What do you guys REALLY think of Walmart?

[ballzack]

I post this in Unfathomable because it really is.

The METEORIC rise of Wallmart. YOW!

Question is, is Walmart part of the main cause of the economic downturn here in the U.S. or not?

Thoughts?

[chihuahua236]

I post this in Unfathomable because it really is.

The METEORIC rise of Wallmart. YOW!

Question is, is Walmart part of the main cause of the economic downturn here in the U.S. or not?

Thoughts?

Walmart?I thought that was a gang? Lol just kidding but seriously kids in high schools I went there and they have gangs called, "K-mart and Walmart

[yee-haw]

I did pick up the eagles' new c.d. at wal-mart!

[chihuahua236]

I did pick up the eagles' new c.d. at wal-mart!

hey if your military and tell em your number they give you a tour of the "bad room".

[buttless_wonder]

Think about this.
Walmart has the buying capacity to purchase an entire stock runs before a manufacturer starts the run. By doing this they can have the retail price they would like to offer be a key in "redesigning" the product. What this gets the consumer is the absolute bottom of the barrel product for a 5% savings. Quite often this is done in consumer electronics since the average customer does not know what they are getting anyways.

I'll spend a little more and get something that will last.

[ballzack]

Good point, Buttless.

I remember watching a documentary on PBS, probably "NOVA" or some similar show.
At any rate, it was NOT about Walmart but about Security at the dockyards in San Diego.
The Dockmaster was pointing out all the thousands of containers going out bound for China. RAW material.
She then pointed out the thousand of containers coming in from China. Containers marked "WALMART". Finished product.

Ouch.

[yee-haw]

Good point, Buttless.

I remember watching a documentary on PBS, probably "NOVA" or some similar show.
At any rate, it was NOT about Walmart but about Security at the dockyards in San Diego.
The Dockmaster was pointing out all the thousands of containers going out bound for China. RAW material.
She then pointed out the thousand of containers coming in from China. Containers marked "WALMART". Finished product.

Ouch.

Freeking wal-mart.....
That means my c.d. came from china!

[hitekredneck]

when sam walton first started walmart, he made a good deal for consumers by offering american made products at a decent price...since his death, his kids have totally corrupted walmart beyond reason....i buy there cause they have what i need at a price i can almost afford after fueling my truck

[ballzack]

Agreed HiTek.
But not just his kids FOOBARING that company up. The stockholders and board of directors are into world (or at least U.S.) total domination of mass merch retail.

I shop at K-Mart just to try and keep that poor dwindling chain a'float. Competition is a good thing in this case.
Now that Sears owns K-mart, hopefully they'll stick around so some of us that want a choice, have a choice.

Most women prefer Target. That chain is a Hudson stores corporation (Marshall Fields and Dayton Hudson). Brightly lit wide isles, Health and Beauty Aides and family items right up front near walk-in. Stuff for "hubby" and jewelry near checkout. HUGE kids/toys/cloting/homewear sections all layed out perfectly for the woman between 22 and 55. Someone did their research here.

The demographic that Walmart targets, however, is vastly different. I heard on a documentary that Sam used to fly his little private airplane around looking for pockets of rural America where homes and business were clustered, and from the air saw opportunities to place his stores. What sells to rural America is what they target.

There may be no stopping them?

Thoughts?

[General Septem]

I support the lowering of costs, but I hear some of their business practices are unethical, which I do not support.

As for small businesses, they just have to find other industries to get into. Retailing is no longer any business for small businesses to get into.

[WhiteRaven]

I wouldn't mind wal-mart, but it can't be safe to have so many stupid retards in a single building.

[ballzack]

That's true General.

Entrepreneurs must continue to find new "opportunities' in a continually changing enconomic landscape.

Want to start a corner drug store or a local hardware store? Good luck.

Find a niche market that is untapped and uncontrolled by the big boys. Not easy to do, but it is doable.

[Prometheus]

I don't feel like paying my employees aliving wage so would you mind paying for all of thier food and subsidiseing thier housing and haveing tax payers pay for it all so I can get rich even faster ? They dont need a lot of money cause they will shop here and by my chinese slave labour goods (How else can you buy materails and labor to make a watch and ship it half way around the world for a toatal of about 5 bucks a unit 2.50 of witch is profit ). And Oh yeah... and who gives a fuck about the rest of the economy anyway right !?

[General Septem]

I don't feel like paying my employees aliving wage so would you mind paying for all of thier food and subsidiseing thier housing and haveing tax payers pay for it all so I can get rich even faster ? They dont need a lot of money cause they will shop here and by my chinese slave labour goods (How else can you buy materails and labor to make a watch and ship it half way around the world for a toatal of about 5 bucks a unit 2.50 of witch is profit ). And Oh yeah... and who gives a fuck about the rest of the economy anyway right !?

