<p>There are no big box stores in my county, no Costco,Target or WalMart. Everyone just crosses the county line and leaves their tax dollars. I don’t know that these people shop locally as a result of having to drive five miles over the county border. What I do know is I and the other county residents have very high property tax rates. We have a big problem with affordable housing. Our schools are excellent and we have very little business to help home owners carry the load. I would welcome a Walmart, a Costco and a Target of our own. Most people here move upon retirement because of the tax burden.</p>
<p>Et tu, Bunsen???</p>
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<p>You are missing my point which I guess was expressed too subtly. Yes, I have a gazillion very cool ethnic groceries and restaurants within 10 miles of my house – and I do frequent them and enjoy them. I’m talking about getting into the fray of hunter gatherer humanity out there that could care less about exotic ethnic cuisine and is very set upon finding a pair of 10 dollar sneakers for her kid. That is why I go to Walmart every now and then. To see that side of our nation. And guess what? It’s not one bit depressing. I find it bracing.There is so much energy and embracing of capitalism (that naughty bad word) and the free market and the just plain thrill of shopping that I come away very much reassured this country is going to be okay. Not because Walmart will save us but because our people will.</p>
<p>There is a place in life for exquisite taste and sophisticated sensibilities. I like that stuff very much and do engage. There is also a vey important place in our society for what the Walmarts provide.</p>
<p>sewhappy, you missed my point. The stores I mentioned are not small, ethnic ones that cater to exquisite tastes. They are quite large chains compared to mom and pop stores, and they carry staples at reasonable prices . What happens when a Walmart drives these out of business (which seems to be the business model of Walmart)?</p>
<p>Bunsen,</p>
<p>One word – preposterous!</p>
<p>Have you actually been inside a Walmart? Have you seen who shops there? Every immigrant nationality imaginable. Hey – don’t lecture me, go lecture them that they are suppose to shop at PCC and Top Foods instead.</p>
<p>*There are no big box stores in my county, no Costco,Target or WalMart. Everyone just crosses the county line and leaves their tax dollars. *</p>
<p>Yes, that’s what happen when those in power try to keep these stores out…people just drive where these stores exist and spend their money there. </p>
<p>Go to any Costco, Sams Club, etc and you’ll see some non-business owners with flatbeds loading up with non-perishables because they only drive out once a month or so. Their flatbeds are full of pet food, TP, paper towels, flour, sugar, rice, coffee, canned goods, paper goods, freezer foods, clothing items, etc…along with some foods that would perish within a week for immediate use. </p>
<p>*On another thread, someone mentioned how much Apple mfg is done in China. Why no rants against Apple? Is it the nature of the goods or the perception that the folks behind Apple are hip? * </p>
<p>lol…BINGO!</p>
<p>^^^Yes. The hip love their devices too much to question Apple’s mfg.</p>
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<p>The difference is that the original owner of other companies did not make all five of their children billionaires on the backs of their employees. The company that lead the way in California to make sure that businesses employing 50 people or more did not have to offer affordable health care was…Walmart. </p>
<p>I avoid Walmart at all costs due to their health care practices alone. That others are doing the same is why I try to avoid those companies as well. But i have a special, bitter place in my heart for Walmart.</p>
<p>Walmart’s foreign suppliers have used sweatshops and there have been child labor violations. Take a look at the documentary film, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. But, hey if the price is right, who cares, is that it?</p>
<p>We buy american made cars- we fly american made airlines- no it isn’t always the least expensive and being very blue collar with an income to match, we could get more bang for the buck if we went with the cheapest option.
But would we really?
You get what you pay for.
