Filthy Wal-Mart

[tellner]

Ah yes, the "China Price" which WalMart demands. I've seen a number of good product lines - Rubbermaid and Metro Shelving to name just two - come apart on the rocks of Sam Wall's "China Price". Essentially, you have to sell it to them for the same price he could get something similar from China where wages are rock-bottom, safety standards non-existent and officials eminently bribeable. The choice is to stop making it in the US or to cut quality down past the bone. Both of the companies mentioned above were reasonably priced and made in the USA. To try and stay in WalMart's good graces they turned a number of excellent lines into crap and then gave up and had the new crappy lines produced overseas.

 

[Nobody]

Here is what got me about working at wal-mart the people working there could not afford the cost of the stuff there even with help from welfare here it is pretty sad. They pay so far below what should be possible an this is in America where wal-mart got it's start.

 

[RED]

The local Wally world around here is fairly clean. I shop there and will continue. If the local Krogers would reduce thier prices I would shop there, but they have a union they have to keep happy. Bottom line, I can't find a place that is cheaper to buy groceries at. Miejers, Krogers, or Giant Eagle's prices are rediculous even with there special tracking cards they have. As far as I'm concerned Wal Mart is sticking it to the manufacturers instead of the customers. Sure would be nice if Exxon did that, I probably wouldn't hear anyone complaining about how crappy looking the gas station is. Sure they have some junk Chinese Junk there, but if I can save 50¢ on a bottle of Tide I will go there. Now If I'm in a hurry I will go elsewhere because the lines are crazy at Wal-Mart.
I don't know about how they treat employees, I'm not one of them. If they aren't making the money they need then they should step up in employment somewhere else.

 

[Sukerkin]

I hate to be a 'naysayer', Red but "sticking it to the manufacturers" is not entirely accurate, or at least not in the way you seem to envisage.

A great many of the 'cheap' products sold by such establishments (as I said, Wal-Mart is not alone, just one of the worst) are manufactured outside the USA under conditions that would be illegal in your country.

Who actually suffers from this particularly nihilistic brand of 'free market piracy' are our counterparts in other countries i.e. poor working stiffs whose existences are no different from that of slave labourers.

It is true that by using the enormous lever of their fiscal size, the likes of Wal-Mart can secure lower prices for the consumers they choose to do so for but, as I noted in my post above, this is a short-term gain only.

If they eliminate all the competition in their locality then prices will soon go back up again - the much vaunted 'free market' does not charge what is fair but what the market will bear i.e. where the maximal profit point is.

From the manufacturers side, the situation is untenable too. If their profits are driven out of existence by price fixing from a huge buyer such as Wal-Mart, then they go out of business.

"So what?", you may say.

If they go out of business then all the people who worked for them are now on welfare. Not only is that a cost to you in the form of taxation but it is also a cost to your national economy as those people are no longer productive.

If this happens often enough you end up with an economy that is solely predicated on service industries rather than manufacturing. This means that you have a weaker economy, the wealth creating potential of which is very limited as a service industry job produces far fewer external ancilliary or supply chain jobs. I used to have a chart of this 'model' about twenty odd years ago and the difference is staggering .

The long and the short of it is that if the consumer body does not work to prevent this then, in the end, everyone loses out. Even the shareholders of the corporate maw that created the problem in the first place lose out eventually, as if there's noone with any wealth to exploit then there's no profit.

Anyhow, if I go on much longer people will begin to fall asleep so I'll wrap up {"About time too, windbag!" shouts everyone :lol:}.

 

[tellner]

Sukerkin, I used to be an economist as well. I finally left the field when my wife said "You come home angry every day. Do something else." It was largely because the field had less to do with social sciences than religion. Believe the theory but treat the facts as pathological. The Sacred Market (laaaa!) is Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent and Omnipresent. The only thing that mere humans can do is bow to the Will of the Market. Anything else leads to damnation. Labor is, by definition, lazy and stupid. Capital is, by definition, wise and hard-working. Elaborate pseudo-mathematical models with thousands of linear equations but no theoretical depth - at least not since Samuelson. Severe physics-envy. No concept of contingencies. An assumption that people are rational (hah!). And so on. My adviser told me flat out "Your ideas are probably right, but don't write about them until you have tenure. Otherwise you'll never get a job in the field."

There was some good stuff, some useful analytical tools and a number of useful insights. But as "science"? If I'd turned in a paper done to economics standards to an engineering manager of physics professor it would have come back with a big red "What is wrong with you, Ellner? Are you on drugs?"

 

[Sukerkin]

I couldn't agree more.

"Rational Expectations Hypothesis" ...
"IS/LM Analyses" ...
"Consumption Functions" ...
"The 'As If' Assumption" ...

and my very favourite

"Ceterus Paribus" ...

All very structured, until you introduce the real world !

The grasp of mathematics I got from my degree has been very useful since, however, tho' much has slipped away such that I can no longer do linear regressions on the fly :lol:.

To be fair to the subject tho', there are certain 'common sense' elements that can be applied at the micro-economic level with a degree of success and some even at the macro economic level.

In the end tho' it is aking to putting up an umbrella and claiming you're controlling the weather .

 

[FearlessFreep]

As far as I'm concerned Wal Mart is sticking it to the manufacturers instead of the customers.

Until you realize that the manufacturers are made up of people, too.

If I, as a customer, shop WalMart simply because they are cheaper than everyone else and they are cheaper because of the pressure they put on the manufacturer and that pressure causese said manufacturer to have to move operations overseas and you happened to work for that company and you lose your job as a result, well...you can thank me for being such a wise consumer and WalMart for doing such a good job bringing me low prices

From The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market. "One of the things that limits or slows the growth of imports is the cost of establishing connections and networks," says Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist. "Wal-Mart is so big and so centralized that it can all at once hook Chinese and other suppliers into its digital system. So--wham!--you have a large switch to overseas sourcing in a period quicker than under the old rules of retailing."

Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their workers nothing.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs.

(emphasis mine)

 

[Sukerkin]

Needless to say, I concurr .

However, I fear that we've strayed far from the original topic of a somewhat mucky store to the grander topics of general economic theory and how laissez faire might've been fine in the Victorian era but is economic suicide now.

A new thread perchance?

 

[FearlessFreep]

D.

However, I fear that we've strayed far from the original topic of a somewhat mucky store to the grander topics of general economic theory and how laissez faire might've been fine in the Victorian era but is economic suicide now.

A new thread perchance?

Not gonna happen because a) the original post was more a statement then a discussion point so it's hard to keep it on topic and b) some subjects illicit an emotional response hat refuses to sat contained Wal-Mart is one of them.

 

[ArmorOfGod]

Bottom line, I can't find a place that is cheaper to buy groceries at. Miejers, Krogers, or Giant Eagle's prices are rediculous even with there special tracking cards they have.

I hate to break it to you, but Wal-Mart is tracking your spending habits even harder than those other companies, even without a tracking card.

Read this:

A week ahead of the storm's landfall, Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's chief information officer, pressed her staff to come up with forecasts based on what had happened when Hurricane Charley struck several weeks earlier. Backed by the trillions of bytes' worth of shopper history that is stored in Wal-Mart's computer network, she felt that the company could "start predicting what's going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen," as she put it

That is from this article: http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/walmart_knows.htm

Has anyone here read "1984" by George Orwell........?

 

[Sukerkin]

Has anyone here read "1984" by George Orwell........?

Or indeed the "Foundation series !

 

[FearlessFreep]

Or indeed the "Foundation series !

Hari Seldon FTW!!!!

 

[shesulsa]

I hate to break it to you, but Wal-Mart is tracking your spending habits even harder than those other companies, even without a tracking card.

Read this:


That is from this article: http://www.thepowerhour.com/news/walmart_knows.htm

Has anyone here read "1984" by George Orwell........?

Wow ... just ... wow ...

 

[Nobody]

The thing is not until this year do you hear the farmers of America beginning to complain about not being able to make it. Wal_Mart an certain other companies started going to other countries that don't value are system of quality control in food.


In China there is no contained method to stop people from making knock off products though there are a lot of crimes stopped doing this they don't stay in jail so we get thing well below standard.

Not to say anyone in America is sick from this just what you see in the new now days.

Wal-Mart seem to encourage this to the knock off product.PO

1984 by George Orwell is good.

 

[shesulsa]

The thing is not until this year do you hear the farmers of America beginning to complain about not being able to make it.

Huh?!?!? Ever hear of Farm Aid? or the 1987 Agricultural credit act?

 

[Nobody]

I forgot an the ones(farmers) i live near now say it is just plain impossible to make it as a farmer.

The thing that gets me a Chinese Wal-Mart is under a Union, but if one develops here they will fire the managers an slowly close the Wal-Mart or get the people who are in that union to be fired.


Now that you mention it i remember Shesulsa. As i try to find the 1987 Agricultural Credit Act to read!

 

[tellner]

A lot of that (the farmers' plight) started in the early 1980s (cf. Altered Harvest if you can find a copy). This was about the same time the Hatch Act was hijacked. The explicit goal of the Reagan Administration was to transform the USDA so as to, and I quote, "transfer Federal funds to the largest and most productive farmers". This is what gave us the ADM lysine scandal, subsidies specificall for corn syrup and a switch to giving the really huge ag-chem combines billions while imposing "the discipline of the Market" on the small farmer.

We made a choice to abandon food security in favor of subsidizing the international conglomerates. People are just starting to realize it and to see how bad a decision that was.

 

[Nobody]

Tellnor, i had totally forgot about that yea, that is what happened an than they started right after that trying to get the restriction lessened on the genetic food effects that has cause the contamination of natural areas like Canada had a thing were they had planted a form of grain had only one life cycle that actually infected even trees an other grass growth to.

You ever hear about where these companies tried to force people in India to plant only certain thing an that they would shut down an destroy there farms if they did not do as these companies said. Right now i can not remember the name of the company that did this.

Filthy Wal-Mart not that they did that just though i should stay near topic.

 

[tellner]

Nobody, it gets even worse.

Back in the '70s Pioneer Hi-Breed started selling corn with the Male Sterile Cytoplasm gene. It was the early version of the Terminator seeds of today. In short, the seeds are sterile. You can't save them and grow more. Back then there was a blight which darned near wiped out the US corn crop - it attacked the Male Sterile seeds. Fortunately, they found a wild variety of corn in Mexico which was resistant. The site where they found it is now a parking lot.

Things have changed. Back in the day farmers saved seeds and traded them. Now that's violating the "intellectual property" of the agro-chem companies. You don't actually buy seeds. You buy a license to grow them for one season. Anything else? They come after you with lawsuits and the police. It's bad here, worse in places like India. The whole point is to (and I quote) "Remove all surplus value from the farmer". In some places it's illegal to grow traditional varieties. The companies come in, find the traditional varieties, patent them (!!!!) and then sue or have prosecuted anyone who tries to keep using them.

This isn't wild-eyed conspiracy theory ********. This is absolutely above-board unapologetic and not even hidden plans to make all agriculture the property of a few multinationals and force everyone to do business on their terms or starve. It makes it hell to be a farmer or a consumer. And don't even get me started on the implications for food security and the potential for disaster.

 

[Sukerkin]

Tellner, what was the title of the documentary that information came form? I remember watching it a year or so ago and being shocked that the mega-corps could be allowed to get away with such outright ludicrous behaviour.

Was it "The Future of Food?".