Allow me to decode this post for my fellow bullshitters. In his jumbled satire, Prometheus makes several claims against Wal Mart, which for clarity I will list along with a thorough debunking:

1. Wal Mart pays their employees minimum wage. Part time workers make that just about anywhere, but Wal Mart's full time workers make an average of over $10 an hour, and receive benefits. That is not a bad living. They may not be at the top, but they have a car and a color TV, which puts them above most factory workers of the '50s. The ones making minimum wage are the part time workers, not the ones with families to support.

2. Wal Mart workers are on welfare. In reality, many of their workers couldn't find work elsewhere and would be on welfare if it weren't for Wal Mart. In short, not only is Wal Mart not keeping their workers on welfare, but they're actually keeping them off welfare.

3. The only way to produce and sell goods as cheaply as Wal Mart does is to hire "slave labor". Like any sane company, Wal Mart produces goods as cheaply as possible by using a very high tech idea called "mass production". Mass production was a driving force behind our country's industrial revolution. Raw materials are dirt ass cheap in bulk, and productivity can be expected to be on the order of thousands of units per day. Labor works just as hard for just as long, they just get more done in a day.

4. Wal Mart is forcing people overseas to work for peanuts. The truth is, sweatshop workers do above average for their respective countries, often well above average. Offering jobs to children in countries where it's legal keeps them from starving or turning to prostitution. These kids aren't working because they're forced to, they're working because they're desperately poor. When America was a developing nation, things were exactly the same way. What's shit for us is gold for other countries. Wal Mart isn't fucking these people in the ass, they're giving them employment opportunities they wouldn't have had otherwise.

5. Wal Mart's business practices are bad for the economy. In reality, the economy is driven by supply and demand, and Wal Mart prices accordingly. They just do business VERY WELL and can price things dirt-ass cheap. This can do nothing but help our economy. Offering the best goods at the cheapest price, that's the goal of any good company that expects to last.

"But General, how is sending all of our job [sic] overseas good for the economy lol?"

America is shifting away from the goods based economy and becoming a service based economy. We're creating jobs a lot faster than we're losing them. This transition is difficult, but it is a sign that we are prospering economically. Services jobs are a lot better than goods jobs, they pay better, they promote societal development (most service jobs require a college degree), and they create more jobs and promote small businesses. Perhaps the only exception to this is retail, which is still a good industry to work for if you're a manager or a student. Cashiering isn't meant for people trying to support a family, period, and if you don't have a college education, that's your fault.

[Paisleyspeaker]

General, I would love to see where you got your information. Here is a litle of mine, with the source at the bottom. The only thing out of your post that I can say I believe is that the full time employees make $10 an hour, and thats only because only the management is actually full-time everyone else is kept at about 32-36 hrs a week.


In Georgia, one of every four WalMart employees has a child in the state's PeachCare health program, according to a recent survey. Over 10,000 of the 166,000 children covered by PeachCare have a parent working for Wal-Mart; no other employer in the state has a comparable share of its employees in the program.

In California, the families of Wal-Mart employees use an estimated 40% more in publicly funded health care than the average for families of employees at other large retail firms, according to an August 2003 study by University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations. Providing health care to Wal-Mart families costs California taxpayers an estimated $32 million annually.

Thanks to their poverty-level wages, Wal-Mart workers are often eligible for other kinds of government assistance as well. The same study found that California Wal-Mart employees and their families utilize an additional $54 million in non-health related federal assistance, including food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing.

The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated the breakdown of costs for one 200-employee Wal-Mart store:
* $36,000 a year for free or reduced school lunches, assuming that 50 families of employees qualify.
* $42,000 a year for Section 8 rental assistance, assuming that 3% of the store employees qualify.
* $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming that 50 employees are heads of households with a child, and 50 employees are married with two children.
* $108,000 a year for the additional federal contribution to state children's health insurance programs, assuming
that 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
* $100,000 a year for additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 families with two children qualify.
* $9,750 a year for the additional costs of low-income energy assistance.

Overall, the committee estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in an excess cost of $420,750 a year for federal taxpayers.

Dollars and Sense magazine, January/February 2005

[Prometheus]

You should find this amusing....no one raps.---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKv6RcXa2UI (I cant get the link to work so just clip this and put it into your browser) And here is a little extra for ya !! ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Q-sRdV7SY&feature=user

[Prometheus]

General, I would love to see where you got your information. Here is a litle of mine, with the source at the bottom. The only thing out of your post that I can say I believe is that the full time employees make $10 an hour, and thats only because only the management is actually full-time everyone else is kept at about 32-36 hrs a week.


