Walmart - Good or bad for America?

Great Debates
1

I have yet to see this movie:

but I am very interested in going to see it.

I’m really of two minds when it comes to Walmart. I consider myself to be somewhat libertarian (a/k/a a liberal without the baggage) so I’m torn. I appreciate the low prices and the fact that they create jobs that might not otherwise be there. It seems, however, that they pay they associates far too little to actually survive ($7 or so an hour is not a real wage). Further, they do not provide decent benefits which adds an even greater burden to their employees. They also drive out smaller businesses who just cannot compete with their prices or service (that may or may not be a good thing).

So my fellow Dopers, what do you think? Yay or Nay to Walmart? If Nay, what can be done?

2

Nay. While I’m a big fan of lazzais faire (sp?) capitalism, I’m also a big fan of anti-trust laws. I’m also a big fan of mom and pop stores where you just might find brands of items that are not available at Wallyworld.

Not only does Walmart tend to squeeze out the competition in many small towns, it uglifies America. It’s turing this country into one giant parking lot. It narrows our choices to cheap plastic generic brands, and it limits us to products that are only approved by the Christian Right. And ultimately, it destroys healthy competition.

(Veering dangerously into hyperbolic territory here)

Soon they will squeeze out all other competition, then you will see slave wages and higher prices. One store. One store to rule them all. One store to find them. One store to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In Bentonville where the shadows lie.

3

You might want to re-read the many Walmart threads from GD and the BBQ Pit. Here’s the latest one I remember:

Why has Walmart not failed due to opposition?

I don’t think I have to energy to go over the argumetns again, but I’m sure other posters will…

4

China exports a lot of stuff to the U.S. I heard that Wal-Mart accounts for 10% of the Chinese goods imported into the U.S. In that sense, it seems that they are bad for America since they ‘own’ a large percentage of our trade imbalance.

But Americans don’t really care where something is made, as long as it’s cheap. So the blame can’t be put completely on Wal-Mart.

5

Don’t lump all Americans in together, of course. Plenty of us oppose Walmart and will gladly pay a few cents more for a better product in a better store.

6

Nay.

On the one hand, a lot of stuff is a lot cheaper on account of Wal-Mart. That’s good for the American as consumer.

On the other, a lot of wages are a lot lower on account of Wal-Mart - not just those of Wallyworld employees themselves, but probably elsewhere as well, because they’re America’s largest employer, and if they’re not paying very well, their competitors don’t either.

If everything in Wal-Mart was 10% more expensive tomorrow, then the vast majority of Wal-Mart shoppers would deal with it OK, quite possibly by buying a bit less stuff. At the margin, most people make a few purchases they don’t have to make; making one or two less isn’t the end of the world. If really and truly, every dime is going for necessities, then you’ve got deeper problems. Chances are, you need a better-paying job.

And that’s where Wal-Mart hurts. For most of us, jobs come in integer increments, like zero and one. And if they don’t, chances are we’re stapling together a bunch of part-time jobs into an attempted living that really doesn’t work well at all.

So what people need, by and large, is one job that pays a living wage. Even if the numbers of Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid wasn’t already well-documented, it would be pretty clear that Wal-Mart pays a lot of people a wage that is just barely a living wage, if that. And to the extent that their practices depress the rest of the American labor market, a lot of other people are just barely scraping by as well on account of Wal-Mart.

So what can we do about it? Two things that I can see. One is a better social safety net, particularly universal health care, to put some sort of humane floor on how badly one’s employment situation can screw up one’s life. The other is legislation to make it easier for employees to form unions, and for suits to be brought against employers who fire employees who are trying to organize their fellow workers.

7

Obviously not enough or Walmart would be going out of business instead of steadily expanding. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shop at Walmart either (I hate the lines for one thing)…but its kind of obvious that they provide a service that a high percentage of American’s DO want.

Is it good or bad for America? No brainer. Its good. It provides jobs for American’s, it injects capital into the US economy, it provides an obviously desired service, especially to more rural communities. If the mom and pop stores were what the majority of American’s wanted then THEY would be successful and the Walmarts would be out of business. The market in action and all that.

-XT

8

While I have the utmost respect for true libertarians (people who really believe in small government – this doesn’t include Republicans who are all for corporate welfare and no-bid contracting), I’m sort of an anti-libertarian myself. I think capitalism is good, business is great, but businesses don’t have ethics, nor should they – ethics are what people have. So you can’t count on a just society if business is given free rein. Government – which is supposed to be by and for the people – needs to step in and make sure that business helps, not hurts, the citizenry.

