Sorry but you are not correct. Walmart does not pay competitive wages and they do not have a decent benefits package for the majority of their store employees.
There are a lot of Walmart employees who rely on food stamps and state assistance for medical benefits...all on state tax payers dime.
There are many communities where Walmart is the only store in town...so some people are ‘forced’ to shop/work at those locales. BUT there are other communities where Walmart is just one of many stores. It’s THOSE stores that I don’t understand why people buy that cheap Chinese (or other countries) crappola.
IMO, Walmart’s business model depends on attracting lower income shoppers who need low cost products....and they’ve done their part w/ keeping their own workers salaries low (low hourly rates and limited hours per week).
Yes...yes....Walmart’s entitled to make a profit. Just don’t feed me the line they pay their people a competitive wage. They don’t.
Walmart has 2 million employees. About half of those are part time.
Part time means lower hourly pay, lower over all pay and no benefits.
Do the math.
Your arguemnet against Walmart is just plain stupid. They offer low prices and attract low income shoppers...so that makes them bad? Get a grip. Go back to your Union Local and have a beer with your fellow trolls.
I have always felt that their was a responsibility that went with being a consumer just as there are responsibilities to being a citizen. As mentioned before I think we sometimes need to make a conscious decision to support the kind of stores we want to see in our communities every dollar is a vote. There's a great passage John Bunyan's book “The Road to Hell” on the reason you shouldn't always buy at the lowest price or sell at the highest price.
However as for the strict economics, the conundrum here gets at the whole reason for the study of economics: scarcity. There just isn't enough to go around. In the market economics sense the employee is the seller of their labor and if they can find a better price for their labor. So in that sense if WalMart's wage weren't competitive no one would work there. So in the sense of whatever the market will bear it is competitive; or no one would sell Walmart their labor hours. If only life were that text book simple. In this economy, there are plenty of people who will take what they can get and if Walmart raises their wages either they have to hirer fewer people (keeping only the most productive employees)or they have to raise prices. So why are the liberals upset to find that these people on the bottom of labor market are in need of help. Are they mad they have a job and aren't on food stamps and welfare? Or are at least trying to work their way up instead of sitting at home surfing the web on their Obamaphone.
What is a competitive wage? The Murphy Express gas station or the Circle K?
Walmart is opening a brand-new store in Washington D.C. This therefore is a store entering an existing market, one that has not been “tainted” by a big store driving down wages or anything.
You claim they offer noncompetitive wages, which would mean they should have trouble convincing people to work, since they should LOSE those employees to the other employers who offer more competitive wages (that is the definition of competitive wage, after all, a wage that allows a company to win the competition for workers).
So, how badly is Walmart losing this competition? Bad enough that they have 23,000 applicants for their 600 positions. They have 40 people to consider for each job they have. Sounds pretty competitive to me.
Some people, like my increasingly ignorant daughter, think Walmart should pay better wages so everybody that works there can afford thanksgiving dinner. Because apparently, when 40 people want 1 job, a company should offer HIGHER wages.