In Georgia, one of every four WalMart employees has a child in the state's PeachCare health program, according to a recent survey. Over 10,000 of the 166,000 children covered by PeachCare have a parent working for Wal-Mart; no other employer in the state has a comparable share of its employees in the program.

In California, the families of Wal-Mart employees use an estimated 40% more in publicly funded health care than the average for families of employees at other large retail firms, according to an August 2003 study by University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations. Providing health care to Wal-Mart families costs California taxpayers an estimated $32 million annually.

Thanks to their poverty-level wages, Wal-Mart workers are often eligible for other kinds of government assistance as well. The same study found that California Wal-Mart employees and their families utilize an additional $54 million in non-health related federal assistance, including food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing.

The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated the breakdown of costs for one 200-employee Wal-Mart store:
* $36,000 a year for free or reduced school lunches, assuming that 50 families of employees qualify.
* $42,000 a year for Section 8 rental assistance, assuming that 3% of the store employees qualify.
* $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming that 50 employees are heads of households with a child, and 50 employees are married with two children.
* $108,000 a year for the additional federal contribution to state children's health insurance programs, assuming
that 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
* $100,000 a year for additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 families with two children qualify.
* $9,750 a year for the additional costs of low-income energy assistance.

Overall, the committee estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in an excess cost of $420,750 a year for federal taxpayers.

Dollars and Sense magazine, January/February 2005

Wow at least sombody in here can see past a quick buck !!

[buttless_wonder]

Here in the town where I live there was just one local grocery store for years. Then came along Safeway, Albertsons and Fred Meyer(Kroger) and people thought the local would go out of business from the tough competition. Instead there business continued just as before because they provided service the large chain stores did not. First off they have the best produce in town. Next is the butcher dept where you can get whatever cut you want within minutes. Say you would like your steaks cut thicker than what is in the display case, just ask and it's done. If I go to one of the large stores I can get the thicker cuts but have to wait till the next day and they mark up the price per pound for doing so.

Same thing goes for a small family run hardware store here. If you want to compete with these larger stores you must be willing to offer something they don't and that would be service.

[General Septem]

General, I would love to see where you got your information. Here is a litle of mine, with the source at the bottom.

Dollars and Sense magazine, January/February 2005

I honestly wasn't surprised to see "Dollars & Sense" as your sole source, but I'm disappointed.

I know how intelligent you are, but you really shouldn't read that garbage, because you know the whole systems theory thing. You'd get so much more reliable information from a real economist magazine rather than a political magazine that talks about economics.

"Dollars & Sense" is where most socialist Democrats get their information from when they say things like "the middle class pay 80% of all taxes, and the rich pay nothing". All you need to do is look at real financial reports to prove that just about everything they say is wrong. The universal response is "the rich & powerful have altered these official reports in order to steal more of your money". The trouble is, allegedly falsified evidence is still better than NO evidence, which is exactly as much evidence as D&S ever shows.

Those people are conspiracy theorists. Do not listen.

By the way, D&S receives millions of dollars from unions. Unions have a vendetta against Wal Mart for not allowing their bullshit there, and as a result they've lost millions of dollars that they could have made in membership dues. That's a true story that never happened. But look into it.

[freakazoid]

Damn! I knew it! Wal-mart is the anti-christ! And all this time, I thought Disney was!

[MrJim]

Wal-Mart is a cannibalistic, small business crushing, shitty blue box with the cheapest shittiest merchandise you can find, and they cater to wetbacks, welfare moms, and alcoholics. The lines suck. The parking lot sucks. The food sits unrefrigerated when people get pissed off waiting in line and abandon their carts, only to be tossed back on the shelf later at night. Most of the workers don't speak English and crowd you out of the isles to spend an hour sorting soup. Nothing good is ever on sale. The bathrooms are nasty. Their CDs and DVDs are never alphabetized. The carts should be put out of their misery. They don't pay their workers shit and don't offer benefits to most. They ruin small towns and piss on the tumbleweeds.

I think that covers it.

And like something out of Ripley's Believe it or Not, everyone shops there.

[Prometheus]

I couldnt agree more.....

[General Septem]

You two must go to the same store. All the Wal Marts around here are decent.

That's a store management issue, not a corporate issue. That said, they might want to think about replacing the manager of that store with someone a little more qualified.

Some of their items suck, but nothing I would ever buy anyway.

[MrJim]

You two must go to the same store. All the Wal Marts around here are decent.

That's a store management issue, not a corporate issue. That said, they might want to think about replacing the manager of that store with someone a little more qualified.

