wal Mart out of towns.
If you are willing to pay more for better customer service, that’s one thing. That’s an economic decision. But to simply decide that it’s somehow more noble to buy goods and services from small businessmen who are inefficient is a ridiculous notion. By doing that you are actually hurting the local economy by keeping money flowing to businesses that aren’t using it for its maximum value. If Wal Mart can supply a wider selection of groceries at a lower price than the ma and pa store down the street, that’s an indication that ma and pa are wasting resources by keeping their store open.
If you pay $50 more for the same pair of boots, then you are, indeed, impoverishing yourself, no matter how you choose to look at it.
I’m not sure what kind of books on Soviet history they have in Montana, but your views on the efficiency of the Soviet economic system is pretty flawed.
No, they don’t. It’s the same basic principle – people buying and selling goods and services.
No, it’s a handy phrase that describes the way we buy and sell goods.
Sure, most people don’t want to waste their money, so you are right that you don’t pose a “threat.” Most people understand that they are better off if they buy from businesses that sell products for the best price. They may not also understand that sellers are better off when buyers do this, too, since it forces the sellers to be more efficient and use resources more wisely.
If they are spending $1000 extra for the same pair of boots, then they should be castigated, too. But usually they are paying extra for the quality.
And the notion that buying local “supports the community or country” is something that, again, is a ridiculous notion. Look up the notion of comparative advantage. We are all better off with specialization.
Self-interest is not selfish. The small businessmen you patronize open their business out of self-interest, not out of some love for you. I know you think you are altruistic by going to them, but your self-interest is at play, too. It is in your self-interest to pay more for their products because it makes you feel good about yourself. It lets you look down on those who shop at Wal Mart. It means you can pat yourself on the back and say you are “giving something to the community.” Well, I’d rather have my money to spend on something else.
Globalization is a handy phrase that describes ultimate Darwinism.
Wal-Mart receives local and state development subsidies to help pay for the land and infrastructure – warning: Wal-Mart Way is a dead end. Further Wal-Mart assistance, paid for by tax payers, includes, job training, tax credits, tax breaks, grants, and Medicaid for uninsured employees. I can’t imagine extensive job training is required for retail line workers but who knows.
I agree that Wal Mart shouldn’t get tax subsidies. But Wal Mart is far from being the only business that receives them.
Medicaid is a different matter, though. Wal Mart doesn’t get Medicaid money. That money goes to its employees (or, most often, to their children – most state Medicaid eligibilty levels don’t allow people making much money to obtain Medicaid coverage). The reason for this is that states set Medicaid eligibilty levels for children so high. In Maryland, for instance, you can make up to 300% of the federal poverty level and your children still qualify for health insurance. I believe around 90% or more of Wal Mart employees have the option of receiving company health insurance. But if the state will give you free or incredibly cheap coverage, it makes no economic sense for employees to take company coverage. So it’s not that Wal Mart pays too little for people to afford insurance; it’s that government programs lure people onto them by their generous eligibility limits.
Well, but look–my locally owned grocery store donates a hefty amount of money to the local school system. The locally owned drug store advertises in the local paper and buys ad space in the school’s yearbooks, sponsors a little league baseball team, and pays a small scholarship to local kids who want to go to pharmacy school. The local sporting goods and shoe store donates equipment to school sports teams. Buying local cycles money back into the local community. WalMart doesn’t do any of those things. If your idea of quality of life is the amount of stuff you can buy with your buck then your support of WalMart makes perfect sense. Some of the stuff I want to buy with my buck is a better local quality of life. Sure I sometimes have to pay a few extra cents at the local drug store to support local folks, but the money comes back around in other ways. Is there something I’m missing about this situation?
I also contend that the quality of products made by local craftsmen and the quality of customer service is better buying local, but anyone’s MMV on that one and it’s not always true.
Sure, you wrote a letter and they donated a pittance. For my local community, ongoing support of community programs is a way of life, and a significant percentage of the money I spend in my local businesses gets used to improve the community. I’d be willing to bet the percentage of money spent at your local WalMart that goes back into the community is… quite small.
