Walmart: Yay or Nay?

[Myrtle]

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Myrtle,
FYP
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Their practices consistently exemplify their belief that the 'ends justifying the means' which is immoral.


Using profit as the ONLY metric (as they do) and then cloaking their motives with the palliative of 'a better price for you' is simplistic, and unfortunately in today's FCC endorsed "10 second attention span world" is very effective.


Their TV advertising is masterful, and plays to all of our good values, by acting like they care about their employees, their community, the environment as they continue to lie.


They nurture and foster our short-sighted greed, and desire to fit 'in' or keep up with the Jones so that most of us march like lemmings over the cliff into the sea....or drugged soldiers into invasion


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heh, I took a little extra liberty with that last line. meh.

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tyvm for what I consider a constructive edit.......

[Jakesta]

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Anders, don't forget that "underemployed" people are not counted in the United States totals of unemployed people. If they were included, that would make our rate about 8%

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What do you mean by "underemployed"?

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Good question.

Someone is considered underemployed when they are working a low-paying job that they are overqualified for. Example: Someone with an MBA is working as a cab driver. That's an extreme example, but I think you get the point.

We have a lot of this in the United States, and these people should be considered somewhat unemployed as well.

The federal government should at least keep a statistic on it.

[TStoneMBD]

dynasty, while i have to say that some comments in this thread have been a pissing match, the majority of this thread is very informative. i have learned alot by reading.

i really dont think this thread has become a farce. its a good debate but is on the brink of ending of course, as its reached 100 posts and the majority of political arguements have been stated.

[Jakesta]

This thread should not be even close to over. I am posing questions that I want answered.

[Myrtle]

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I don't consider any violations significant enough to detract from the massive overall positive economic impact Wal-Mart has had on the U.S. and the world.

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I'm trying to see the overall picture.

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I hear the later statement, but I'm having a hard time taking it seriously after reading the former.........

[gvibes]

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Gvibes- very true. Many corporations violate these laws.

But I can't think of another company in the United States that has violated these laws with a higher frequency than Wal-Mart in the past 10 years.

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They are bigger. Of course they will violate more (at least as far as labor violations go). I would guess that the agriculture industry is by far the greatest violator of immigration laws in this country, and Wal-Mart's environmental violations are extremely minor.

[shadow29]

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I don't consider any violations significant enough to detract from the massive overall positive economic impact Wal-Mart has had on the U.S. and the world.

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I'm trying to see the overall picture.

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I hear the later statement, but I'm having a hard time taking it seriously after reading the former.........

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I don't see how you could not take it seriously. The employment violations WalMart has made are deplorable, but in the larger picture, the good that WalMart has done for both the US economy and the US consumer (alhtough the two are intrinsically linked) outweighs the violations. The violations, while bad, are still relatively minor in comparison to what WalMart has done in a positive regard for the economy.

[wacki]

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The issue is Walmart and it's business practices.

Where do you stnad on this issue?

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I love Wal-Mart.

I want to give Wal-Mart a big American hug while draped in the Stars & Stripes and holding a sparkler in one hand.

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[Dynasty]

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The issue is Walmart and it's business practices.

Where do you stnad on this issue?

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I love Wal-Mart.

I want to give Wal-Mart a big American hug while draped in the Stars & Stripes and holding a sparkler in one hand.

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I've been waiting to use this one but just never seemed to find an opportunity since I downloaded it.



Yours might be better. But, mine is cuter.

[Cornell Fiji]

OK, so from what I've gathered the arguments against Wal-Mart are that:

1) It has an unfair advantage because of economies of scale.

2) It intimidates suppliers

3) It forces suppliers to outsource

4) It breaks/bypasses laws that protect workers

5) It is antiunion

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I will address these issues two at a time. After these posts I will try to counter any subsequent anti Wal-Mart posts that provide a coherent argument or any posts that logically contest anything that I write here.

1) It has an unfair advantage because of economies of scale.


