Posted on 08/26/2005 8:34:52 AM PDT by Isara
Wal-Mart (WMT) is the favorite whipping boy of labor unions and leftists who blame the retail giant for everything from low wages to a lack of health insurance. But don't tell the people of Oakland, Calif.
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...Wal-Mart workers and customers see things differently. Take those at the new store in Oakland. Built on a once-empty field, it has brought 350 jobs averaging $10.82 an hour to a heavily minority area. It'll also bring in a half-million badly needed tax dollars.
And how many people applied for those 350 jobs? 11,000. No, we didn't accidentally add a zero. That's 31 applicants for each new position.
....
.... The 25-year-old single mom with a 2-year old child at home landed one of the Oakland positions. "It's this job or no job," she said. "I make a lot more here than I do watching TV and soap operas and stuff."
...Wal-Mart Stores Inc. now employs more than one of every 100 American workers and accounts for about 2.4% of U.S. GDP. For those with little education or training, Wal-Mart throws a lifeline to the world's most dynamic economy.
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...Wal-Mart, which at the time had a 48% productivity advantage over its competitors, forced others to get better or go under. Most got better — a lot better — to keep up.
....A study by University of Missouri economist Emek Basker found Wal-Mart's entry into a market increases jobs by 100 immediately and by a net 50 jobs in the long run. A job-creator, in other words, not a job-killer.
Still other research shows how Wal-Mart passes the benefits of its extraordinary productivity onto consumers. Harvard business professor Pankaj Ghemawat reckons Wal-Mart helps push prices down 5% to 8% in markets it enters, saving customers $16 billion a year. But, because competitors have to match its prices, overall savings are even greater.
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(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
How strange that a company that's had such a beneficial impact would be so demonized. And how reminiscent of the disinformation campaigns in the old USSR.
The fact is, Wal-Mart by itself is responsible for much of the improvement in America's standard of living.
This is why such jobs are essential for the economy. No skills, undereducated, they are not going to get $50K a year. Opportunities that otherwise DO NOT EXIST for these people.
Ya think?
The left will DEMONIZE ANYTHING...just to be able to print crap in thier complicity MSM. They truly represent the low-lifes of our society.
Name me a time and place that leftists didn't demonize anyone who actually had a beneficial impact on society.
What's the figure? 1,000,000,000??? additional people living in freedom because of Ronald Reagan?
50,000,000 (so far) because of W.
The number of communist contries has dropped from over 100 to single digits since Reagan.
When Wal-Mart moves in, its like everybody getting a raise. The marginally efficient Mom and Pop stores may go out of business, but they are replaced by specialty stores that don't carry commodity-type goods that become viable because the local customers now have more discretionary income as opposed to money they spend on necessities.
Wal-Mart is very good at moving people up the ladder of success. They are very stingy at first, but long-term employees make out like bandits.
Labor = overhead. If union operations want to compete with Southwest and WM, they need to think about something other than price competition. The unions kill prices and eat up companies with benefit demands (see GM, a benefits company that also makes cars).
WM also got ahead of everyone with computer-based logistics. Fast moving and easily tracked supplies lower costs. All the complaints about WM could be said of Target and the others.
Think about that for a minute ...
Some are just plain ignorant. Others need to blame someone (mostly those who are successful) for their unhappy personal situation and still others do it to promote their political agenda (unions).
If the libs had their way, the unskilled, undereducated would make $50K per year via a unionized, gov't-owned Wal-Mart!
Let the unions boycott Walmart. It won't be very effective since their attempts at forced groupthink won't keep intelligent spouses from shopping there. And shopping in an environment with less thugs is always a plus.
I do not demonize nor idolize Wal-Mart. They have good and bad points. A lot of people here get very emotional about WM and I don't know why. They can pay some workers more but they also hire some people that I would not hire on a bet. It all evens out. If a person needs a job badly, WM will hire you and that's a good thing.
I agree.
WM is killing Safeway and other ordinary grocery stores in Phoenix. But Sprouts is doing well and expanding as a high end, health food conscious store. We got to WM for most basics and Sprouts for special items and supplements.
