Ignoring second-order effects (e.g. different sales-per-employee figures for different retailers), retail employees can be assumed more-or-less constant. Wal-Mart clerks would instead have been clerks at the Mrs. Jones’s Store that Wal-mart put out of business. The next question is: Who compensated their employees better, WalMart or Mrs. Jones?
Wal-Mart in particular is notorious for draining money out of a local economy. With a Rexall or Kienows, more revenue tends to circulate locally instead of being in Bentonville before the sun goes down. In addition, big boxes move a lot of cheap crap that dies quickly, so they put more pressure on local landfills without having to consider the cost. It is really not as simple as the prices are lower, there are hidden costs.
One would assume that Wal-mart was compensating better than someone else how would they hire the staff to open the store in the first place?
From my experience in retail, and with friends in retail, Mrs Jones was paying Minimum Wage, and you only got a raise when the Minimum Wage went up. I’ve never understood the uproar over Big Boxes putting poor Mrs Jones out of business because most Mrs Joneses were barely holding on as it is.
Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. But typically, unless they are very specialized, small Mom & Pop stores can’t compete with the economy of scale of a big box chain.
The “uproar” is based on a couple of things:
- A belief that smaller, locally owned businesses are better for the community than a retail franchise that mostly provides low-level service labor jobs.
- Related to that - instead of revenue staying locally, it get sent out to corporate HQ (and the Walton’s family pockets).
- Big box stores often receive significant subsidies. They incur significant costs in infrastructure improvements (ie wider roads to deal with the traffic). Out-competing local businesses is one thing, but they shouldn’t receive taxpayer money to do it.
- Often there is a net job loss or the new jobs are lower quality (ie being a “greater” vs a store owner).
- They change the face of the community. A sleepy small town will often find itself with a huge box store serving as an anchor for a giant strip mall along with the required acres of parking and 4 lane highways providing access.
As opposed to… what? Little House on the Prairie where mom churned her own butter? Sorry to sound snarky but welcome to the 20th century (and, no, I did not make a mistake by referencing the 20th rather than the 21st century).
And Mrs Jones provided better jobs? Have you ever worked retail?
Because of economy of scale, neither Mrs Jones nor Oakminster are feeding much into the economy, either.
It pisses me off, sometimes, but those better roads are sweet.
I’ve had some of those jobs. The ones at WalMart seem about the same quality.
Not even Mayberry is Mayberry anymore. Sure, most of those could have been, or were, plots for the show, but the murder of Police Sgt Greg Martin in 1996 was no laughing matter.
I would never say that Big Boxes are an unalloyed good, nor would I say that you can’t stand in the Way of Progress. I’ll just say something else insipid, like, “They are what they are.” 
Yes, and Mrs Joneses typically had fewer jobs, less room for promotion and often only hired relatives or gave preferences to relatives.
I fondly remember the time when I could go to Mom and Pop Hardware to buy locally made nails, screws, garden hoses and plumbing fixtures. Why, when I had a problem with screws not being made correctly, I could call on Clem, the local screw manufacturer and he’d straighten everything out for me. Those were the days!
There is your problem right there, Clem should not be straightening out screws.
Well, Clem always was a bit slow, but that’s the price we paid for local work. A-yep, things are fine n’ dandy. Now excuse me while I go change into my good burlap clothes for Sunday, go see if Doc has developed his own line of vaccines (my poor darling being sick wit’ the Polio, but we don’t want none of those out-of-town medicines here), and if the new auto plant is working. Sure, all we’ve managed so far is a horse and buggy, but I’m certain Jim will be able to make his own Model T’s any year now!
Oh yeah? Well, Clem never brought his wares to town on “trucks”. He brought them in on the back of mule, the way God intended!
[insert your own vagina joke here, and admit you were thinking it too]
Don’t forget the local barbershop where you could sing sugary songs in four-male-part harmony! Manly days, those of yore!
Well, yeh, kindasorta . . . Thet is, yew got the story and the order uv events a liddle bit confused, but ol’ Clem he did do a whole lotta things involvin’ his wares and his mules . . . bareback . . .
Henry Ford said "There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible. "
Today, Ford’s quote seems as antiquated as the Model T. Businessmen today have gotten used to a government that caters to their every whim and a generation of stooges that think that corporate profits are sacrosanct. Sure, it would be nice for Wal Mart to pay a better wage and not have their employees go without insurance, but golly gee, we just can’t ask their shareholders to accept a nickel less in profits, can we? And holy smokes, raise their prices? The horror! No, the ONLY way for Wal Mart to stay in business is to pay the lowest wage that is humanly possible and for their employees to go without health insurance. Let 'em go to the ER for treatment, then the taxpayers will be on the hook for their health care! BWA HA HA!
The truth is, Wal Mart is a giant parasite. Our tax dollars pay for the new or widened roads that their giant stores demand. Our tax dollars pay for the health care for their employees. We’re paying them to come into town, drive out the local businesses, and take our money. As long as there are enough stooges that vote for their shills in Congress, this will continue.
Let’s look at a real example.
Our small, local Wal-Mart expanded and opened about a year ago.
Wal-Mart paid for the expanded roads.
They hired many new employees, some of which were making lower wages elsewhere. They recruited some employees from nearby towns due to a local shortage, and some drive quite a distance to get here because of the attractive wages and benefits.
No local business have folded. Three new stores have opened, one inside the Wal-Mart store, two and down across the street. Tax receipts have increased dramatically. The school districts are ecstatic, since the tax receipts have outpaced the pupil increase.
The police department has not added personnel, and doesn’t feel the need to, as their work load isn’t increasing.
The local hardware store, which competes with WM’s hardware department, is completing their fourth expansion, and business is better than ever.
