The retailer is banning newspapers that are critical of the corporation… you have to wonder what other kind of stories have been squashed out of fear of this kind of reprisal.
Unlike many of the company’s critics, I’ve shopped at Wal-Mart and on occasion found what I needed at a good price. But in the era after Sam Walton’s death and the company’s growth into an international juggernaut I believe the worm has truly turned. Wal-Mart is a company that trades on its All-America image to trample on American consumers and workers — and the excuse that such behavior is the price of doing business just does not match up with the evidence at hand.
I’m not going to get into the whole “I love Walmart/I hate Walmart” thing, but I will say that these attacks on Walmart with regard to employees having to take advantage of state health care benefits and how much it “costs” taxpayers are complete BS.
The same goes for the goofy law they passed in Maryland which forces companies like Wal-Mart to pony up cash because of the perceived notion that their stores are costing taxpayers money and why? Because they don’t provide enough benefits to prevent state residents from having to use government services.
These arguments would be valid IF and only IF the state could determine that the emplyees in question would earn more money and be paid better benefits were Wal-Mart not around and there is no evidence of that at all. In fact, I would argue that Wal-Mart saves taxpayers money because without that job, the Wal-Mart employee might have to use more government services.
On the surface, you appear to make a case, Jay C. Underneath, however, your contempt and obvious “I have mine, screw you” attitude reeks of the stench of the offal from whatever angry white supremecyst site you pulled it from.
Following your argument it becomes “hard work = guaranteed success” that so many right wingers drag out whenever talking about social programs. Its a summation of the belief that a purely capitalist society can be successful, that corporations will see the benefit of caring for its communities and everyone will stand around the campfire and sing wonderful songs about the USA. The problem? In practice it tends to lead to corruption, luck and “who ya know” success and has nothing to do with hard work.
Wal-mart is a destructive force in the US, from buying from supplies for less than an item is worth to hiring people too hard up to offer any complaint when its practices are less than honorable.
I suppose you believe that allowing workers to only work 38 hours a week is ok? Oh wait, thats just that liberal media lying again, right?
God I hate Republicans. Thank you for firing me up again, putz.
I would argue that Wal-Mart saves taxpayers money because without that job,
Typical, uniformed bullshit. You really have no idea that the reason Wal-Mart is reviled has nothing to do with Costco, do you?
Typical, uniformed bullshit. You really have no idea that the reason Wal-Mart is reviled has nothing to do with Costco, do you?
WTF does any of this have to do with Costco? And I could care less about Wal-Mart being reviled. I made the point that these complaints about how much money WalMart supposedly costs taxpayers are nonsense. And I have yet to see anybody prove otherwise.
Underneath, however, your contempt and obvious I have mine, screw you attitude reeks of the stench of the offal from whatever angry white supremecyst site you pulled it from.
First of all moron, if I was a white supremacist, I wouldn’t be posting comments on a weblog hosted by a black man. So we’ll just chalk up that comment to your obvious stupidity.
The rest of your comment is a tirade against this supposed ‘argument’ that I never even brought up. I merely said that it is bogus to assert that Walmart is responsible for people having to use public assistance. This not about whether they pay their employees enough, or how many hours they make them work. It’s about whether or not employees of Walmart would still be using public assistance were Walmart not exist.
Try and grab your knee which apparently jerked pretty far away from your body.
Dumbass.
Okay, let’s not waste time:
I made the point that these complaints about how much money WalMart supposedly costs taxpayers are nonsense. And I have yet to see anybody prove otherwise.
You have yet to look.
Wal-Mart stands out on rolls of PeachCare
(Story about children of Wal-Mart employees on state healthcare rolls in GA)
REPUBLICAN LEGISLATOR BLAMES WAL-MART FOR RISING HEALTH CARE COSTS
(This one speaks for itself)
Wal-Mart Employees’s Children Depend on State for Health Care
WTF does any of this have to do with Costco?
Again, pay attention:
Wal-Mart should aim higher on employee pay, benefits
Costco vs. Wal-Mart: Scoring the latest rounds
Wal-Mart is working on an unsustainable business model that relies on driving everything to the bottom. They do everything they can to force suppliers to sell for cheaper, which drives down prices and wages. They also chisel every dime they can from their employees, which means their employees have less purchasing power even to buy the cheaper goods. The health care issue is significant– especially combined with the low wages– because it means that local taxpayers must shoulder the burden of Wal-Mart’s vampirical profiteering.
The Costco model, while not perfect, at least recognizes that happier, better-compensated employees can provide a stable, motivated workforce that will, in turn, be more attractive to savvier consumers. It is no surprise that the short-sighted vultures of Wall Street don’t like Costco. “Happy workers? Those f–king commies!!”