People prefer a large store with most of their items at reduced prices. WM is a late-comer. Too bad the others didn't see this developing.
"If union operations want to compete with Southwest and WM, they need to think about something other than price competition."
About ten years ago, there was a proposal in one of the trade unions in the Midwest to unionize employers by providing a one-stop shop for employee benefits, training and certification, and specialized skills on demand. Yes, employees would benefit from higher wages, but the idea was to also make the union attractive to the employer.
The idea died an ugly death because union leadership just could not change their mindset from "union vs. employer" to "unions providing valuable services to both employees and employers."
Too bad the Buchanan/Tancredo crowd doesn't share that attitude.
NOTE to all single women: Avoid any man who whines about illegal aliens stealing American jobs. He will just use it as an excuse not to keep a job.
Unions are increasingly irrelevant in America. We have President Reagan to thank for that. The Patco strike - a great moment in facing down obnoxious union bosses.
boy, you just have to work an illegal alien based "bash" in on every thread, don't you?
Note to all single women: Avoid any many who confuses opposition to ILLEGAL immigration with oppossing ALL immigration. Such a man can not hold a logical thought in his head.
You're applying false 0 sum math. There's no reason why those 350 people had to be employed anywhere until the WalMart opened, most of them were probably unemployed. Now it is possible that without WalMart other area retailers would have expanded and eventually employed some or all of those 350, but there's no garauntee of that. And there's also no garauntee that the existence of WalMart will cause other businesses to shrink at a cost of 250 jobs, if other businesses weren't providing the products people wanted at the prices they wanted to pay like WalMart then they more than likely simply weren't making the sales (other than the staples if people can't find what they want at a price they want they generally simply don't buy, especially since we all know that eventually almost everything comes down in price).
Do you consider yourself an authority on picking up men? ;-)
" We Buy Chicom stuff, not American!"
The "war against Walmart" is most likely based on the fact that they refuse to Unionize, alienating a large segment of Dems. The fact that Unionizing would result in several job losses due to higher costs doesn't seem to matter if you're a Dem. To them, that is what welfare is for.
But absolute growth exists most of the time (even in down economies we tend to add wealth to the system), thus it is almost never truly a zero sum game.
I do believe in Adam Smith which is why I know that's not the case. Marx is the big worshipper of zero sum math and the assumption that adding jobs here does nothing more than cost jobs elsewhere. Smith understood that the basic building blocks of our economy (mining, farming, other raw resouce harvesting, and then all of the steps that turn those raw materials into finished goods) constantly cause absolute growth which means you can add jobs here and never lose jobs anywhere. People indeed DO sit around wanting things but not buying them because the things they want are not at a price they are willing to/ can afford to pay, that's why so many things come down in price as they get older and why discount retailers exist. If you want CD X that just came out but are unwilling to/ unable to afford the price of brand new CDs you wait and look, eventually it will either come down in price across the board or it will be available at a discount retailer for less than. That's how price barriers work, and Smith explained that too.
In 2002 Wal-Mart bought $12 billion in merchandise from China. China has a about a $7 trillion economy. Do the math.
The real story cheap products from China are providing millions of jobs for Americans and saving American consumers billions over higher priced goods from other countries.
NOTE to all single women: Avoid any man who exibits obsessive/compulsive tendancies by continually whining about Pat Buchanan even though Buchanan only received a tiny percentage of the votes the last time he ran for public office.
Man I wish they'd hire some of those workers for our Walmart. I was in yesterday and when I went to check out, exactly 7 of about 40 registers were open. The shortest line was a 15 minute wait. I would have walked out but I had already done the shopping and needed the stuff I had.
This is one of the reasons I rarely go to Walmart.
Hmmm! The Safeway over in Mesa has been doing well. Especially since they now have the delivery service.
We are waiting for a SmallMart to open near us.
That depends upon your view of beneficial. A lot of Freepers analyize WM in terms of micro economics -- that is, how WM effects them and their specific community -- rather than from a macro economic viewpoint -- that is, WM's impact upon the global economy, which is often less obvious.
