Wal-mart draws ire even in poor parts of Brooklyn

On the other hand, I'm getting sick of cheap Chinese-made crap. We can't import our way into prosperity.

I don't get the singling out of Walmart. Every other retailer carries the same amount (or more) of Chinese (and other) imports. My local grocery chains also carry Chinese garlic. The reason is simple - even if the garlic is $0.10 cheaper, that's $0.10 straight to the bottom line - nothing to sniff at in a sector where the most efficient operators make $0.02 per $1 of sales. We're not importing our way to poverty - the reason we're wealthy and they're poor is simple - we design iPods and they use screwdrivers to assemble them. Anybody (Chinese, Bangladeshi, Egyptian or Nigerian) can assemble an iPod - it's designing it that makes the US a wealthy country. If we ever get into a situation where the Chinese are designing iPods and we're assembling them, we're going to be ones with Third World living standards.

I worked for one. I should think I know how the business works.

Like I said, thank you for shopping with them. I wouldn’t be able to afford stuff at walmart.

"My local grocery chains also carry Chinese garlic."

Right, now they do, because they have to from a purely competitive standpoint. Walmart is so massive, it doesn't influence the market, it - as a practical matter - sets the conditions for the retail market.

"We're not importing our way to poverty - the reason we're wealthy and they're poor is simple - we design iPods and they use screwdrivers to assemble them."

Yes, we design the iPods, but we aren't manufacturing anything that goes into the iPod. The Chinese aren't simply using "screwdrivers to assemble them", they are also the first, second and third tier parts supplier as well - circuit boards, batteries, processors and other electronic iPod components and cases and packaging are all built AND assembled in China.

"If we ever get into a situation where the Chinese are designing iPods and we're assembling them, we're going to be ones with Third World living standards."

Fair enough. But, what exactly is China buying from us that is made in America. Almost nothing ($334B import to $82B export), other than our debt. To the extent that we do sell them goods, they're agricultural goods - they're buying some wheat and some soybeans, mostly. How is that a sustainable relationship?

We are no longer buying just low-value, high-labor goods from Chinese (allegedly) inferior economy. We are buying some of our most expensive, highly-advanced technological goods, while they buy our low-value commodities.

Things should have started to equalize by now, but because China artificially manipulates it's currency so that it's always lower than the dollar, their goods are always cheaper than ours. Is this Walmart's problem? No, not really. But, they do compound an already difficult economic position for American manufacturers.

More can be read below, in an article from last fall...

U.S. Growth Slows Due to Trade Deficit

Sure, someone has to buy the cheap chinese crap. Pretty soon they’ll make the customers stock the shelves.

You got that right. Most electronics, tools, etc are imported. YET, Wal-mart does sell alot of Great Value Products and many are made in the USA. Unions ran alot of manufacturers out of the country along with the epa and green lobby. Wal-mart does not need taxpayer bailouts ..we can’t say that for unions.

rhetorical question?

Just more liberals preying on their stupid poor constituents.

A-holes who never had a job are going to bitch that the first job they ever had a shot at doesn't pay enough. Gimme a break.

..how dumb are New Yorkers?

Rhetorical question, right?

If you don't like buying cheap Chinese-made crap at WalMart, go to Target-- and pay a little more to buy cheap Chinese-made crap there instead.

Sometimes Wal-Mart needs to throw up its hands and say, “Okay. We’re outta here.” For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Wal-Mart insists on trying to locate new stores in concentrated Democrat parasite nests (”cities”) that clearly don’t want them.

Wal-Mart should stick to nicer suburban areas where prospective employees are more likely to be at least somewhat literate, and the customers are less likely to be shoplifting thieves. Suburban shoppers can get their stuff cheap, and if they have to use a restroom it will probably be clean and uninhabited by homeless teen mothers bathing their kids in the sinks or homos practicing their wide stances in the stalls.

Forget the cities, Wal-Mart. It’s a win-win for everybody.

Those of you who hate walmart, just don’t shop there- it’s that simple. The poor among us need a place to go where we can buy important staples for less- shampoo, kitty litter,aspirin, toothpaste...

All we ever hear from you Walmart haters is “cheap chinese crap, cheap chinese crap...” repeated like a mantra, but what you won’t admit to yourself is that almost every item I buy at walmart I can buy at other stores (target, sears, stop and shop, etc). Walmart is by no means the only store that sells goods imported from China. But at walmart I pay less, which is important on a small budget.

It’s a free country. Most of us on this forum are conservatives, so it’s a surprise whenever I see that some freepers have this leftist tendency to want to control (and eliminate?) a legitimate business for which you have acquired a visceral dislike.

Low-income people in Brooklyn will not tolerate being supplied with the things they use every day at low prices. They're too smart for that.

Low income people in Brooklyn, and elsewhere, have managed just fine for over a century. They get many of the things they need from the shops there which are owned and operated by people who have a stake in the community, and are often low income or at best middle class themselves. Thats how a community works. And the capital that isn't siphoned off to Albany or Washington stays in Brooklyn.

Walmart would siphon off more capital and send it Bentonville and Bejing, flooding the area with cheap trinkets and garbage products in the process, killing generations of neighborhood small businesses. In exchange, a few people get dead end jobs. Oh, and some grease flows to a few squeaky wheels.

This is inconsistent with-- in fact, directly opposed to -- conservative values. Nobody who supports this process has any conservative credibility. You are clearly on the wrong site.

Walmart generally sells cheap crap. So that poor person MAY save a few cents on what they buy, but then they have to buy it again once it breaks.