The relevance of mentioning Costco is your implication that Wal-Mart is at worst a necessary evil. (I would argue that Wal-Mart saves taxpayers money because without that job, the Wal-Mart employee might have to use more government services.) Nothing could be further from the truth. Wal-Mart helps to create the economic conditions off which it feeds. Again, this kind of ‘growth’ isn’t sustainable. Costco proves that there is an existing, sustainable model that is also a proven success.
On Wal Mart, you guys don’t get it. Wal Mart or any business is not there to provide health care or the highest possible wages. They are a business, a very successful business. They offer a certain type of job to the public. NOBODY, NOBODY makes people take a job at Wal-Mart or any other place. they do it voluntarily. And to my knowledge, Wal-Mart has not lied to their employees. The working and cosuming public has VOLUNTARILY rewarded this philosophy.
The real question is, if Wal-Mart is so wrong, why not open up your own business and beat Wal-Mart yourself. Have your billionaire bud Soros do it. If its so easy, why doesn’t someone else do it? K-Mart has esssentially failed trying to do the same thing. Free country.
Dugger
Your argument became “they should just be happy they have jobs” stemming from “In fact, I would argue that Wal-Mart saves taxpayers money because without that job, the Wal-Mart employee might have to use more government services.”
So the fact that almost no Walmart worker has health insurance, isn’t allowed to work over 38 hours and is usually underpaid is a GOOD thing because at least they arn’t on the streets….
Oh please. When Wal-Mart rumbles into a small town, plops its fat ass on top of every local business it drives the average wages into the ground, the entire community is damaged, and eventually its not worth it for Wal-Mart to operate there anymore, so it picks its bloated hiney up again and leaves behind a mass amount of wreckage. Capitalism at its best, baby!
Wal-mart, through its sheer size, exercises near-monopolistic power.
It is capable of underpricing and driving out of business locally-owned merchants in small markets coast to coast. Through its buying power, it can force an American manufacturer to choose between slashing costs or surrendering to a Chinese state-run operation.
In short, Wal-mart has achieved the ability to skew the free market in its own favor.
Being profitable isn’t necessarily good for the community. Other companies, such as Costco, provide their employees with exceptional benefits, they offer excellent pricing on bulk items and they continue to return decent profit. People WANT to work for Costco, but when there are no jobs, people are forced to take that which is left, Wal-Mart.
How can you explain how people continue to work for them when their wages are the lowest in an area (typically), they provide little to no benefits and the job itself has little to no reward? Its their last option, plain and simple.
Quaker,
But overall, Wal-Mart is making money - so they can’t be underpricing very much. And yes they are big, very big, but that could be because they are good at what they do and, most importantly, because the public supports them. Nevertheless, I am a little uncomfortable with the leverage they are showing in the grocery business, Smaller chains, like Winn Dixie down here, are being forced out and we are down now to just a few competing grocery chains. I don’t know the answer. Seems unfair to penalize Wal-Mart for being good or for rewarding the Winn Dixies of the world for being inefficient. Oh well - I don’t know…..
Dugger, yet “I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical”
Mr. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was also very big for the same reason. However, there is a point at which a company gains the ability to control markets to its own advantage.
That’s bad. Or at least, that’s what we used to think in this country.
Binky,
I agree Costco is a good employer. They actually show capitalism can work well. But again, Wal-Mart forces no one to work there. The country stops no one from supplanting Wal-Mart with a theoretical better product and with higher wages etc. Why don’t investors just jump at the chance, if its doable? People love to make money. If I thought Progressive Mart or The People’s Liberation Mart would make me big bucks, I’d invest my $1.95 in it. Of course, its not easy to do what Wal-Mart does and maybe those on the outside who can’t do what Wal-mart does, can’t offer a better alternative.
Quaker, So would you bust up Wal-Mart? Not a polemical question, just curious.
Dugger
When Wal-Mart removes its international purchasing office from China, where political dissidents manufacture goods, then we’ll talk about fair, Duggy.
Wal-mart has a link into the manufacturers and suppliers and they’ve monopolized on those, not allowing those suppliers (according to a lot of rumor) to work with any direct competitors. During the dot-com bust, suppliers depended on wal-mart to stay afloat, and now they’ve sold their soul and can’t get it back.
I dunno. I haven’t done much reading on the current state of antitrust law, so I don’t know if there’s any standing for the government to do so.
On the other hand, Wal-Mart is now in a position to dictate terms to its suppliers. The supplier complies or goes out of business. That doesn’t seem like a “free market” to me.
