Whats it going to do to your stock price if you close 30% of your production?
Nephew of a stevedore, NYC. Try $65K after 20 years, c. 1994. Can’t tell you where they start now, but unless that Doctor is Without Borders, you’re wrong.
I think that Sam Walton, founder of WalMart, must be spinning in his grave. He did build an immense empire from a five and dime, and deserved that success. When WalMart was up and coming under his watch, he made a big deal about “Made in America”, and that WalMart was all about supporting US companies. Took about three years after his death for that to fall by the wayside.
I would like an actual well thought out answer from people that support a “living wage”.
What is that living wage based on? You have both high school kids and parents that support multiple people doing the exact same job (e.g. cashier). Almost every position at Wal-Mart and every other large employer of commonly skilled workers is like that.
Does the high school kid get a raise so that he could potentially support a family of four? Sweet. Or, do we just have different wage levels depending on life circumstances for the same job? I think the problem with that is more than obvious.
Boost? You mean the “boost” that bankrupted Vlasic? That boost?
I’m not going to say that Vlasic was going to be dancing through fields of wildflowers after rebuffing Wal-Mart. They’re going to take a hit, lose sales, lose stock price, lay off a big slice of their workforce, all that really lousy stuff that happens to business in trouble. However, there is nothing to indicate that bankruptcy was the only possible outcome of Wal-Mart’s proposal. For the record, losing 30% of your revenue is going to be a lot better for your stock price than going bankrupt.
I heard someone say when I was near Wal-Mart’s headquaters that they now require that suppliers have a maximum of 20% of their business with Wal-Mart. This was to counteract those types of problems and a responsible way to deal with a real potential to bankrupt other companies.
Does anyone know if that 20% rule is accuate now?
Have any of you WalMart fans ever heard of a thing called capitalism? The free market? Listen to talk radio and you’ll hear these are good things.
But instead of capitalism, companies like WalMart and Microsoft are setting up a form of pseudo-socialism - one centrally planned organization controlling the economy and deciding what gets sold and how much you pay for it. It makes little difference to the average citizen whether the decisions are being made by one big government or one big corporation. Either way they’re deciding what’s good for the organization not the citizen.
The amazing thing is that as these companies close down the free market, people are praising it as a triumph of capitalism.
That boost isn’t what bankrupted Vlasic actually, they were in trouble to begin with. That it’s a temporary boost is the issue. Sales jump up and product turnover increases, but over a period of variable time the supplier is unable to keep up with the demand and the lower selling price, and has to cannibalize their other operations just to maintain the relationship.
Giving that up to a competitor sounds like the wisest move of all, but you still have to contend with the dropoff of 30% of your business and all that that entails as far as overhead and production costs. Then there’s the continued dropoff of sales in your remaining 70% to the competitor who is now cannibalizing themselves to keep up with the demand. It’s a no-win situation, and not one most businesses can just weather, especially the smaller ones.
There is precedent that either option could result in bankruptcy, but you’re right that it wasn’t the only outcome. They were in trouble to begin with and it was likely that their ship was going to sink regardless of their relationship with Wal-mart. It just so happened that their decision to stay with them expedited it.
They are just big. They aren’t the only source around. Plenty of people choose never to set foot in Wal-Mart and they get by just fine. However, they may benefit indirectly from competitive pricing at other stores. I can’t be pseudo-socialism if it is pure capitalism and it can’t be a monopoly if everyone has other sources available for everything.
Forty dollars a week “contribution” to a union for a college age person?
Color me skeptical.
Here is a good rundown of the living wage.
Most workers are working to support themselves. Few people join WalMart for fun. The idea behind a living wage is that workers will make enough money to not qualify for government assistance- which few can argue isn’t a reasonable stance.
Well, if all the good folks of small town America CHOSE to buy at Wal-Mart instead of at Sam Drucker’s General Store or at Mom & Pop’s shops, why don’t you curse those disloyal consumers?
Sam Walton gave people a choice, and they chose to abandon the small shops you idealize.
So, why waste your venom on Wal-Mart when you should be ripping the people who choose to shop there?
Here, Shag, have a cup of koolaid and reread the OP:
And that’s from somebody who’s a WalMart fan.
Every area offers mail order and internet shopping as an alternative to Wal-Mart. The OP mentioned Maine as the location. Now there are parts of Maine that are rural as you will find but they usually don’t plop down Wal-Marts in the middle of nowhere. There has to be some other stores around even if the price and selection aren’t as good as Wal-Mart’s. I come from a town in Louisiana so small that it doesn’t even have a McDonald’s let alone a Wal-Mart. I am sure people there would love one too.
There is a Wal-Mart 5 miles from my house. However, my town looks like you just stepped into a Norman Rockwell painting. You can go to the hardware store and get advice on anything you want, the local general store sells stuff I have never seen anywhere else and does a huge business and it seems that everyone has found their niche. Nobody bitches about what other business are doing to them. They just adjust and it works out well for everyone.
You can’t exactly buy grocceries via mail order, Shagnasty. And I’d be willing to bet that not everyone has a goddamned computer to shop online, or can afford to buy even from the J.C. Penny’s catalog (which is a shame-I’ve gotten some nice stuff there). That and some of us like to try stuff on before we buy it.
You can by groceries all day long on the web here through 3 or 4 competing services that are both cheap and not Wal-Mart. Granted that option isn’t available everywhere. Just saying.
If you are so poor that you can’t afford a car and gas to drive elsewhere or a computer (or phone) to shop remotely then you have much bigger problems than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a boon to people at the lowest end of the spectrum because it lets them buy things affordably and even gives them a shot a some employment.
It is the people a couple of notches up from the poorest that I could see running into a problem if they choose not to adapt to changing economies.
It is the poorest that have little choice but shop at Wal-mart that are the most affected by outsourcing of production because those are typically the unskilled laborers who are the first victims of their own shopping habits.
Wal-mart is an unsterilized, undersized band-aid on too large a wound when it comes to helping the poor.
No offense, Shag, but cite? Because you seem to be living in the only town in the United States where the local businesses haven’t had a problem since the Big W moved in.
If this is the case, then I think it is unfair to blame their demise on Wal-Mart. I thought about this last night, and there are a bunch of pickle makers supplying the market. Assume that Wal-Mart didn’t enter into a more profitable relationship with these other manufacturers, that would set Vlasic’s problem clearly on their management’s shoulders. There are two choices remaining for each of these competitors:
The same relationship with Wal-Mart
No relationship with Wal-Mart
Both of these have been described as bad for the company, yet I have not heard anything about other pickle companies going under, just Vlasic. These companies survived where Vlasic died, that is a normal consequence of competition and the free market, not anything special, or anything to be mad about.
Uh, that’s how Wal-Mart really became the power house it is. They did plop down Wal-Marts in areas that had very few shopping options in rural areas and they continue to do so today. I live in a town of 4,000 and they’re building a Super Wal-Mart to replace the Wal-Mart Express and I have no doubt it will be well supported. While it might not seem at first glance that a small population could support a Super Wal-Mart they will get business from throughout the county.
Marc