My dislike for WM has nothing to do with wages, benefits, working conditions, the layout of the stores, the quality of the goods, or the kind of people who shop there. I despise WM because I don't believe that taxpayers should be subsidizing ANY multi-billion dollar business, which is what happens everytime local government gives WM a real property tax abatement or uses the power of eminant domain to aquire public property for WM's use. I also object to any business that engages in predatory pricing or uses its commanding market share to essentially squeeze its suppliers into moving overseas and/or out of business. My third objection has to do with economic diversity. Anyone who knows anything about investing understands the importance of a diversified investment portfolio. If a person invests all of their money in the stock of one company and that company crashes, then the person's portfolio is going to crash also because of the lack of investment diversity. Economic diversity works the same way. If one company controls something like 40% of the retail market, and that company crashes, then communities that have "invested" all of their resources with that company will crash with it, and that's not good for any economy.
That is what we're looking at here. People complain about WalMart because they're on top of the heap and have a high profile. No one has ever substantively established that there's a major loss of small retailers when WalMart comes to town, sure there's some but small business close regularly and new competition the most common final straw. There also tends to be a revitalization of businesses in the area as Walmart brings more business traffic into the area, some businesses even seem to attach themselves rather parasitically to WalMart (in AZ and NM go find yourself a WalMart that is in a multi-business structure, which is usually not a Super or Big Wally but just a regular one, you've got a better than even chance of finding a Sally's Beauty Supply store in the same stripmall, and if they aren't near Wally they're near K-Mart or Target, Sally's seems to only exist within close proximity of a big box). This fall off business also adds jobs.
It's not new demand their satisfying, it's existing demand that isn't currently being met in that area, that's a key method of growth, find an undercapitalized niche and fill it.
With staples they substitute with what they can afford, with non-staples they tend to wait. The vast majority of WalMart's square footage is taken up by non-staples. WalMart only replaces small retailers that can't adapt. There are two well documented ways to survive the WalMart invasion: provide better service, or provide greater product depth. Small retailers that can't adapt (or even large retailers for that matter, remember Wards) are always living on borrowed time and will go under eventually with or without WalMart around to take the blame.
There's still quite a bit of revenue in the world of nostalgia providing. If you're willing to put the effort into looking for them there's plenty of family farmers selling their goods from kiosks on the farm, plenty of village craftsman types providing excellent handmade goods, and small shopkeepers giving the excellent service small stores were known for. And oddly enough the places in this country where those things are easiest to find are in the small town areas that WalMart is so fond of going too, and they seem to do a lot better after WalMart moves in. Which makes sense, when people start saving money on stuff they have more money for the small luxury items these nostalgia merchants have to offer.
"The 25-year-old single mom with a 2-year old child at home landed one of the Oakland positions. "It's this job or no job," she said. "I make a lot more here than I do watching TV and soap operas and stuff."
This is why such jobs are essential for the economy. No skills, undereducated, they are not going to get $50K a year. Opportunities that otherwise DO NOT EXIST for these people."
How can you fall for this tripe.
Everything sold by Walmart is already sold in that area by other companies. All of those companies had employees. So all we are looking at here is a transfer of jobs from one place to another.
Walmart still can't sell any more than the local area can afford to buy.
Walmart is not an economic engine for an area, any more than any other retailer is an economic engine.
The 25% number came from a radio report re W-M this week and is assumed to be correct. As for the US jobs that W-M provides, how does they equate with the arms the Chicoms are amassing and threatening us with? Americans are so dense they simply do not want to listen to the facts. Commies are still our enemies and always will be.
I have a very good job and I still think the illegal alien problem needs addressing. Course I'm already married to the best woman in the world so I couldn't care less whether the single ladies notice me or not.
OTOH, Wally is a retailer unlike any other, with a unique ability to move the market in one direction or another. So I think Wally does bear more responsibility in this matter than does Ace Hardware or someone with less buying power.
WM has been a great blessing to my son's family. They think it's great.
Surely you jest.
The only employees that made out like bandits were the ones that were working there 20 years ago.
For the last five years the stock has remained steady while Wall-Mart has forced more and more of it's employees to quit or get fired.