Off the top of my head, I’d probably start with an investigation of whether Wal-Mart is demanding and receiving preferential pricing from suppliers that isn’t available to competitors. And by “preferential,” I’m not talking about volume discount. I’m talking about a “Wal-Mart only” price.
You have yet to look.
Wal-Mart stands out on rolls of PeachCare
(Story about children of Wal-Mart employees on state healthcare rolls in GA)
REPUBLICAN LEGISLATOR BLAMES WAL-MART FOR RISING HEALTH CARE COSTS
(This one speaks for itself)
This proves nothing. It’s more accusations, backed up by ZERO evidence. Like I said, I want to see evidence that were Walmart not employing these people, they would:
A. Be making more money
B. Have better benefits that would keep them off state health care programs
Where is the evidence?
My comments had nothing to do with Costco and their business model. It’s completely irrelevant to what I was saying.
Your argument became they should just be happy they have jobs stemming from In fact, I would argue that Wal-Mart saves taxpayers money because without that job, the Wal-Mart employee might have to use more government services.
Oh please. My comments implied nothing of the sort. I am not defending WalMart and their business practices. What I am defending them against, are the idiotic politicians and people who somehow reached the absurd conclusion that WalMart is a drain on taxpayer dollars. It’s quite simply a nutty argument.
So the fact that almost no Walmart worker has health insurance, isn t allowed to work over 38 hours and is usually underpaid is a GOOD thing because at least they arn t on the streets& .
You need to learn to read for content. Again, my comments about Walmart had nothing to do with the working conditions, benefits or pay scale their employees work under. You keep missing the point, so try and stay with me. My comments were a simply a rebuttal to those who, again, are making the claim that taxpayers are somehow being forced to pick up health care costs of Walmart employees.
Again, as I said above, the implication is that if they did NOT work for Walmart, they be making the wages and getting benefits that would not necessitate their entry into a state health care program. I want to see the evidence of this.
When Wal-Mart rumbles into a small town, plops its fat ass on top of every local business it drives the average wages into the ground
Again, I want to see evidence. You’re actually making the claim that these little mom and pop stores are paying better wages than Walmart and providing them with better benefits. You’d have to show that in order for your claim that they drive down average wages to be accurate.
“A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state’s health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers. A North Carolina hospital found that 31 percent of 1,900 patients who described themselves as Wal-Mart employees were on Medicaid, while an additional 16 percent had no insurance at all.”
“And backers of a measure that will be on California’s ballot tomorrow, which would force big employers like Wal-Mart to either provide affordable health insurance to their workers or pay into a state insurance pool, say Wal-Mart employees without company insurance are costing California’s state health care programs an estimated $32 million a year.”
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshops/2665.html
I’ll be waiting for that apology, but I’m assuming you’ll come up with some other excuse.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3045walmart_iowa.html
Quaker,
I don’t either. I don’t want an investigation. As I said, I’m uncomfortable with their easy sashay into the grocery business and the impact thats had. And I would worry if we didn’t have a few other major discount chain comeptitors. As you said, need to know more, but I might consider some restrictions on their ability to expand into other fields. Still, I’m always uncomfortable with punishing excellence.
Dugger
A survey by Georgia officials found that more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state s health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers.
Where is the evidence that these people would not cost taxpayers a single dime were they not working at Walmart.
I’m going to apologize for anything because you haven’t PROVEN a thing. I’ll break it down for you so you’ll understand.
Let’s say that Mary Schmoe works at the Walmart Anytown, Georgia. Because of the low wages and meager benefits, she is forced to have her children be in Georgia’s state health care program. Ok? That’s settled.
The accusation is, that because Walmart doesn’t pay her enough and because they don’t have good benefits, her having to enroll her kids in the state health care system is essentially the same thing as the state subsidizing health care for Walmart employees. Agreed? Good.
Now, let’s say for whatever reason, that WalMart never existed in Anytown, GA. In order for these accusations to have merit, Mary Schmoe would have had to have been earning more money somewhere else that also supplied her with the kind of benefits that would keep her from having to enroll her children in the state health care program.
It’s that simple. In order for somebody to prove that Walmart is costing the state money, they have to provide some evidence that things would be better were Walmart not around.
I undestand that people are pushing Walmart to pay better wages and better benefits. That’s fine. Push all you want. I would go so far as to say that I agree that with the kind of money Wal-Mart makes it could easily provide better wages and benefits. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is whether or not they are “costing” the taxpayers anything and I say they aren’t.
You’ve basically created an impossible question so you don’t have to face the facts that are there in the articles I supplied.
Its the same way with evolution - if you didn’t see it happen, you won’t believe it. You’d demand to see the missing link and a dinosaur or they just didn’t happen..
Ah, pointless debate. its so fun.
