Wal-Mart for some reason has a bad reputation in Texas, it is not thought of that way everywhere. I hated Wal-Mart until I moved to Colorado. Here they are better than Target. I'm not sure what the big fuss is about having a Wal-Mart near the heights, like someone said, its in the middle of the 4th largest city in the country.
There is between the earnings of the small business people that Wal-Mart puts out of business and the grocery checkers at Wal-Mart.
Apples to oranges. The assertion was that Wal Mart replaces good jobs with crappy jobs. Not true. Anytime you own your own business, it is not a statistically measurable job. I owned my own business for a couple of years. For reasons unrelated to Wal Mart, it did not work out. You can never take tomorrow as a given when you own a business. As an aside, I noticed that there is a Wal Mart and a Sam's at Westheimer and Dunvale. Miraculously, Bering's hardware a few blocks away has managed to survive.
Actually WalMart gives the money back to the consumer in ultra-low cost of goods. People shop at Walmart for the prices. The vast majority of jobs at walmart is unskilled labor. Workers are paid a fair wage for their skill level. They certainly aren't treated like Google employees, but overall they are treated fair. There are far more worse job environments out there that you never hear about. If wages and benefits are jacked up, then the price of goods go up. That will not bode well for many people who are heavily invested in Walmart for the sake of "unionizing" unskilled labor jobs. The issue that needs to be investigated is how Walmart treats their suppliers. Its borderline criminal on how they strong arm their suppliers into cutting their prices. If they cut a supplier, that supplier can easily slip into bankruptcy from the sheer loss of business. Its one thing if its a risk the supplier chooses to take, but something entirely different when they are already cutting the suppliers throat from the beginning.
That's a business management issue on the part of the suppliers. Every single business has to deal with it regardless of if they are a Walmart supplier or an accounting firm: become overly dependent on one client at your peril. That's what gives us things like Enron, and Roger wearing a santa suit on Mad Men.
It's not apples to oranges at all. That small business is put out of business and the sales are scooped up by Wal-Mart and the dollars taken out of the community. You want to talk about one anectodal example of a store not put out of business by Wal-Mart but there are thousands and thousands of examples to the contrary in towns and cities all over the country.
"Gives money back to the consumer"... Where does this money they are giving back come from? Wal-Mart doesn't take smaller profits for themeslves. They aren't "giving back" their share of the money to consumers. They leverage their size in a way similar to the outlawed ways monopolies used to work in the 19th century to take money away from their suppliers and employees, and give it to consumers. They keep the same profits relative to percentages of individual sales for themselves, but they increase volume. From the perch of the snooty educated professional, the hardscrabble existence of all the hoi polloi undoubtedly appears pretty sordid no matter what they do. Let them eat cake, and all that. :grin: But the fact of the matter is, that there are always going to be undereducated people who don't become lawyers. If everybody went to law school, there would be a whole lot of jobs left unfilled. The question is, whether it is in anybody's best interest for them to be marginalized as much as possible, or whether it should be possible for people to live out a modest existence filling these crappy jobs with a bit of dignity. What Wal-Mart does, is to exert downward pressure on the crappiness of crappy jobs. While it all appears crappy beyond crappy to you, if you were down there mucking along on the bottom, marginal gradations in the level of crappiness beneath your threshold of notice seem much more relevant. Fundamentally, for all the people complaining about snobbishness, it seems pretty snobby to just assume that the portions of our society who work in unskilled labor should expect to be treated like crap. I'm going to tie this in with the Norwegian prison photos that I posted a while back. Fundamentally, if you treat people like animals, you shouldn't blame them when they act like animals. The dignity you afford to people - especially the people on the bottom - has a direct result on the way they behave.
Indeed. This is one topic where I have to part ways with Refman and JV. Small businesses are a big part of the heart and soul of a community. They make up a big part of local culture, a big part of what makes one village, one town, one city different from the next. When you place a national behemoth smack dab in the middle of that local culture, a behemoth who wants to put those local companies owned and operated by your neighbors, in many cases, out of business, you may as well say that you don't want to be unique as a community. You want "to be like everyone else." That may appeal to some folks, but it sure as heck doesn't appeal to me.
While this may be true, it seems that the challenge for the small business is to differentiate itself in some way so that they can compete on a basis other than price. Sure price is a huge competitive factor, but people bought groceries at Randall's for generations at a higher price due to being a local store and an increased level of service. Of course, then Randall's started buying everything in sight and overexpanded, leading to the sale to Safeway. None of the perceived evils of Wal Mart are sufficient to allow government to decide which business should build and those which should not.