I mean they actually lock their workers inside their stores while off the clock. When they run out off hours they are still expected to work their shifts OFF THE CLOCK. They have been sucessfully sued over and over again, but they don't stop these illegal tacticts.
10.83 / hour means this mother of two children is still collecting Food Stamps and Medicaid. That is costing the taxpayers several thousand dollars per year. No doubt Wall-Mart forced her to fill out forms so they get additional money from the government to help pay her wages. That is more of our hard earned taxes going to the richest Company in America.
I guess that's why so many apply for jobs when a WM opens. They are probably led into training at gunpoint and held there without food and water.
A WM opened on a spot at Northwern and 59th in Phoenix. It was so ugly and deserted that one could hardly imagine a business thriving there. Now the area is rebuilt with luxury homes around it. Many businesses are thriving next to it. Oh the humanity!
Post #3 - thanks for the link. That deserves its own thread. Great read.
That's not my contention, don't put words in my mouth.
Staples aren't things you can't get elsewhere, staples (in the world of retail) are life sustaining good like food and fuel. The vast majority of WalMart's store space is taken up by non-staples.
And there's nothing wrong with not being able to compete with them head-to-head. Small stores have never been able to compete with large stores on price, that goes all the way back to the 5 and Dimes of yester-year. But they can compete on service, product knowledge and product depth.
It's necessary to put effort into finding them because you can't farm in a city, thus it is impossible for family farmers (or industrial farmers) to be able to sell their goods in a retail mode somewhere that is both convenient for them and the customer. Also they don't tend to spend millions on advertising so they don't inundate your TV with name recognition and product awareness commercials.
It's simple reality, small towns tend to be closer to farms than large towns and cities. In fact one of the terms frequently used for those small towns near farms is "farming community". Also you get lots of retirees in small towns (quite deliberately, small towns spend a lot of time and money trying to bring in retirees) and they're frequently the people making old world craft goods for sale just to keep their hands and mind busy in their golden years. The smart ones DO welcome WalMart with open arms, it's the people who believe the lies of the left (or the ones that are projectors of the lies of the left) that whine and complain, in those places where people fought against WalMart and lost compare the number of people that were protesting with the number of people flocking to the store, that looks like welcoming with open arms to me.
I'm not saying there's no pain involved with the process, I'm saying the pain involved with WalMart's rise is greatly overstated.
Actually $10/hr is 22 thousand a year (sorry tested accounting software for 4 years, some of those numbers are deeply engrained in my psyche). Depending on where you live, what your general costs are and whether or not there's another income in your household 22K can be a comfortable life, yeah these folks are never going to own luxury cars or 42" plasma TVs (at least not while they're working at WalMart, but it could fund them going back to school and moving up the success chain), but with some smarts they won't require government assistance either (especially when you add in that after the probation period is up WalMart gives medical). We're not all destined to live in total comfort you know, the world still needs a few bag boys and gas station attendants.
As post 45 says. It is sad that there are that many unemployeed.
But that just means they move from welfare into poverty. They are certinally not buying expensive homes. Although some owners of nearby diners might. Even some of the Diners employees might.
Problem is. The richest employer in America is stiffing the American Taxpayer for Billions a year while at the same time forcing millions more onto Welfare by eliminating good paying jobs and supressing wages. A double whammy to the American poor.
Why is it Home Depot pays $3.00 / hour more than Wal-Mart?
How many of these workers will still be making $10.30 in three years? A new Distribution Center opened in Southern Utah. They started out at $12.00 / hour. This is how they convinced the community to let them move in. Two years latter they were down to $10.00 / hour now $8.00 / hour.
Wal-Mart more than deserves the bad press they are getting.
Bentonville is Mecca as far as I'm concerned.
I say, "Then work at Home Depot." They are a huge retail outfit.
Recently a man went out to hire illegals for handbill distribution. They refused to work for $7 an hours and demanded $9 instead. The law of supply and demand.
A woman told me that she counseled her friend to quit WM, since the friend was poorly paid and a single mother. Five years later the same woman was manager of that WM store. Sorry, you do not convince me.
Retail jobs suck overall. Management always pays better. The way to success is having job skills and an education.
I am the real Abe Krieger (CS/CM) - who are you??
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