Who wants that? If Wal-Mart runs a good operation, I’m all for that. As a former retailer, I know how hard that is. If Wal-Mart offers customers more choices, that’s fine.
What I’m talking about is a company that uses its size to constrain the choices of manufacturers, of employees, and eventually, of customers. If Wal-Mart coerces manufacturers into giving the company exclusive pricing, that could be both unfair and illegal.
Is there proof that Wal-Mart does that? Not that I know of. But the company’s power over small to medium sized manufacturers provides the opportunity for abuse.
You ve basically created an impossible question so you don t have to face the facts that are there in the articles I supplied.
It’s not impossible. States and localities every day conduct studies that determine if something is cost effective or if it’s a drain on resources.
what would those employees be doing if they weren t working for Wal-Mart?Who knows! They might work for Ma and Pa-Mart. They might move out of state. They might just sit there in the red Georgia clay and pick their banjos. If they did, it wouldn t be any worse for the taxpayers of Georgia. They d get the same benefits that Wal-mart gives em.
Quaker, the politicians cannot claim that Walmart is a drain on taxpayers when they cannot show that things would be better without Walmart.
Besides, the research CAN be done so it’s convuluted as you claim. All one has to do is examine the records of those on public assistance and employed by Walmart. Were they on public assistance before the Walmart in their area opened? If so, what kind of benefits did they receive? Were they employed? If so, what was their pay? What kind of benefits did their employer offer?
The information is there. And if the proof is in the proverbial pudding, by all means, they should use it any way they can.
By I’m sure the proof is not there and this is just a way, through political rhetoric and class warfare, of basically extorting money from Walmart to kick into the government trough.
Jay, why substitute an opportunity cost for a real dollars-and-cents cost? The state of Georgia pays out $x for the state health care program. The beneficiaries of the program include Wal-mart employees. That’s a real cost.
Instead of recognizing this, you’d impose a convoluted standard of proof that requires us to know a hypothetical: what would those employees be doing if they weren’t working for Wal-Mart?Who knows! They might work for Ma and Pa-Mart. They might move out of state. They might just sit there in the red Georgia clay and pick their banjos. If they did, it wouldn’t be any worse for the taxpayers of Georgia. They’d get the same benefits that Wal-mart gives ‘em.
Nonsense. Politicians make a living doing exactly that. Welfare? Drain on taxpayers. We’d be better off if we cut the deadbeats off cold. Tax rates? Drain on the taxpayers. Why we’d have even more revenue if we just drop that top rate a few percentage points. School funding? Drain on the taxpayers. Those public schools would shape right up if we gave people vouchers to spend wherever they want.
You’re sure? Then you have a much clearer insight on where those Wal-Mart employees would be without Wal-Mart than any of the rest of us. Share, why doncha?
Here’s what those class warriors at Business Week reported a couple of years ago. (It’s a pdf file. It seems to be customary to warn people of that.)
Nonsense. Politicians make a living doing exactly that. Welfare? Drain on taxpayers. We d be better off if we cut the deadbeats off cold. Tax rates? Drain on the taxpayers. Why we d have even more revenue if we just drop that top rate a few percentage points. School funding? Drain on the taxpayers. Those public schools would shape right up if we gave people vouchers to spend wherever they want.
These are totally irrelevant comments. One of the people calling for WalMart to cough up dough is a Republican, so this isn’t a partisan issue. I said politician, because that’s what I meant - politician.
Here s what those class warriors at Business Week reported a couple of years ago.
And has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Wal-Mart’s effect on competition, consumers, etc. is a different conversation.
You re sure? Then you have a much clearer insight on where those Wal-Mart employees would be without Wal-Mart than any of the rest of us. Share, why doncha?
No, I just said that if these politicians were to do some homework, I am guessing that they wouldn’t be able to make the same claims were they to actually look into it. Grandstanding is what politicians do best.
Wow. Screwed that up.
No matter.
I didn’t raise a partisan argument either. You said politicians can’t claim what they can’t prove. In fact, they do it all the time. The practice isn’t unique to this issue.
Right here is a study that says the families of Wal-Mart employees use 40 percent more in government services than the average of families of all large retailers.
Now without working our way down to the level of studying each individual case, couldn’t we guess that people working in retail at Wal-Mart would be likely to work for another retailer if Wal-Mart wasn’t around?
And has nothing to do with what I am talking about. Wal-Mart s effect on competition, consumers, etc. is a different conversation.
If you say so. However, the article makes a pretty good case that the effect on competition is inextricable from the effect on employees. For example, the article cites a study that estimates Wal-Mart closed more than 7,000 businesses between 1983 and 1993–in Iowa alone.
Hunh. I coulda sworn you said you were sure. My apologies.