People always complain about wal mart putting small businesses out of operation and taking over their local market share. They then employ hundreds of people in the area. We've all heard the argument of small business vs. more jobs. But think about the kind of people that need to utilize wal-marts low prices and the people that work there in comparison with the people that own and operate the small business and preferr to shop there.
Wal-Mart Employees- Working class
Preferred Wal-Mart Shopper- Working class
Small Business owner- lower upper class
Preferred Small business shopper- middle class

The people who need wal-marts are low income.
The people hurt economically my Walmart are upper class. So why do liberals hate walmart even though they take jobs from the financially secure and give them to the insecure? Because it's a corporation, more so they're a big corporation. But worst of all they're a successful corporation. The worst of all, how dare they make money and profits. Just pointing out more of the all encompassing liberal hypocracy.

Wage "slavery" is worse than possessive slavery in "most" ways? Some ways. Many ways. A few ways. Various ways. But, most? Give me a break. Man, I don't post for like a year and a facebook message tells me to log on and "click" and I get suckered in to one of these.

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Originally posted by Bushsupporter:

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Wal-Mart supports slave-labor

Tell me how Walmart is able to own slaves when it has been illegal for 100 years. I think you are making this up.

The equivilant of slave labor where slavery has supposedly been outlawed is wage slavery. It's worse than slavery, in most ways.

I disagree with your points about Wal-Mart helping the poor. I used to live in a town where the only two major grocery places were an Albertsons and Wal-Mart. They had taken over the town and destroyed the competition entirely, and in return they controlled the price of food, which was significantly higher than it should have been. I know this has happened all over the country where Wal-Marts are allowed to set up their monopolies.

That is just one problem I have with Wal-Mart. I have a million more but will only go into it as much as I need to say.

Revolution, have you worked at Walmart? Your assesment is close to the truth, but oddly far off. There are benifits that are avaliable, most after a year of working, and not too shabby. Vacations, sick leave and bereavement leave are avaliable to all employees, full time after a year, and part time after two years. The pay is decent, if you work hard and get pay promotions whenever they're avaliable. After a year of working for Walmart, my pay has increased by almost two dollars. I can't compare this to other companies, but it's better than some that I've heard. One of the things I severely regret having, is the open door policy. This is, essentially, if you feel you can't talk to your immediate supervisor, you can go a step higher if you feel you must. I wish I could do that, with my relatively specific problems, but I couldn't even begin to figure out how to present my case to them. I'd need some help.

On the opposite note, you rarely see people in suits or nice clothes shopping there. I've seen several transients, many disabled people, and so many lower class folks. The store has a pleasent atmosphere, wide ailses, easy maneuverability and a wide variety of brands to choose from. It's true they've ran some companies into the ground, and I'm not going to offer a "but" for that. I'm not going to work here forever, but for now, I like my pay, I like most of my coworkers, and I like working nights. It's not as bad as people say it is.

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"liberal vs. conservative stuff."

Lol, more often than not liberals are just soft commies. If people are going to claim to be liberal, they should stick to being liberal. How is attacking corporations liberal? This is just class-struggle BS.

(Woops, now "Speed" the Commie is going to come in here screaming about the beougiouse )

I've done a lot of research on all of this to give you some decent factual feed back and some good economic theory. For every 2 jobs Wal-Mart creates, it destroys 3. Slavery is not illegal. It is in the United States, but almost nothing at Wal Mart is manufactured here. And that's just ownership slavery. There's also what I call economic slavery. Free trade zones are areas of countries where it is no longer national land but international bank land (such as World Bank). So things made there can technically said Made in America. But the people that work there have no other place to work because the corporate factories shut down their local economies. They are forced to work in harsh conditions for little pay because there are no other choices. There is nothing to do but work there and be harshly repressed. It is slavery.

Also, I think there should be a cutback on the "liberal vs. conservative stuff." It's a side note, but being a one-party person does not cultivate ideas. It destroys them by destroying the person. Free your mind

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Wal-Mart supports slave-labor

Tell me how Walmart is able to own slaves when it has been illegal for 100 years. I think you are making this up.

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Because of the drive to keep prices so low, suppliers look to unfair working conditions, compensation, etc. for their employees to make up for what Wal-Mart is not paying them.

