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What's the deal with WalMart?


Jim Oaks

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2005 Jaguar XJ8
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Ford Ranger
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I was watching TV Christmas Eve and saw a commercial come on about how 70% of the stuff from Walmart comes from China and to check out http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/

I was just looking at the site and there's all kinds of issues there.

When I was a kid in the 70's and early 80's, KMart was the place to go to buy stuff at a reasonable price. Everything else my parents got from Sears. In the 90's WalMart too over. Most people live in rural areas where there isn't much to choose from. Around here we have Walmart and Kmart and Kmart never seems to have anything. If I travel from here to Tennessee it seems like there will be nothing and then a Walmart where people come from miles to shop at. Let's face it, you can get everything you would normally need practically from there when you shop. Food, clothing, gas, etc.

It seems Walmart really has sort of a monopoly over rural America. It also seems like there are groups out there that oppose Walmart. I always liked Walmart for their 1-stop shopping. Hell, they have a better meat department than my local grocery store.

Am I supporting a company that buys from the Chinese and underpays it's employees? Is Walmart bad for America? If so, where will I shop?

Is anything made in America anymore? This computer probably isn't. My Motorola cell phone's made in China.

I have found myself looking at things around the house wondering where it came from. It's bugging me so badly that I'm going to contact the manufacturers of the products I sell at TRS Fab & Off-Road and see where they come from.

I here people say nothing is made in America anymore. I think it's BS.

I think with our economy we're looking at the tags with the price instead of the tag where it was manufactured.

You know where you bought stuff the last time you went shopping, but do you know where it came from? Go look.
 
I here people say nothing is made in America anymore. I think it's BS.

nothing cheap is made in America anymore. labor costs are just so much more that its not feaseable for small companies to stay here if they want to succede.

as far as what i buy thats made in america, all of my tools are!:icon_hornsup:
 
Yeah, labor costs have something to do with it, though they've been running down U.S. labor quite a bit in the past couple of decades. I earn about 1/2 to 1/3 what my dad makes in the same trade. Feels like some of us are being used for an experiment, "how much will they put up with for how little?" Apparently they don't need autobody techs anymore, so I'm going back to school next year. I buy American if I can afford it and don't necessarily begrudge Wal-Mart shoppers.
 
I don't begrudge Walmart shoppers. I shop there all the time. I am curious though as to how much stuff I'm buying that's not from the US.

I was a union employee for 15 years. If it wasn't for the union, our working conditions would have really sucked. I do remember though over the years seeing employees strike large companies and the companies closing. Sometimes I wonder if it's a viscous cycle where we want to be paid more, so in exchange the cost of production goes up and then the cost of living goes up, and then the pay goes up because the cost of living went up......and then the cost of production goes up because pay went up......so on and so forth.
 
Most all of us want to stretch our dollar as far as we can; Wal-Mart recognizes this as paramount so they buy from Chinese suppliers because they are the cheapest. It's simple capitalism.

Many of us remember WM's "Bringing It Home To The USA" ad campaign from the '80s, where they touted their American suppliers. As the number of cheaper overseas (usually, but not always, Chinese) suppliers grew, the campaign was quietly phased out.

In the '80s the Chinese gov't sought to move away from their agrarian economy and into manufacturing. Towards that end, they subsidized construction of hundreds of thousands of factories making everything under the sun. The Chinese gov't carefully controls the value of the yuan, instead of letting it "float" at market value as other currencies do.

The Chinese saw what happened to the Japanese economy in the '40s. Struggling to recover from the devastation of WWII, they turned to making lots of low-cost,easily manufactured goods. People back then said "Made in Japan??" with the same disdain many now reserve for Chinese goods.

If these suppliers were located in Indonesia or India or Slovenia, WM would buy from them -- as long as they were cheapest.

US firms simply cannot compete on price when it comes to high-volume low-cost goods like these. The cost of doing business here is just too high, by comparison. But many of the products we buy for our Rangers are made in the US; these tend to be low-volume, specialized products -- lift kits, etc., etc. -- not something WM would bother to stock.

What puzzles me about these anti-WM groups is that WM has never forced one person to shop there or to work there. It's a matter of choice! Don't like WM's practices? Don't shop there, or work there.

As Jim says, "Sometimes I wonder if it's a viscous cycle where we want to be paid more, so in exchange the cost of production goes up and then the cost of living goes up, and then the pay goes up because the cost of living went up......and then the cost of production goes up because pay went up......so on and so forth."

Exactly. It's called the Wage-Price Spiral, and as you have seen it's really a shell game. They're just moving the money around, but at the end of the day you're not taking home any more money. This is where companies like WM saw their opportunity.