I worked in plenty of jobs, some in retail others in factories prior to going to law school. I understand the reality of these jobs. To take a look at somebody who went to law school in his late 20s and assume that he is a snooty educated professional who knows nothing of these jobs is a pretty bold assumption. As an attorney, I have also represented people in these jobs. I know more than what you may think I do.
What do you mean "the dollars are taken out of the comminity?" Wal-Mart hires people in the community, and it gives great deals to people in the community (otherwise they wouldn't shop there).
Thirty years ago, I was a child. I'm sure my thirty year old memories provide me some insight into childhood from this distant vantage point. Nevertheless, as I have not been a child in quite a while, I am no longer qualified to speak intuitively or with absolute authority as to what a child may or may not think/believe/want/like. In other words, with a little reflection, the insight that I think my childhood provides me into children is probably far more illusory than I would care to admit. Especially on an intuitive and emotional level. Fundamentally, we are creatures of the moment. Whatever you may have been, you are currently significantly distant from that perspective.
I was cleaning out bins full of dead crickets at Petsmart less than 10 years ago. I can assure you that I would not have been enjoying a significantly higher level of dignity had I been cleaning out bins full of dead crickets at some random local pet store, which on average probably would have been a trashier place than Petsmart.
I only mean that, especially in a large organization like Walmart, you get what you get as far as employee behavior goes. It is incumbent on company management to recognize the patterns their employees will fall into and manage it to make them profitable workers all the same. If they're stealing too much, or procrastinating too much, or stupid too much, or surfing clutchfans too much, that's on management, not the worker.
"You don't understand. It cannot be reasoned with! It cannot be controlled! It does not have feelings! It is programmed for one thing...to make money. And, it will not stop!!!...EVER!!!" "I came back for you, Sara." "Wait..." "Oh." (shrugs shoulders) "Sorry. I thought this was a Terminator thread (not really)." "T-E-R-M-I-N-A-T-E W-A-L-M-A-R-T" "*--- C-O-N-F-I-R-M-E-D ---*"
I have to disagree again, Ref. It has been documented that Walmart has a huge negative impact on local businesses. In cities with strict zoning laws, however, they are very restricted in where they can build their gigantic stores. A direct result of that is saving those local businesses people like us care about.The small shop which actually has the merchendize you are looking for and the quality you desire, along with an experienced staff seeing to your every need, a staff that will, more often than not, recognize you, say hello, and even remember you name. The sort of service I grew up expecting. All it takes in a community to stop Walmart is a strong local government, and a strong, engaged electorate, with zoning laws on the books and a willingness to use them, and not hand out variences.
Aren't you denying others in your community a choice, however? The small shop which has merchandise you are seeking and a strong, knowledgeable sales staff sounds great. If they are so great, they should be able to stay in business even if Walmart exists. People would go there instead of Walmart for the great service and selection. The problem is money. That shop may charge 20% more. You are denying your fellow consumer the choice to forgo the service portion of the shopping experience to save money. Its like some states that demand that you have Full Service gasoline fill ups. They MAKE people pay more for the service that most people would gladly give up to save money. You are demanding the same thing. You are making the choice for everyone else that they will pay more for better service, when they can in fact do without the service portion and save a sizeable amount of money. Money that they may choose to spend in what they see as a more valuable use to their family. The $1 they save on that box of Tide may very well mean a high quality of life overall for their family. The $2 they save on frozen chicken. The $30 they save on school clothes. It all adds up. Who are you to decide to have the government enforce what YOU feel is a better choice for everyone else for their families. It all goes back to this: if people didn't want to save money on their consumer goods, they wouldn't shop at Walmart and we'd all shop at Mom and Pop places. If you, and a sizeable portion of the community think that by supporting the small businesses is the better way, then by all means, take your dollars there and support them. Rally your neigbors and ask them to support the small business to keep them in business. If that small business is TRULY much better, then their premium prices should be able to carry them.
I think there was a comparison on the average cost of products Wal-mart sells against other places. Outside its loss-leaders, they're mostly the same. People get drawn in on the sales, but shop for everything else. Plus, the "cost savings" Walmart uses through strong-arming distributors bounces back in the form of lower quality or lower value goods we were accustomed to 15 years ago. You really get what you pay for. Also helps with their funky pricing at the cent level. $13.47 is harder to mentally compare than something that normally costs 14 bucks. If you like shopping at Walmart, great. They're the big winners of capitalism's Pareto distribution. I don't feel any need to feed the Beast, though I doubt a Mom n Pop owner would make any distinction with Walmart and Costco....