We are not going to pay to have someone else’s job sent overseas because tomorrow it will be our job.</p>
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<p>No, I have not been inside a Walmart recently, but a couple of weeks ago I spent quite some time in a parking lot of one waiting for H to come out of the HD (shared parking lot). The shoppers coming in and out of that particular Walmart looked like the least diverse crowd I have seen lately. I know that the local Mexican community shops at Top or QFC (which now have added large sections with their favorite foods from Mexico), my Asian friends frequent Uwajimaya and other Asian groceries, and the Russians, Indians etc. have their favorite places as well (not chichi by any standards). What I’m trying to say is that what one sees in one community does not reflect the entire picture.</p>
<p>Bunsen, my immigrant friends tend to shop their immigrant groceries AND Walmart. They also love Costco. Not Trader Joes. They don’t see any charm at all in Trader Joes . . .</p>
<p>I have a question for all the Walmart dissenters out there…do you buy things from Amazon or any other internet website or do you always buy locally for everything? Amazon and tons of other internet sites have the ability to undercut the local stores just as much, if not more, than Walmart. In fact, a lot of the Amazon vendors are smaller stores.</p>
<p>I was looking for a nutritional supplement recently. First I researched the product online and then went out with the intention of buying it locally. It was $27 at our local health food store, $23 at WF and $13 at Amazon with free shipping. While I’m all for shopping locally (actually I do it all - mom and pop and Walmart and Target and WF) I was shocked at the price difference and would have been an absolute fool to pay twice the price. With a smart phone in hand, I can now stand in any store and scan a product and have Amazon show me their price. Amazon is usually 30-50% less.</p>
<p>While it’s easy to say, ‘predatory pricing’, ‘jobs going overseas’ etc. The reality is we now live in a global economy and if the US can’t figure out how to compete, we’re sunk. All the ‘buy American’ slogans in the world isn’t going to stop us from going down the drain.</p>
<p>musicamusica, once again, you rock my world. ;)</p>
<p>Walmart is not unique in what it does, but it did play a significant role in helping to start the slide of the US economic base and the cheap prices has a story behind it. Walmart was always a discount store and was known for cheap prices, but a good deal of the things they sold were made in the US, and they made decent money. Walmart as today was often the only decent shopping experience in many rural areas, and it allowed people to afford even basic stuff at pretty cheap prices. Interestingly, Walmarts were also known for customer service, I was shocked when I went to a Walmart in Pennsylvania at how well run it was, they had people in the various departments, could get help finding stuff…which is not how the Walmarts I have been in are run these days, along with US made goods, Wallmart on a customer service basis is as cut rate as its prices…</p>
<p>Anyway, Walmart became the largest store in the country (and I believe the world), with the power to match and that is where the free market idea kind of falls apart. For a free market to work, you can’t have competitors with the size to basically force out competition by cutting prices below cost, which Walmart has been accused of, they put not just mom and pop stores out of business, but also other retailers. But the bigger part of it is because of their size, Walmart went to suppliers and put a gun to their head on prices, they said “you will make this and sell it to us for 5 bucks instead of 6”…the suppliers, because of Walmarts size, couldn’t say no…and ended up to meet those price points having to go offshore to dirt cheap labor markets basically. What Walmart doesn’t tell you is that those savings in cost didn’t much go into lower prices, it went into their bottom line (there was a Harvard business review article about this several years ago), so in many cases you end up paying not much less then when it was made in the US, and Walmart reaped the profit. Should Walmart have been allowed to do that? It was their right, but I wouldn’t exactly give Walmart medals for helping ordinary people. Likewise, I also think they have played a bait and switch and have been allowed to do it, they are selling for example housewares or small appliances with a name like Oster on it, when the name is the same but you are basically getting something much worse made, but they are implying it is the same thing. Someone mentioned the stuff the Home Depot sells as Anderson and Pella, they are of lesser quality then what they sell elsewhere, but Home Depot is selling those as if they are first quality (and I can tell you, as someone with background in home renovation and construction, they aren’t), and Walmart is doing the same thing…which hurts competitors who may very well be selling better quality merchandise at prices not all that much higher.</p>
<p>Where I rip Walmart is that in the name of greed, like far too many businesses, they forgot they are part of a community and what they do affects other things. Andrew Carnegie, not exactly a socialist or for that matter a saint, recognized that wealth doesn’t flow from God or from a river or from his own brain, it comes from the community. Henry Ford knew it when he paid his workers 5 bucks a day (considered outrageous by conservatives of his day). In the name of allmighty shareholder value (and personal greed of those running the show), they basically forgot that. </p>