I don't know the answer. I feel that we need a certain amount of manufacturing in our economy, which would ideally be of the bigger-ticket items. Here in Alabama, Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai have all built factories recently and are churning out cars as fast as possible. Why? Because it's cheaper to build them here than to build them overseas and ship them here. American workers can compete with any workers in the world on equal footing. So it works both ways.
 
Whether or not Wal-Mart is good for America is certainly open to debate. Yes, they offer good at low prices, and they are convenient places to shop. However, when they move into new towns, they often shut down local businesses that have previously been successful. Wal-Mart has a bad reputation, due in part to the size of the corporation. I'd rather not shop there, and I know many people who absolutely refuse to, but sometimes I do.

I'm pretty sure Wal-Mart will someday rule the world. Many 'Supercenters' already have fast food restaurants, car care centers, optometrists, and some have banks. Eventually, the supercenters will become 'super-cities' and you'll never need to leave.
 
My dad and my Mrs. love wally world. They find excuses to go there. Me personally I can't stand the place. I hate the mass volume of people there on a daily basis, can't stand the retardedly long lines for the few checkouts open......well pretty much everything. The thing that kills me is the stuff brought into my house that is poor quality when I could have bought the same thing at the store down the street for $.50 more and 10x better quality. Last but least the thing that really chaps my butt is the Mrs. says she shops there to save money due to the prices but she buys all the other junk they have in reality spending twice as much.

Matt
 
"and you'll never need to leave." - Sunk

Just recently, WM kicked a woman out of one of their centers after she had been there for 72 hours. At least, I think that was how much time she was there.
Story link
 
Last but least the thing that really chaps my butt is the Mrs. says she shops there to save money due to the prices but she buys all the other junk they have in reality spending twice as much.

Matt

Exactly right. WM knows that each person who comes in will spend, according to their math, $80 per visit. People come in to get one thing but then...!
 
help change our oppressive tax code and make america the tax haven of the world!companies will spring up big time,investors will fall all over themselve to get a piece of the pie.and you and i can stop paying twice,once from our paycheck(income tax)and again when we buy something(corporate tax).when companies have a better playing field the jobs will be added and competition will help bring down prices and maybe someday more products will say"made in usa".oh,and makg you may flame me now.
 
and makg you may flame me now.

Yup, you're believing what you want to believe.

Like it or not, what you are advocating is a very large scale experiment based on a large set of wishful-thinking extrapolations. And the results of that experiment probably won't be even slightly palatable.

The assumptions of the flat-taxers have been tested several times, and they simply don't work in the real world. Look back at tax receipts, and you'll find that the claim that deficits go down when tax rates are lowered has never been realized despite large scale attempts.

And if you want to bring unnamed "university economists" into the discussion like you did last time around, you have to explain "stagspansion." 'Cause it's impossible if we believe Harvard.
 
it ain't the flat tax and and it wasn't just havard and you're still speaking in circles because you haven't popped open the book.people who do not have the facts cannot speak factually about the subject and the media has bourne that out.it really is laughable.the 2nd book is out in february,it's called fair tax,answering the critics.so we'll just half to agree to disagree on this one.but before you dismiss me as some kind of crackpot,realize that im just one of many hundreds of thousands of people who think it has got a shot.
 
Yes, I'm aware that it's not the specific flat tax proposal that Ross Perot put forward.

It is, however, based on the same assumptions, plus others.

YOU made some false claims about it, particularly that it was espoused by (unnamed) university professors, when in fact it was published by a US Congressperson. Not exactly an impartial party....

There are hundreds of thousands of people who believe in the Tooth Fairy. That doesn't make her real.
 
I wish I could remember the news story.......I saw on TV a few months ago where Walmart was in.......Japan I think.......and not doing well. Shoppers there apparently tend to spend more based on the product than the price and the Amercian ideas of Walmart aren't working out for them.

Our Walmart has:

Grocery
Tire center
Gas station
Eye glass center
Hair cutter
Subway Restuarant
Bank

I can do all my shopping, banking, get gas, eat and get a hair cut in one spot.

Walmart is all we really have to choose from. Kmart's went down hill. They do hurt the smaller businesses.

We have a chain of Sheetz gas stations (based in PA) popping up in north east Ohio that's killing small businesses as well. I've seen convenient stores and gas stations close because of Sheetz.
 
i probably did name the wrong university,i was speaking from memory and i've slept since then.i've had countless hours of this issue on a local radio show hosted by one of the authors and have heard all the arguments explained in great detail.i also know you don't believe in "economists"as they aren't "scientists".frankly i've kind of burned out on the same old questions about it,and of course argueing with you.so have it you way,but beware,it's coming.
 

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