Huh? So it’s a GOOD thing that the owner of Bob’s Crappy, Unstylish, and Overpriced Clothes is only paying (and earning) minimum wage because someday, if he and Clem in the stock room work real hard, a miracle will occur and people will start shopping at their stores rather than drive twenty miles farther to shop at some other store, which doesn’t have to be WalMart since “downtown” was killed thirty years ago when they built the mall, that sells crappy and unstylish clothes at a cheaper price because he is living the American Dream?
Better revise your definition of the American Dream because what you are describing started dying fifty years ago. This ain’t Mayberry and Floyd’s Barber Shop went under when they put in the Bo-rics and hired people who could do more than one haircut.
But I wouldn’t see that as Wal-Mart forcing them to close. I would see it as the public forcing them to close by no longer shopping there.
I don’t see the logic in people saying “Damn Wal-Mart forced everyone out of business. I tried not to shop there but I…could…not…resist…low…prices.
Sorry Clem, I know you are going out of business cause I don’t shop at your store anymore. But it’s not my fault. I…just…can’t…resist.”
Fight?
If a 500lb. gorilla moves in next door, it is not wise to hit over the head with a stick. It does little good and it annoys the gorilla. :dubious:
People don’t care that much to be honest. Most people won’t avoid walmart (some will) because of political beliefs. Besides walmart isn’t that bad with its employees, they pay higher than the minimum wage and they offer healthcare. Alot of service jobs pay the minimum wage and do not offer healthcare at all. They are still bad with how they treat suppliers and competitors though.
How do you think they got “good” with customers? Hey, Mr. Supplier, go ahead and charge me more. You deserve it. What the heck, I’ll just raise prices and my customers can eat it.
Actually, this is overall the most intelligent WalMart thread I’ve ever seen in GD. What a refreshing change!
And we all eat it. I have had a Walmart here for a long time, and just this year it moved to a new location and became a Supercenter. Sure, there are a few grocery stores around the area, but the idea of “one stop shopping” in this day and age is so strong that the only way these grocers are going to last is from the neighborhood “run in/run out” shopping that sometimes needs to be done.
Walmart can raise their prices and do whatever they please as it stands now, cause they know without them there is not much of an alternative. Walmart is the pioneer of the ‘one stop shop’ and it’s only going to get bigger. They pay their employees well enough, and give benefits, and in areas with smaller populations and not much economic growth or opportunity it is seen as a welcome blessing.
I personally don’t like Walmart at all, but it is hard to visualize my life if it wasn’t right there, twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. A blue and grey foreshadowing of where the world is headed.
Well, I for one kinda’ like spending 25% less on the items I buy there, which I suspect are about… I dunno, 10% of my income.
So, it’s basically a bonus to me of 2% of my net income. Every year. For the rest of my life, I guess. So Wal-Mart’s worth… $30-40K to me.
That being said, if I had more money, I’d spend it shopping at Target. Wal-Mart CANNOT get any of its locations in my town in good shape.
Long lines, filthy stores, disorganized shelves, verbal abuse being heaped out by management on the employees over the PA system.
Then they should look at one of the fastest growing grocery chains, Trader Joe’s. Reasonable prices on up-market goods. Employees who are cheerful and seem to be treated well (though my WalMarts are clean, neat, and full of cheerful employees). If the stores in your area think they can survive doing business the way they always have then perhaps they don’t belong in business.
Sadly, that’s pretty much what it’s come down to. They can’t compete with Walmart, and since there are so many of them in about a 10 mile radius, I won’t be surprised to see them start dropping off one by one over the next few years.
Thats pretty short sighted logic. Suppliers have employees too and if they can’t make a living wage then they will have to start cutting wages, outsourcing and doing layoffs.
“Wal-Mart is one of the key forces that propelled global outsourcing – off-shoring of U.S. jobs – precisely because it controls so much of the purchasing power of the U.S. economy,” says Gary Gereffi, a Duke University professor who studies global supply chains.
Sounds like a recipe for a depression.
Maybe because all those things are not true or blown out of proportion? Walmart paid more than Kmart.
And- it’s not Walmarts fault that their competition can’t compete in an open market. You know- one of the things I have to do is go around to small “family run” markets. I hate them- they are dirty, overpriced, and offer a poor selection. I’d much rather shop at Safeway. If we thought about all “big chains” like we did about Walmart- we’d all have to shop at those crappy little “mom&pop” stores. No thanks.
That being said- I don’t like to shop Walmart, I do prefer Target, but that’s not for “PC” reasons.
Nope. It makes no sense to pay someone $5 if there is another person who will do the job for $4. If you want to be charitable, then give the guy some charity. But denying the $4 guy a job in favor of the $5 guy doesn’t help things, it only puts the $4 guy out of business. Why is that good?