So the poor, little, defensless businesses like Sony, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Sonoma, and Wrangler can't do anything. I feel so bad. If suppliers resort to poor working practices it is thier fault (although I am not conceding your point that they do) not Walmart's. Go start a board about them.

Wal-Mart supports slave-labor, and if you are against illegal immigration, alot of Walmart's inventory (esp. produce) is produced somewhere along the line by severely underpaid illegal-immigrants. So I have to disagree with you FML, people, maybe not the shoppers or the in-store employees, are hurt by Wal-mart. And, I agree with Jasminet, there is so much competition for product space in Walmart, that suppliers will do just about anything to keep their prices lower than everybody else. Because of the drive to keep prices so low, suppliers look to unfair working conditions, compensation, etc. for their employees to make up for what Wal-Mart is not paying them.

But don't you know FML, Walmart is stupid and they hate people and thier employees. Also, there is no where else in the country to work if you don't like your job. Walmart is the only employer in the US.

Would you call using their marketshare to drive down the cost of prescription drugs unethical? They are selling most generic drug brands for 4$ per prescription. They can do what they want because companies trying to sell their product wouldn't dare leave 70% of the retail market untapped. I bet you that the same people who thought it was unfair for them to demand price drops so aggresively with Sony will hold their peace and try to divert the attention to another thing that makes Wal-mart look bad on this one.

Maybe so, BUT

It is not a moral and ethical way to do business AND the costs are so much more to society. Poor working parents usually have to work 2 jobs or more just to survive. They don't have the chance to sit down with their kids and do homework, get their kids involved in extra-curricular activities (swimming, basketball or such at the neighborhood rec), can't get to parent-teacher conferences, can't give their children ANY quality time whatsoever. The kids turn to crime, drugs, or get pregnant early because even though their parent really WANTS to be a good parent, the children feel neglected because they never got to spend time with their mother and/or father. The dope boys run rampant because they look at how hard their parents are working without ever getting ahead and see that hard work does NOT pay, so they take the 'easy' way out.
There is something wrong in a society which is supposedly the richest when it has the highest number of people living in poverty of any developed nation.
Not all businesses work this way. Costco's business model: floor workers (cashiers, etc.) start out at ~$10/hour WITH benefits. Their reasoning is sound and makes economic sense: Less turnover/less expensive training time needed, enough money for the worker/greater productivity, greater productivity/no need to hire as many workers. Their return to shareholder: HIGHER than Wal-Mart's. So the line about a higher wage being bad for business is just thrown out the door by this progressive RETAIL company.
Of the businesses that exploit the economy, suppliers, and their worker, Wal-Mart is the largest....THIS is the reason why so many people cite Wal-Mart as the 'devil'. If Wal-Mart is forced to change IT's ways, other companies will follow.
Just my two cents.

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Originally posted by clpo13:
Jasminet, you could have just described any business. Wal-Mart is just better known than other companies that use the same methods.

As for the bit about the haves sharing, they shouldn't have to. It's their money. They made it. Read Atlas Shrugged.

Of course, there are those who don't quite earn their fortunes, but that's a different story altogether.

nope FML is one of the old school vets who left before your time

out of curiousity, is the person that started this thread around anymore? b/c this guy has like 3000 posts and I've honestly never heard of him until right now.

Jasminet, you could have just described any business. Wal-Mart is just better known than other companies that use the same methods.

As for the bit about the haves sharing, they shouldn't have to. It's their money. They made it. Read Atlas Shrugged.

Of course, there are those who don't quite earn their fortunes, but that's a different story altogether.