<p>Retail jobs in general suck, whether you are on the floor or a manager, they don’t pay well, never have. The problem I have is the practices of Walmart, who had/have a unique role to play, in effect sucked wealth out of the community to use Carnegie’s term, and like a vampire did so without thinking of the consequences. Don McNeil, the guy who makes weathertech floor mats (here in the US, and they are great products) said that what people like Walmart or the other outsourcers don’t understand is that eventually even with their ‘low prices’ no one will be able to afford to shop there, and people in China certainly won’t. What I rap Walmart for is greed, and it was shortsighted, stupid greed, as bad as anything you will see on Wall Street. They aren’t alone, but they had a unique role, and what disturbs me is Walmart’s power has only grown, and it includes politically, and that is dangerous to me…</p>
<p>As far as looking down on people shopping at Walmart, I might be educated and fairly well off, but I would never do that, I wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I don’t buy fancy clothing or luxury cars, and I kind of enjoy seeing the people who shop there, they are people I know only too well. I know what it is like to have a depleted bank account and needing something, I know what it means to wonder about tomorrow, and the people shopping there are not greedy, they are there for the best prices they can get to try and survive. On the other hand, I also firmly believe that Walmart and other companies like that sell the vision that without ruthlessly cutting costs the way they did, they couldn’t operate, and that is hogwash, for a number of reasons. Given the size of Walmart and their legitimate purchasing power, they could offer low prices like that without doing what they did…they did what they did to make a cash cow even bigger, so the CEO could make 20 million a year, etc, and in my book that is greed. When someone’s operating MO is ‘enough is never enough’, I have a problem with that, or when ‘shareholder’ value reigns supreme, I am within my rights to criticize it as being what it is, narrow focused and stupid.</p>
<p>Most mom and pop stores are not making their goods in the back–not sewing up Levi’s or knitting T-shirts. They buy their stuff from similar sources for everYday goods. They just sell it for more with fewer choices. I don’t shop at Wal-mart much but when I need some things that I know the have I will. I can get a lot done in an hour from groceries to CDs or whatever i want. I don’t think anyone would say WM sells much in the way of luxury goods. It’s mostly stuff real people including many lower income people need all the time and you can get a good price and make on trip.
At least WM employees never have to woRry about their checks bouncing or not getting paid–things that happen at small stores all the time.</p>
<p>I dont shop at Walmart because of how they treat their employees.</p>
<p>On a personal level, I do work for a large fortune 500 software company. We are basically dictated the price which we will charge for the work we produce. We are also told we need to send the work to Asia. Trying to keep local employees working we chose to keep the work local and still matched the price they dictated but this was unacceptable to them. The choice was do the work in Asia or end a twenty year relationship.</p>
<p>Sad times
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Everyone is allowed to draw their line in the sand. It is a personal choice and seeing the protesters on Wall Street, one I assume we will see more of in the future.</p>
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Uh oh… another entre into posting a million links to stun gun articles?? AAAGGGHHHHH…</p>
<p>Momlive-</p>
<p>It is a global economy but there are still nation states and people living in places and so forth. The problem with the current model in many things is that it isn’t a global economy, it is making stuff in places with dirt cheap labor who can’t buy what they are making, where the local countries refuse to allow foreign made goods into their country, where they de facto set their currency value, and then want to sell the products anywhere they wish. Put it this way, for every dollar that is spent in China, they spend less then 20c back again, and most of that is raw materials…same with India, Vietnam, etc…for their to be a global economy means there needs to be vibrant local economies, what we have here is a 19th century economy gone global…</p>
<p>small request… musicprnt-
One of these days I would really like to read one of your posts. But they fill my monitor and my eyes start to glaze over. Would it be possible to write shorter posts? I think you’d get a lot more readers. Just sayin’.</p>
<p>*** Edit*** LOL!! I READ the post that slipped in just above mine!! Thank you!!</p>
<p>Annasdad, just wow. This blows me away. Okay sure I get the draw to Walmart…people have to make ends meet and cut costs in their shopping. What i don’t get is how something like Walmart can be viewed as if its equivalent of something amazing, like say a new hospital, a cure for cancer, the return of soldiers, or a bridge connecting an isolated community. </p>
<p>I wish you could post the article you’ll write on this! </p>
<p>Do you feel pressure to stay neutral with your paper?</p>
<p>As an aside, our city would not allow a Walmart. We are fortunate that we have a ton of small businesses everywhere. Those that come to visit from many parts of the US are amazed when they see it. We definitely pay more but I (and apparently a million other people) wouldn’t want it any other way.</p>