Wal Mart

[Marvin S]

my point is it would you should check into how much walmart costs us as taxpayers for their employees. It does not make them the cheapest place to shop when you figure the millions of dollars that their employees draw from public assistance. I for one will pay a little more for a product to know that the employee is being paid a reasonable rate and not having to take public assistance.

Rather than us chasing down those costs why don't you enlighten us? We have Safeway, Costco, Fred Meyer (Kroger), Quality Foods (also Kroger), Target all within about a maximum of 20 miles from where we live & my wife shops all of them. I go with her on occasion & notice one thing, many of the employees at WMT would have some issue with obtaining any job at the other stores. But WMT has taken them & made them productive. I would think that possibly we should have WMT bid on the Post Office contract & the Amtrak contract, they appear to have the logistics thing down to a science. Ever wonder why, when you get a traffic ticket, that the insurance company knows about it before the ink is dry from the officer's signature?

And no I have not seen any guns to anyones heads either, but when they (walmart) have ran good employers out of business with their tactics and this is the only place to work what are people to do?

Why don't you clarify that "good employer" comment? What is a "good employer"?

I guess when it boils down to it walmart has a lot of similarities to our government. The rich can take away the middle class and the rich keep getting richer. It is easier to control the poor that have nothing.

In this country if you are poor it is because, in most cases, you made conscious life style choices that placed you there. I only refer to monetary wealth, as some who chose to stay in a region where wages were low have other wealth!!!

[YardleyLabs]

...

In this country if you are poor it is because, in most cases, you made conscious life style choices that placed you there. I only refer to monetary wealth, as some who chose to stay in a region where wages were low have other wealth!!!

There was a time when I believed that. I no longer do. When companies the size of AT&T, Prudential, Merril Lynch, etc., decide to outsource 50-70% of their IT work to India, it is not a lifestyle choice of the displaced staff. When decisions are made to terminate 20% of managers in a company and it coincidentally happens that almost everyone terminated is within two years of vesting retirement benefits, it is not a lifestyle choice. There are a lot of people in this country who followed all the "rules", paid their bills, managed their finances responsibly, and are now out in the cold. Add a major illness into the equation and you are likely to find someone who is now homeless, bankrupt, and virtually unemployable.

[Jim Pickering]

An episode of Penn and Teller's "BullSh*t" about WalMart hatred: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-o1fj1rX7A (it's Part 1, the other three parts are on the right side of screeen). Pretty funny stuff.

Thank you!! The videos saved me a ton of typing.

My child bride recently gained employed by Walmart and thus far cannot stop talking about how great the company is. She has found the corporate culture to be far superior to anything she had experienced in her prior 32 years of employment by major retailers. While I cannot speak to Walmarts pay scales, I can say that their employee benefits program is second to none.

In any case given that Walmart is now funding my dog habit I can certainly do without the bashing, thank you.

Save Money. Live Better.

[kdeckels]

While I won't bash them, they don't carry the dog food or any other dog supplies I want, they deeply cut into their hunting dept., I have to wear dress clothes to work - I just can't see a thing in that mammoth store I want.

[YardleyLabs]

I am actually not a Wal*Mart basher. While it concerns me that only 40% of their employees can qualify and/or pay for health benefits, I believe the right solution is for companies to stop paying benefits for any of their employees since it dramatically increases the cost of lower level employees (thereby encouraging elimination of those jobs) and decreases our ability to compete on a global basis, helping to drive jobs out of the US to countries where employers are not saddled with those costs. And while Wal*Mart has a very high percentage of low paid employees, that is the business it is in and those jobs provide employment for large numbers of people who would be shunned by other employers, giving them structure, training, experience, and income that is a lot preferable to unemployment

The biggest impact of Wal*Mart is actually in their relationship with their suppliers. That impact is not inherently bad, but it is painful. I suspect Wal*Mart has done more to drive the globalization of manufacturing than all of our trade agreements put together. In their relentless pursuit of lower prices, they have worked hard to develop suppliers in parts of the world with the lowest possible costs of labor, and by doing so have accelerated the pace of globalization, but not affected its direction. The reality is that a globalized economy forces globalization of wage scales. People in high wage countries will see their incomes fall, while those in low income countries will theirs rise until they reach a level of economic equilibrium. For the US, that is and will continue to be a painful transition. Consumers have benefited from this strategy in the form of dramatically lower costs of goods.

Wal*Mart has also set the standard for continuously improving sourcing, inventory management, distribution, information management, and process management. Their demand for efficiency has forced their business partners (junior partners) to keep pace or fail. The improvements made by the survivors have been dramatic. It is hard to call that a bad thing.

However, if Wal*Mart is going to define the future of retailing, some of our institutions need to adapt to keep up. One of those is health care. Hopefully, we will succeed in moving toward national health insurance now. It will oly be more painful later.