If you keep cutting wages you cut into peoples ability to make a living, which creates more economic problems then it solves. People who can’t afford health insurance pay 2x as much for healthcare as those who can because they do not get preventitive medicine. People who can’t afford $230/month in rent may end up in bureaucratic government housing probjects that cost way more than $230/month.
When suppliers are forced to sell products at really really low prices they have to cut costs. Cutting costs leads to layoffs and outsourcing. these have benefits (growth of third world economies) but domestically they can be tragic. True you can’t fight progress, but the system you are talking about is one where there would be massive unemployment and job insecurity, which would also lead to people either not having money to spend or saving their money for when they get fired, which would lead to even more cost cutting and more firing, hence a depression. If everyone is cutting prices too hard nobody will be able to hire anyone and people will not have money to spend on the new socks that are 10% cheaper than they are at other places.
FTR, I do shop at walmart. I do not think their treatment of their employees is bad but I do not like their treatment of suppliers (even though I agree its not illegal).
Suppliers aren’t really “forced” into doing anything. Sure the accounts they have set up with Wal-Mart are huge but they still have the option of telling them “no thanks, we still need to charge you $10 per shirt if you want to buy from us, not the $5 your telling us you’ll pay us.”
And Walmart in turn can drop them as a supplier. That’s how negotiations work between retailers and vendors.
Only the suppliers who are dependant on Walmart as their “big account” feel the crunch. A large vendor like Sony if pressured by Walmart to sell them Playstations for $50 could easily tell them “go jump in a lake, you’ll buy them at $100 like everyone else, go ahead and drop us, we’ll sell them to ToysRus, BestBuy, and Target. We don’t need you, you need us.”
And that in turn is why you see very cheap goods being sold out of Walmart and less and less name brand stuff.
What are you talking about? The “system” we are discussing is in place now and has been for decades. Do you think WalMart is the first company that discovered putting pressore on suppliers to reduce cost? Where is the “massive unemployment”? The facts simply do not support your thesis.
FTR, I do not shop at WalMart because I hate fighting crowds in huge, colorless warehouses. But that’s just me. Plenty of people get value from shopping there, obviously.
A couple years ago, Wal-Mart opened a superstore in the small western PA town where my parents live. There were all sorts of dire predictions that it would kill off the locally owned businesses.
Before Wal-mart opened in this town of 5700 there were:
3 grocery stores, all parts of chains
1 hunting supplies/gun store
3 drug stores, 1 local 2 chain
3 auto parts stores
1 Men’s Clothing Store- caters to guys who want to dress like Ward Cleaver
1 Women’s Clothing Store- I don’t know any women who want to dress like that.
1 Radio Shack
1 Family Dollar
1 Dollar General
So the Wal-Mart behemoth comes stomping into town and a few years later, all those businesses are still going concerns. Previous to Wal-Mart, there had been no department store since the 1990’s. Hills, Ames, Murphy Mart, Grants, and Jamesway had all had stores there over the years but they each closed when their chains folded.
If the people of that town wanted to buy things like school clothes for their kids, toys, entertainment media, and other such consumer goods they had to drive a minimum of 17 miles to the closest shopping mall.
AFAIK, the locals there think Wal-Mart is great. It brought jobs and more convenient access to a lot of goods to their town. The only real complaint I’ve heard any of them make is that they don’t like the meat that Wal-Mart sells, a complaint I share.
WalMart might drive out the competition by offering low, low prices that the Mom and Pops can’t compete with. Or more likely, that the smaller chain stores can’t compete with. But they don’t subsequently turn around and jack their prices through the roof once they have a monopoly, they continue to keep those low, low prices. If they tried to jack up prices they’d just invite the other chains to move back in. WalMart succeeds because they offer low low prices all the time and relentlessly find ways to cut prices even more. WalMart doesn’t have high prices at stores where they have little competition, they still have low prices. And what exactly is evil about moving into areas where they have little competition? Isn’t that a good thing for consumers?
I dislike their treatment of employees, the dirtiness of their stores, the crap merchandise that is falling off shelves, the lack of help when needed, the only one lane open to purchase things, the mind controlled “greeter” at the front door.
Maybe it’s changed–I haven’t gone in one in 2 years. I thank god I live in a suburban area, where I have plenty of retail choices.
I don’t know why it is still around–apparently I am in the minority in not liking it.
I would rather pay a bit more for a product and know that I am helping to keep local business afloat, than to help the Walton family.
Walmart can call the shots because of its sheer size–but that doesn’t make its gouging of suppliers “right” or even good for the long haul, in terms of our economy.