There is no way that this should be held against them. Yes, the fact that they are so massive means that their margins need to be much smaller than margins of other retailers. I find this to be a testament to their greatness. This is not a case of either vertical or horizontal integration. This is just a retail giant that is so big that it is able to accept minimum profits on each item sold because of the sheer volume of items that get sold in their stores. Wal-Mart is such an enormous entity because of these economies of scale. It is truly a chicken and the egg thing. Wal-Mart is huge so it can accept smaller profits on each item sold. Smaller profits mean lower prices which mean more sales which mean lower prices...

Of course it would be hard for another retailer to start up and provide the "Everyday low prices" that Wal-Mart does because they would not be able to amass the volume of goods sold per day that Wal-Mart does. There are barriers to entry in the retail segment just as there are in the aerospace segment, the auto segment, and education. The barriers in retail are actually smaller than most industries because you can operate at the inefficient level that some of Wal-Mart's competitors operate at and still get by.

Wal-Mart's sheer size does give them a great competitive advantage. To fault them for this however would be faulting them for their success as a business leader and therefore is quite absurd.


2)It intimidates suppliers

I don't know which anti Wal-Mart argument I find more absurd, this one or the one that says that they should allow unions to make them inefficient and drag them down to the rest of the industry. But I am getting ahead of myself...

Wal-Mart sold $255,500,000,000 worth of goods last year. I love the example of Dial in the article that was linked to earlier in the thread [ QUOTE ]
Dial Corp., for example, does 28% of its business with Wal-Mart. If Dial lost that one account, it would have to double its sales to its next nine customers just to stay even.

[/ QUOTE ] When you provide more than a quarter of your vendor's business then you do have the power to strong arm that vendor. What makes this free market economy great is that if you don't want to deal with Wal-Mart's abusive tactics then you don't have to put your products in their stores. Companies that are strong armed by Wal-Mart choose to be strong armed by Wal-Mart (it IS a tough decision) there is not a company in the nation that does not know what it is getting into when it signs that Wal-Mart contract. And when they do so, they are giving up their right to bitch about what a bad deal they are getting.

The article linked to earlier in this thread had some great quotes about the pressures that Wal-Mart puts on its vendors.

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By now, it is accepted wisdom that Wal-Mart makes the companies it does business with more efficient and focused, leaner and faster. Wal-Mart itself is known for continuous improvement in its ability to handle, move, and track merchandise. It expects the same of its suppliers. But the ability to operate at peak efficiency only gets you in the door at Wal-Mart. The public image Wal-Mart projects may be as cheery as its yellow smiley-face mascot, but there is nothing genial about the process by which Wal-Mart gets its suppliers to provide tires and contact lenses, guns and underarm deodorant at every day low prices. Wal-Mart is legendary for forcing its suppliers to redesign everything from their packaging to their computer systems. It is also legendary for quite straightforwardly telling them what it will pay for their goods.

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Vendors are also forced to take less profit. However nowhere is it written that companies have a right for profitability. Actually, basic economic theory says otherwise. Wal-Mart absolutely intimidates its suppliers and makes them cut their costs. What amazes me is the feeling of entitlement that these vendors have. For many years the Wal-Mart vendors were operating inefficiently and still sucking in big profits for their companies. When Wal-Mart demanded lower prices than what the current prices of production were for these vendors they were forced to become more efficient or be taken off the shelves. When you are fighting to keep a contract that represents 1/4 of your business it is amazing the leaks that you will find in your production process. Production in all segments of the marketplace has been streamlined so that vendors can still profit at the prices that Wal-Mart demands, I have seen the number 9%. I do not know the studies that produced the number but industrial America has become 9% more efficient because of the price pressures that Wal-Mart has placed on its vendors. I find that to be great for the country.

An example of how Wal-Mart forced its vendors to become more disciplined can also be found in that article:
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"Everyone from the forklift driver on up to me, the CEO, knew we had to deliver [to Wal-Mart] on time. Not 10 minutes late. And not 45 minutes early, either," says Robin Prever, who was CEO of Saratoga Beverage Group from 1992 to 2000, and made private-label water sold at Wal-Mart. "The message came through clearly: You have this 30-second delivery window. Either you're there, or you're out. With a customer like that, it changes your organization. For the better. It wakes everybody up. And all our customers benefited. We changed our whole approach to doing business."

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Wow, a company had to streamline their process because Wal-Mart strong armed them. Absolutely objectionable...