Wal-Mart does NOT help the poor and the only economy it really boosts is it's own. AND have you ever really shopped there and noticed that the prices are no better than anywhere else?
Wal-Mart opening scenario:
They decide to build in a town. Most cities/towns like the idea of a Wal-Mart because they think it will bring dollars. Wal-Mart wrangles with the city for tax breaks and incentives to lure them to build there. The city is already losing, and the store isn't even built yet.
Here's how Wal-Mart deals with suppliers (and why even though their original premise was to sell mainly American, they've put so many American suppliers out of business that they've had to abandon that line)-Company X sells vacuum cleaners; their wholesale cost is $50 (this is just a generalization). Wal-Mart refuses to pay $50; they say, "Well, we're going to buy bunches, so sell them to US for $35." This has already taken most of any profit away from the supplier. The supplier is so enthused at the prospect of his/her product being sold in Wal-Mart that they don't think through the economic implications to their business; they just see that their product will become well-known. They agree. They have to hire more people for the increased production, and generally, their workers aren't minimum wage workers like Wal-Mart employees. They have to buy more equipment to meet the now increased demand. Their costs skyrocket, and because their profit margin has been cut off, they can't continue to produce. They tell Wal-Mart, "Hey, this $35 per piece is not working for me; I can't pay my bills. Can we take it up to $40? That way, you still get a big break on the price, but it helps me continue to produce the vacuum cleaners. Otherwise, I can't continue operations." Wal-Mart says, "Tough; you agreed to it. You shouldn't have agreed if you weren't going to be able to deliver. Oh yeah, we were going to come to you to see about taking OUR price down even further since we're selling so many of your vacuums...."
AND their workers...well, minimum wage or close to it isn't enough to feed anyone, let alone someone with a family. 80% of their retail employees work close to or at a 40-hour work week and still qualify for food stamps. Oh yeah, they don't get any benefits and heaven help them if they need to take a day off, since vacation days are stingily meted out. They don't have steady hours, so if they want to go to school to better themselves, they have to wrangle with an often Napoleonic manager with a small mind. Keep in mind that Wal-Mart profits have steadily increased, so the Waltons and their shareholders are rolling in the dough while the people at the front lines who are actually doing the work and presenting the public face of Wal-Mart are living in poverty.
So explain again how Wal-Mart makes things better for poor people? Most of their employees are poor; they just get to go to work everyday and be poor, while the people at the top get richer and richer. There's no such thing as trickle-down economics; if the haves get more, they don't share, even when they have more than is humanly possible to spend.

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Originally posted by FreeMarketLover:
People always complain about wal mart putting small businesses out of operation and taking over their local market share. They then employ hundreds of people in the area. We've all heard the argument of small business vs. more jobs. But think about the kind of people that need to utilize wal-marts low prices and the people that work there in comparison with the people that own and operate the small business and preferr to shop there.
Wal-Mart Employees- Working class
Preferred Wal-Mart Shopper- Working class
Small Business owner- lower upper class
Preferred Small business shopper- middle class

The people who need wal-marts are low income.
The people hurt economically my Walmart are upper class. So why do liberals hate walmart even though they take jobs from the financially secure and give them to the insecure? Because it's a corporation, more so they're a big corporation. But worst of all they're a successful corporation. The worst of all, how dare they make money and profits. Just pointing out more of the all encompassing liberal hypocracy.

would you mind sititng your source?

Target can't compete with wal-Mart in rural and lower class demographics.
Wal-Mart can't compete with Target in the urban Middle class demographic.
The thing is that Wal-Mart has such a large market share through the number of stores and volume of merchandise, that Target will never match them in volume of sales. As a consumer, I hate wal-mart and am very close to never shopping there again(could get better customer service from a dead moose). From a market perspective, they are alright.

Stores like wal-mart kill the local "general store" but they guarantee the exsistance of specialty stores. Wal-mart in not going to sell masa mix and tamale corn husks. Small Mercado Centrals will always exsist because products like that are beyond wal-marts limit of product diversification.
Another example is super markets. They will never put korean markets out of business because the products are to specialized for Safeway to move in to.
Target approached wal-mart in an ingenius way. They realized that you can't beat wal-mart at their own game unless you want to go the way of the K-Mart. The focus on the urban middle class demographic. A demographic that cannot be fully catered to with wal-mart's business strategy. If you don't mind paying 26 cents more for your toilet paper, it's worth it to go to a store that is nice and clutter free. You can see where you are going and you don't feel like you are in a rat race. Target: They're brilliant.

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Target does have that catchy song.

What, the one for back to school that's a spinoff of actual songs that are the cool songs? Yeah... Well, I don't really know what to say but I do believe they'd stick to Wal Mart. As benje pointed out, it does have red almost everywhere, which I can't stand either. WalMart's color is more soothing and not as "Hey! HERE I AM! Buy stuff!"

The only thing about target I don't like is the fact that there is red all over the place...