Is Wal-Mart evil or bad for our economy?

[Labrocca]

I have been a long time hater of Wal-Mart.Â*Â*I hope this thread really picks up but I just wanted to get it started.Â*Â*

http://www.mises.org/story/2377

That's a nice read that is fair.

There is also a great documentary I saw years ago about the downfall of a town when a Wal-Mart moved in.

I personally refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and I try to pursuade others from shopping there as well.Â*Â*Normally I get odd looks though when the subject comes up.

Here is a nice story of Wal-Mart closing the only store to unionize.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0511-03.htm

McDonalds does the same thing and I refuse to eat there as well.

[Elrathin]

I personally refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and I try to pursuade others from shopping there as well. Normally I get odd looks though when the subject comes up.


I end up paying about $50 or more a month because I don't shop at Wal-Mart and I think it is well worth it personally.

[Drocket]

The article that you link to doesn't even get into what I consider the biggest problem with Walmart: what I consider the biggest issue is the degree to which Walmart is involved in the move of manufacturing jobs overseas. In terms of their activities as a retailer - or at least, what they did to grow into a large company - what they do is essentially honest (aside from their regular and repeated issues with illegal immigrant workers...): they lower prices by being efficient, and buying in bulk. Its something that hurts independent stores and smaller chains, but ultimately, that's pretty much just life.

The problem comes with how they've used their power as the largest retail chain in the world, by essentially bullying manufacturers into making their products overseas. Rubbermaid is the perfect example of this: Walmart went to Rubbermaid and told them that we'll pay you $X for your product. In order to meet this price, you're going to move your factories to China, or we're not going to sell your products anymore. Rubbermaid refused, Walmart stopped carrying all Rubbermaid products, and Rubbermaid quite nearly went out of business. Eventually Rubbermaid caved - they simply didn't have any choice - and so now Rubbermaid products are made in China and sold in Walmart. This isn't an isolated incident: this is how Walmart does business with its suppliers.

Walmart is simply too big. They're not a monopoly, but their power is close enough to one that it simply doesn't make much difference. When you actually start looking at the role Walmart has played in company after company, I think it becomes clear that Walmart, more than any other single force, has played a MASSIVE role in the loss of America's manufacturing base. This is a problem that's slowly destroying our country. Solving the problem isn't easy, though. Breaking up Walmart might be a good first step. It won't bring back jobs that have already been lost, but it will, at least, eliminate a massive force that continues to push our remaining jobs overseas.

[Labrocca]

The problem comes with how they've used their power as the largest retail chain in the world, by essentially bullying manufacturers into making their products overseas. Rubbermaid is the perfect example of this: Walmart went to Rubbermaid and told them that we'll pay you $X for your product. In order to meet this price, you're going to move your factories to China, or we're not going to sell your products anymore. Rubbermaid refused, Walmart stopped carrying all Rubbermaid products, and Rubbermaid quite nearly went out of business. Eventually Rubbermaid caved - they simply didn't have any choice - and so now Rubbermaid products are made in China and sold in Walmart. This isn't an isolated incident: this is how Walmart does business with its suppliers.

I wish more Americans would wake up to the bullying that Wal-Mart does. Wal-Mart should be broken up imho. The first step is to disallow them to be grocery stores and retail stores together. Another step is to allow unions within their ranks. Their union busting antics don't sit well with me. If workers want to unionize they should have that right. Firing union sympathizers isn't going to do them good in the eyes of the public.

[dgridley]

I agree.. I'm not a big proponent of unions but I do support the right to form or have a union.

These days because of all the laws in place protecting workers rights, unions aren't the necessity they were years ago.

I worked for a photo studio in NY where production was unionized and clerical and bosses weren't. The studio paid full medical for over 300 production workers and eventually had to ask the union to pay a portion when business started to decline because of competition from digital facilities. Well, the union refused and to make a long story short, the entire business had to close and more than just the union workers lost their jobs because of it. After awhile, the company was able to re-organize under a new name, out-sourced the production, and was able to hire back a small fraction of the clerical force but the place was never the same again. It went from having dozens of studios across the US to having just 5-6.

[DearS]

I Think in many ways Wal-Mart is just moving faster than others. Thats Business, if its legal but not fair, its not Wal-Marts resposibility to others.

I'm sure the economy works well naturally. Laws playing an important role, with them being the the fair scale, Wal-Mart is fair in the U.S. We all live with the same law, Wal-Mart took the oppurtinities afforded to them.

Wal-Mart's success in my opinion is a showing of how poor people around the world, can be a big part of the economy, as long of their is an imbalance with the poorer peoples, balancers will have businesss. Wal-Mart is balancing things quicker than anyone one on the market, currently.

A domestic only economy is impossible, always was.

Is Wal-Mart good or bad for the economy? No good or bad, the economy has no judgement, its works in all directions, for different reasons. What works for us? is the question.

[Buck Laser]

I'm glad Labrocca is bothered by Wal-Mart. Personally, I think Wal-Mart stands as a paradigm of just about all that's wrong with our country. As others have noted, when Wal-Mart moves into a community, it generally marks the end of locally-owned businesses and jobs. A friend of mine wrote a book more than 20 years ago, called How WalMart is Strip Mining America. The truth of his title becomes more evident to me each time I travel through rural areas--dead downtowns, and no businesses to be seen but Wal-Marts and junk food franchise restaurants.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that it costs more to buy from local merchants, as Elrathin points out. Even so, it's damned near impossible to buy many things that are American-made any more. I don't particularly blame Wal-Mart for that, because I think the real fault lies in our too-hasty acceptance of free trade as a Good Idea.

I will admit that when I first heard about the idea of free trade, and dropping trade barriers, it sounded good. Nobody really wants any more regulation than necessary. But that was before I found out that the only real benefits of free trade go to the owners, not the workers. To my surprise, I find myself becoming more nationalistic as I see not only manufacturing, but high tech jobs leaving the US. But I do not believe in the kind of isolationism that would build walls around America to cut us off from the rest of the world, either. It's evident to me that a very great many people are in the same boat with me, be they conservative or liberal, democrats or republicans.