[Hew]

Wal*Mart has also set the standard for continuously improving sourcing, inventory management, distribution, information management, and process management. Their demand for efficiency has forced their business partners (junior partners) to keep pace or fail. The improvements made by the survivors have been dramatic. It is hard to call that a bad thing.

My brother lives in Bentonville (WalMart HQ) and reps/sells to them. He'd give you a big amen to the above. They are very demanding of their vendors (where does a 10,000lb elephant sit?....), but as long as the vendor can keep up with WalMart's pace they're sitting on a goldmine. They also use their very big stick to enforce their workplace policies on their overseas vendors. My brother had to go to China and settle a dispute between WalMart and a company he was working for. Walmart sent their workplace compliance inspector to the factories to check conditions. The inspector was S. Korean. The Chinese factory managers resented being subservient to, and bossed around by, a Korean (apparently they don't like each other) and harrassed the guy and weren't cooperative. WalMart was on the verge of cancelling the multi-million dollar order over the whole thing. Eventually everyone hugged it out and the inspector returned and completed his work at the factories. Maybe WalMart should run the United Nations, too.

[ducknwork]

It wasn't that long ago that WalMart's slogan was 'We buy American so you can too.' Can all of the blame really be placed on Wal Mart when it is the consumer that is constantly demanding lower prices and the American worker that is constantly demanding higher wages? You can't have both and still buy American. What do we want...higher prices or lower wages?


Gotcha by the balls regards,

[YardleyLabs]

It wasn't that long ago that WalMart's slogan was 'We buy American so you can too.' Can all of the blame really be placed on Wal Mart when it is the consumer that is constantly demanding lower prices and the American worker that is constantly demanding higher wages? You can't have both and still buy American. What do we want...higher prices or lower wages?


Gotcha by the balls regards,

The reality is that American workers have seen their wages decline significantly over the last decade when you consider both the effects of inflation and devaluation of the dollar. Despite this, our wages remain high by global standards, our trade remains out of balance, and our real wages will continue going down as a result. Some, but not all of this is attributable to unrealistic exchange rates between the US and China. However, China is not very likely to accept a devaluation of the dollar againt the Yuan as long as they hold trillions in dollar denominated securities.

American worker productivity has increased substantially, but the productivity of workers in other countries has grown even faster, closing much of the gap that originally justified America's higher wages. Investment that might otherwise have been made to help improve American productivity more, has been applied to moving jobs to lower wage regions of the world and improving productivity there instead. While this may make short term economic sense, it makes no long term sense for the US economy at all.

In the future, our consumer driven economy will have to find its consumers in other countries since the consumers here can no longer afford to pay. This is already being seen since much of the recovery in corporate profits has come from sales overseas. Unfortunately, this has not helped our balance of trade because those are actually goods that we are already making overseas.

The other side of this picture is that return on capital has gone up as return on labor has declined. That is contributing to the growing income and wealth divide that we see in the US. Given that capital is infinitely more mobile than labor, the shift is not surprising.

Many want to end or curtail globalization to combat these trends. While this sounds nice, it is unrealistic. The cat is out of the bag and cannot be stuffed back in. However, if we are going to have a long term future, there will need to be changes that are not going to some from companies or investors seeking to maximize short term profits.

[thebigcat]

[QUOTE=Golddogs;580941]For those kneeling at the feet of Sam Walton, it should be pointed out that the success of Wally World came at a huge cost to what has always been considered the backbone of American capitalism, the small business and businessman. Look at the damage caused to small towns across America in the downtown districts. Wal Marts success came at a high cost to many fine Americans who were able to provid for their families w/o goverment help.


You say that small businesses and the businessman is directly correlated to "American Capitalism"? Well that might have been the case 20 years ago. American business as we know it has evolved. Customers are more savvy, their purchasing behavior is not based on loyalty anymore, it's based upon price. Walmart intentions on securing the lowest cost of products to deliver the lowest cost to the consumer might have driven small businesses to bankruptcy. However, you must applaud their efforts for being a driven, innovative and forward thinking company. They knew what really mattered to the customer and have based their whole business model on the theory of driving down cost.

Don't get me wrong, I feel terrible for those who have lost their jobs due to layoffs or cutbacks. Unfortunately it is part of life. A primary reason for unemployment getting the high level of recognition in past years because it's more prevalent and widespread now than ever.

I'm going to put it out there plain and simple and then get off my soap box. If you're unable to remain competitive in the market that you service, regardless if you're fighting the worlds largest retailer or another small business, then your days as a business/corporation are numbered.

[cycler]

While this show does not relate to the point the OP intention with this thread, it is none the less very interesting, and shows how WM impacts communities and businesses, all in the name of lower prices.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/