That said, I have a serious distaste for Wal-Mart. Yes, they’re only doing what they’re supposed to – maximize profit – but I think the results are horribly destructive to the American way of life. My reasons are the same as many of TDN’s above – they encourage the blanding of American culture and they treat their employees terribly. Moreover, they adopt a pose of the friendly member of the community, capitalizing on the gullibility of the overworked, undereducated American (although McDonald’s is much worse in this regard). The low prices are just not worth it.

9

I’ll let others worry about beauty and ugliness, so long as they aren’t allowed to build a Wal-Mart in Glacier National Park. But I am a frequent visitor to one middlin’-sized town - Plant City, FL - where Wal-Mart is the only place in town that you can buy a lot of stuff, especially clothing and toys, but a lot of other doodads as well. (Sure, you can always drive to Brandon or Lakeland to patronize other retailers, but an extra half-hour of travel time is a nontrivial tax on one’s resources.)

On account of this article about their overseas practices (more the straw that broke the camel’s back than the entire reason; been warning my wife for awhile that this was probably gonna happen), I’d made the decision to stop shopping at WallyWorld up around home. But when visiting the in-laws in Plant City, it’s really a challenge to do one’s shopping without going to Wal-Mart.

10

I’ve never understood this argument in light of mail order catalogues and the internet. If you really hate Walmart, go there to check out the merchandise, try on clothes, etc, then buy it over the internet. Few people, except the really poor, don’t have internet access, and they’re the ones who NEED the low prices at WalMart. And, if you don’t have internet access, pick up a phone…

11

IME, anything that’s obvious, isn’t.

Out of curiousity, given how much stuff Wal-Mart imports from China, and how Wal-Mart’s providers are often forced to move jobs overseas to meet Wal-Mart’s insatiable demand for lower prices, what kind of “jobs for American’s” [sic] are we talking about here?

12

Ahem. It ships American jobs overseas to China where labor is much cheaper. The wealth that would have gone to American workers then goes into Wal-Fart’s coffers. This also does a lot to aggravate our balance-of-trade problem.

American workers can’t outbid Chinese, Filipino or Mexican workers. We can’t pay American rent, pay American grocery prices or pay American health insurance premiums with Third World wages. You don’t have to be an anarchist or an Islamofascist to question the wisdom of globalization.

13

Well, I suppose there are all those jobs in shipping, transportation, then there are the local jobs created in the towns the Walmart is in (clerking, management, sales, etc). You may not have noticed this, but the US doesn’t really DO manufacturing anymore, least not on the same scale as China. So, if there was or wasn’t a Walmart there still wouldn’t be manufacturing jobs in the US to make compatable goods (at higher prices). The capital injected into the US economy comes in the form of capital into the local economies (where the actual stores are) as well as, well, taxes on the Walmart corporation. Or did you guys not want that money?

You mean the manufacturing jobs that have been in decline in the US for decades? THOSE jobs? What makes you think that Walmart is the reason US manufacturing has been in decline? Can you show a correlation between the rise of Walmart and the decline of US manufacturing?
I guess I really don’t get the problem. If you don’t like Walmart (and I don’t), don’t shop there. Go somewhere else. If you don’t want to work at Walmart, if they are such slave drivers, then don’t work there. If they ARE such slave drivers I’m hard pressed to figure out why they always have plenty of employees though…slave labor perhaps? Folks too stupid to know that they are getting screwed by the big corporation and that they should go look elsewhere? Po’ folks too dumb to know that buying stuff cheap is a really bad idea, when they SHOULD be paying more for less variety?

Really, where does this anti-Walmart theme come from? Is it snobbery (too ‘junky’ for the refined tastes of the elite)? What? Its just a store…

-XT

14

Let’s examine a scenerio here. I don’t know how well it matches up with reality, but I imagine that, to some extent, it could.

Wlamrt moves into a small town. With its lower prices, it drives smaller stores out of business. People lose jobs. Having nowhere else to go, they apply for work at Walmart. Since Walmart pays low part time wages, its employees can no longer afford to shop anywhere but there. Walmart is now channelling the wages it pays directly back into itself. Employees can no longer afford to start their own businesses, which is OK because they would fail anyway. The town is getting poorer, while WallyCorp reaps all the benefits.

even sven once called this a vassal state. Good choice of words. Walmart has not created jobs, it has created vassals. In my own mind, it seems to resemble the company store in a coal mining town. In essence, the store has become the town economy.