Many of the items they sell are built to lower specs than the items the competitor is selling.

I've shopped at Wal-Mart and I can attest to the fact that they carry many national brands....the same as any other store. One has to be a bit discerning, of course, but I've bought everything from electronics to clothes to food staples at Wal-Mart and never found the quality to be inferior, or, as you so charmingly put it: 'cheap crap'. I think the 'Wal-Mart sells cheap crap' meme is a myth, generated by those who oppose Wal-Mart because they employ mostly unskilled labor, don't offer free, gold-plated benefits to part-time employees and won't knuckle under to the retail unions, all cardinal sins to the left. Well, that and the fact that Wal Mart makes a tidy profit, always a deadly sin to a leftist who loves jobs but hates the businesses that generate jobs, especially for the unskilled.

That some Americans buy into that myth and feel smugly superior for boycotting Wal Mart and self-righteous for bashing the enterprise is unfortunate. The Wal Mart chain has been growing and prospering for almost 50 years. That doesn't happen to a national chain that consistently sells 'cheap crap' to it's customers. Consider Abraham Lincoln's adage: 'You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time'.

Wal Mart may not sell what you think is 'quality' but that is mostly a subjective assessment and one not supported by the facts. They will survive quite well whether or not they open stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan. If they don't open those stores it will be a loss for the lower-income residents of those areas but ultimately, that is their choice. Too bad they appear to be making it from ignorance. That these same folks might have sense enough not to buy from Wal Mart if all they sold was junk, thus putting Wal Mart out of business, never seems to occur to some people.

‘but I’ve bought everything from electronics to clothes to food staples at Wal-Mart and never found the quality to be inferior”

You’re not opening your eyes then. P&G sells 24% of everything they sell at Walmart. Walmart has the buying power to dictate profit margins to vendors. Walmart doesn’t even pay for the item until the consumer buys it. Yes, you buy the toothpaste and then P&G gets paid.

There is only so much you can reduce price based on efficiency of the logistics systems. Sooner or later the manufacturer is forced to reduce the thread count or grade of materials in order to reduce cost.

That doesn’t even call into question the poor quality control of anything produced in China.

Walmart has done a fantastic job of convincing people they are cheaper than everyone else. They’ve also done a great job of training customers to never ask for customer service.

Do a price comparison sometime. I first did that at Sams and was very surprised.

Do a price comparison sometime. I first did that at Sams and was very surprised.

I won't quibble about the the WalMart-vendor relationship because I'm not an expert in retail management and can't verify your contentions one way or the other. I'm just a shopper looking for value, like everyone else. However, I seriously doubt that a huge corporation such as Proctor & Gamble, with annual sales in the multi-billions, is giving anything away to WalMart. If they are allowing the kind of deal you state, both Wal Mart and P&G are satisified with the profits each derive so why should this be an issue to carp about?...unless you're a competitor.

Like most consumers today, I've comparison-shopped and found that, yes, other stores can 'beat' WalMart prices on some items, some of the time. You have to look for sales and of course, equal quality. I do. As for WalMart stocking products made in China, those Chinese-manufactured products are ubiquitous today and hardly limited to Wal Mart. I recently purchased famous-name brand items of clothing at J.C. Penney and Macy's (on sale, of course) and found the labels often state 'Made in China". The quality of those items were fine. So much for 'cheap crap from China' being a Wal Mart exclusive. It simply is not. Again, caveat emptor is the watchword for all consumers, or should be.

Frankly, I don't have any stock in WalMart or know anyone that works for the company so their policies and profits mean little to me. I simply see the chain as an example of the entrepreneurial spirit, initiated by Sam Walton all those years ago in tiny Bentonville, Arkansas. It has prospered and risen to preeminence in the retail sector and of course, by doing so it is both envied and hated by many, especially on the left, to whom financial success is a sure sign of evil intent of some kind or other. To me, a consumer looking for the best value, I find WalMart to be a good place to find mostly name-brand items at a good price, although not on every single item I might want or need. Sure, the 'warehouse' stores often have better prices...if you want to buy almost everything in bulk, have a place to put it and don't mind paying the fee to 'join' the 'club'. That may be great for others but it doesn't work for me.

Of course WalMart competitors cry 'foul' when the big billion-dollar corporation takes their market share by undercutting them. What else is new? That some local 'mom-and-pop' stores are pushed out of business when WalMart comes to town is simply a fact of doing business. Thus it ever was. Big corporations don't exist to protect small businesses from ever being closed due to an inability to compete. No more than I can be expected to do inferior work so my co-worker won't look bad by comparison and possibly be fired. That would be ridiculous. In my area, there are plenty of small locally-owned stores successfully competing with WalMart every day. They capitalize on WalMart's notorious lack of 'service' and run sales that come close enough to WalMart prices to keep their customers. However, I often shop at mid-level stores in the mall that don't offer much, if anything, in the way of 'service' I'm afraid that customer service is a dying tradition, and not just because WalMart doesn't have any. It's endemic in the retail sector.

As I've previously stated, bashing WalMart has become a bit of a sport in some circles, especially on the political left. I think most of it is baseless or predicated on faulty assumptions and false rumors. However, I have no dog in this fight, just an admiration for the success of WalMart. I do not accept that their success is somehow based on pure avarice and shoddy business practices. I think much of the criticism is pure envy. I intend to continue to patronize WalMart and if some residents of New York don't want the store in their neighborhood, so be it. Their loss.

Very well said and I am in total accord.