The adjacent grocery supermarket, which was predicted by some to close, seems to have no shortage of shoppers and the parking lot looks as full as ever. They put in an all-new dairy case section and a new, upscale deli counter in the past year.
The closest MacDonald’s just leveled their store and is building a new and bigger one, with 2 drive-thru lanes. The shopping mall they are a part of has no vacancies.
If this is a terrible thing Wal-Mart has done to our community, I certainly hope we have more terrible things like this.
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
Today, Ford’s quote seems as antiquated as the Model T. Businessmen today have gotten used to a government that caters to their every whim and a generation of stooges that think that corporate profits are sacrosanct. Sure, it would be nice for Wal Mart to pay a better wage and not have their employees go without insurance, but golly gee, we just can’t ask their shareholders to accept a nickel less in profits, can we? And holy smokes, raise their prices? The horror! No, the ONLY way for Wal Mart to stay in business is to pay the lowest wage that is humanly possible and for their employees to go without health insurance. Let 'em go to the ER for treatment, then the taxpayers will be on the hook for their health care! BWA HA HA!
[/QUOTE]
Ford’s quote IS antiquated (he basically didn’t have any competition, while today the Ford Motor Company competes with car manufacturers around the world, and automation has rendered many of the manufacturing jobs as superfluous), and not particularly relevant since you are comparing a car manufacturer in the early days of the US industrial revolution to a retail chain store which orients toward the low end price point for goods and services and is all about value.
Sure, it would be nice if Wal-Mart COULD pay a better wage, but looking at the example in the OP, if they merely gave the 300 employees in the store a $2/hour raise that’s nearly a million dollars ($2/hour per 300 people averaging 32 hours a week over 50 weeks…most likely would be higher) which is going to cut into this particular stores annual profits. I have no idea what kind of profits a store like that makes annually, but a million less is probably going to be noticed. Then if you add health care on top of that for each current part time employees (full time employees already get heath care through Wal-Mart) you are talking around another $2-3 million in annual costs (I based this on 150 people not currently having insurance at that 300 person store, and health care costs of $1500/month per employee not currently covered. The actual price would probably be higher) that are going to come directly out of THIS stores profits. At some point it’s just not going to be worth it to keep the store going because either you are going to have to cut your profits to the bone or you are going to have to increase your prices, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of Wal-Mart in the first place…not to mention adding those additional costs to the consumer, many of which shop at Wal-Mart specifically to save money.
The truth is this is completely horseshit. They aren’t a ‘giant parasite’ except to folks like you. Our tax dollars go to widening the roads, which helps more than Wal-Mart, and are compensated back into the community in the form of taxes we get from Wal-Mart and those 300 employees. As to health care, who was covering their health care BEFORE there was a Wal-Mart there? Was the mom and pop store they might have been working at before covering them? :dubious: Was it even employing all 300 of these folks before? :dubious:
As for taking our money, no one is putting a gun to any shoppers heads. I know that snobs (like you) hate Wal-Mart and everything it stands for, but this is just such a ridiculous argument I don’t know whether to laugh or roll my eyes. Wal-Mart provides a service, for which customers willing patronize them. If those local businesses were doing it for the local people then Wal-Mart wouldn’t stand a chance and they would be going out of business.
To be honest, I’m a snob like you…I don’t like Wal-Mart. Not because they are a parasite sucking the life blood of the community, but because they are noisy and crowded and at the local one near me the lines are always pretty long on the few unfortunate instances I have had the misfortune to have to use it. I’d much rather shop at Alberson’s or Smith’s, given the choice. But clearly they are more an economic engine for the community here than anything. Yeah, it costs some to put in the infrastructure. But the local Wal-Mart has drawn in other business to it’s area. Several fast food places have sprung up right next to it, and a strip mall in the back parking area as well. On the opposite corner there is another strip mall that’s grown up in it’s shadow, and several gas stations. All this in an area that was essentially desert with a single lane road going through it before the Wal-Mart. Now they are building a movie theater and another strip mall and some additional restaurants across the other street. All because of Wal-Mart? Maybe not…but all due in part to the fact that Wal-Mart brings the people into the area, and also because Wal-Mart forced the city to improve the road infrastructure. Not counting the millions in taxes the local Wal-Mart is probably bringing in, it’s been an economic boom for the city.
I just hate shopping there. 
There is the possible situation where opening a big-box store in one town enriches that town, but blights nearby towns for some distance away. I haven’t ever really heard anyone talk about that.
In other words, the Wal-Mart may do what Musicat describes for it’s home town, but all the mom & pop stores in town in a radius of say… 25 miles may get run out of business because people are willing to drive 25 miles for lower prices, rather than stay at home to get the same prices they could get previously in the other town.
I’d imagine this is a consequence, but I don’t have any real proof.
And… BobLibDem has it wrong; it’s not Congress that’s the problem, it’s state and local governments that pull out all the stops for Wal-Marts.
I also tend to think that vilifying companies for economies of scale is foolish. Many people would be pissed even if a hypothetical big-box store with excellent employee treatment and benefits opened in small towns, because it would drive local businesses out of business. That’s the way of the world. Would they also be pissed if some local boy came back from college with a MBA and started his own local store and out-competed the un-taught local store owners and did more with less, leaving people out of work? Probably, and that’s unfair.
And so what if it’s true? People in the surrounding towns obviously like the situation better, or they would have continued shopping at Mom and Pop. It’s too bad for Mom and Pop, but it was too bad for the buggy whip manufacturers, too.
And since we’re talking hypotheticals and anecdotes… I have a Mom and Pop hardware store near me. It’s great and convenient for me even though the prices are a bit higher than Home Depot (there are at least 3 within 10 miles of my house). But they employ mostly local teenagers, so they don’t have to worry about good pay or benefits.