15

Actually you are much less likely to find a diversity of products at mom-and-pop stores than at Wal-Mart. While I understand the desire to shop at mom-and-pop stores, the fact is that most of these places have high prices with limited inventory. Wal-Mart offers a much better price and a wider selection of products.

I’d like to see some facts on the apparently rampant destruction of small mom-and-pop stores by Wal-Mart.

Even if this phenomenon is true, so what? It’s not like Wal-Mart is going in there with a gun forcing people to shut down. Instead, it offers an alternative to these stores and it seems the people in town choose to go to Wal-Mart over the higher priced alternative. Why is that bad? Why should a store that offers higher prices and a smaller inventory be artificially propped up simply because some people like the thought that it’s a “mom-and-pop” store? If it’s not competitive it should go out of business.

Again, Wal-Mart offers a much wider selection than usually exists in an area before it shows up.

I wasn’t aware the Christian right had a preferred brand of toilet paper or dog food. I’ll have to check out these Christian-right-approved products next time I head to Wal-Mart.

No, those who seek to use their state legislatures or city councils to keep out Wal-Marts are the ones destroying competition. No one is forced to shop at Wal-Mart. People choose to do so. If you don’t like that, then don’t shop there. But don’t try to restrict the rights of others who want to do so. That’s the true meaning of competition – letting the people choose where they shop. Wal-Mart does not hurt that.

16

TP and dog food? No. How about CDs, videos, and reproductive medications?

17

A lot of things don’t make sense to buy over the Web. If you realize you really need a 3-pack of V-neck t-shirts or jockey briefs, you just go buy them; you don’t order them over the Web with shipping doubling the cost.

Also, aside from old people (not that there’s no overlap), Wal-Mart shoppers are one of the population segments least likely to be computer literate. And how does this phone thing work for low-end clothing, anyway? Maybe it’s my income bracket, but the clothing catalogs that come to the house don’t have a lot of cheap stuff in them. Wal-Mart shoppers often can’t afford L.L. Bean. I think these days, you’ve got to actually go to a J.C. Penney store to get one of those thick Penney’s catalogs; I don’t know if Sears still does them or not. But K-Mart and Wal-Mart and Target and other low-end retailers don’t have non-Internet ways, that I can see, to let your fingers do the walking.

18

Yay.
Much of the criticism directed at WalMart could easily be said about any of the other big retailers. WalMart may be the biggest, but they are not the only big retailer focusing on mid to low end goods. (Zellers, Sears, Target, Hudson Bay…)

All the complaints about low paying jobs, and crappy made in China goods are applicable to those companies too, so if you have a problem with that then you have a problem with all of those retailers too.

I think WalMart sets itself apart because its management seems to actually understand and care about retailing. Nothing is left to chance. They have been, and should be, rewarded in the marketplace for making smart decisions. Unlike some of their competitors who just don’t seem to give a damn if you buy anything or not.

19

Well, I thought you said most people didn’t need the low prices at WalMart. Are you changing that positoin now? At most you’ve made an argument that people need WalMart for emergency shopping. But WalMart can’t survive on only that type of business anyway.

That was one of the points I was making. You claim most people don’t NEED the low prices of WalMart, and while I agree that’s true, there is the very low end economic segment that DOES need those low prices. The others overwhelmingly CAN shop online if they want to, and if WalMart tries to force itself on them.

I, for instance, hate WalMart and refuse to shop there. But I don’t begruge others who do want to shop there. People flock to those stores not just in areas where they’re the “only choice”, but in suburb after suburb across the country where plenty of choice abounds.

If we held a referendum nationwide tomorrow to keep or get rid of WalMart, what do you think the result would be? (Actually we have a referrendum every day, as people vote with their feet.) We keep hearing about how great these Mom and Pop stores are. I’d like to see some statistics about inventory, price, wages and benefits at Mom-and-Pop-Mart vs WalMart. I’d be very surprised if they were any better.

Perhaps the Democrats should campaign on a platform to get rid of WalMart and see where that gets them. I’m sure it’ll go over big in Manhattan and Hollywood, but not so well in the bulk of the country.

20

Why are you turning this into a political screed?