Some of their items suck, but nothing I would ever buy anyway.

Since I stumbled across this searching in response to another thread, I couldn't let it die... We have at least 25 Wal-Mart stores in this area. They are all pretty much the same, minus some differences in their return policies (that's because the mexicans on this side of town steal shit and then try to return it). What's funny is that the ones in nicer neighborhoods rarely survive. The ones in the ghetto thrive, though.

I think "Wal-Mart" is the first word the mexicans learn when they get here. Second to that is "welfare".

[ballzack]

I am not a fan of Walmart. I think I've shopped there once or twice.
It's too mass-merch for my taste.

But I really don't "shop" that much. Most of what I want, I have. And my taste is specialized. You can't buy a Patagonia Fly Fishing vest at Walmart. Yet, anyway.

Hey Jimbo, I'm going back to Garland next month. I'll smile and wave!

-zack

[freakazoid]

Wal-Mart is a cannibalistic, small business crushing, shitty blue box with the cheapest shittiest merchandise you can find, and they cater to wetbacks, welfare moms, and alcoholics. The lines suck. The parking lot sucks. The food sits unrefrigerated when people get pissed off waiting in line and abandon their carts, only to be tossed back on the shelf later at night. Most of the workers don't speak English and crowd you out of the isles to spend an hour sorting soup. Nothing good is ever on sale. The bathrooms are nasty. Their CDs and DVDs are never alphabetized. The carts should be put out of their misery. They don't pay their workers shit and don't offer benefits to most. They ruin small towns and piss on the tumbleweeds.

I think that covers it.

And like something out of Ripley's Believe it or Not, everyone shops there.

I have a way to get rid of Walmart...

- wetbacks...hunt them down, arrest them and send to interment camps (photographed, finger printed and DNA sample taken) and then deportation to wherever they came from; if they return, life imprisonment at useful hard labor, no possibility of parole under any circumstances (immediate result...serious crime; arm robbery, rape, gang violence, drunk driving, serious drug usage, drug sales, murder, etc. will drop at least an estimated 30% to 35% in the United States). No exceptions.

- welfare moms...24 months on welfare maximum, forced to go to school to learn a trade, taken off welfare and forced to maintain gainful employment. If found to be using drugs, or if they refuse to go to school, all welfare cut off for life. Children placed in decent foster homes until adoption can be arranged. No exceptions.

- alcoholics...court ordered strict alcohol / drug rehab program and education if they need to learn a trade...refusal to comply; 5 years in state prison sequestered from alcohol or drugs. Upon release, second chance to attend court ordered strict alcohol / drug rehab program and education. Refusal to except, all public welfare cut off for life. No exceptions.

- workers don't speak English...pass federal laws and a Constitutional Amendment establishing English only as the only national and supported language, cut off ALL support at the federal, state and local level for any language other than English. Pass a law that all employees in the United States must pass a minimum English compentancy test to be eligible for employment. Why not? They force ALL pilots (commercial or private) to speak, understand and write English, or NO pilot's license. No exceptions.

- The bathrooms are nasty...hire Disney's clean up crew to maintain the restrooms (you know, the guys walking around in white uniforms with the broom and dustpan on a stick), perfect job for promoIdiot. No exceptions.

- Their CDs and DVDs are never alphabetized...they are, but in farking Farsi, Taiwanese and Vietnamese. Just look closer.

- The carts should be put out of their misery...sell them to wetbacks; hell, why not, they steal them anyway, might as well make a buck off them. Or, don't have carts in the store, let the wetbacks carry the shit they bought or stole out of the store, that way they will be easy for INF Agents and Boarder Patrol to spot on the street (see point number one above).

- They don't pay their workers shit and don't offer benefits to most...most are already WAY overpaid as far as I can tell. Cut their wages in concert with IQ...i.e.; about 30 cents and hour.

- ACLU bleeding heart liberals bitching and whining...tell them to shut the hell up and get lost. If they continue, deported to North Korea or Afghanistan, forced to marry an islamic camel. No exceptions.

"They ruin small towns and piss on the tumbleweeds." Result...Walmart goes BK, closes doors, local businesses saved from the "Walmart Effect." The country is FAR BETTER OFF! Simple answers to simple problems.

[hitekredneck]

sam waltom has to be spinning in his grave at what his kids have done to his business...look, guys, i despise what wally-world has become, but in all fairness, sam walton started walmart with the best of intentions...in the beginning, he sold only american made products at reasonable prices...if you look at the timelines, walmart didn't start selling sweat-shop items til after he died and control of the company went to his heirs...now, as everybody has mentioned, they're a huge, multi-billion dollar conglomerate that has cost small business in every state in the union...