“A range of studies has found that Wal-Mart’s prices are 8 percent to 39 percent below the prices of its competitors. The single most careful economic study, co-authored by the well-respected MIT economist Jerry Hausman, found that grocery sales by Wal-Mart and other big-box stores made consumers better off to the tune of 25 percent of food consumption. That doesn’t mean much for those of us in the top fifth of the income distribution—we spend only about 3.5 percent of our income on food at home and, at least in my case, most of that shopping is done at high-priced supermarkets like Whole Foods. But that’s a huge savings for households in the bottom quintile, which, on average, spend 26 percent of their income on food. In fact, it is equivalent to a 6.5 percent boost in household income—unless the family lives in New York City or one of the other places that have successfully kept Wal-Mart and its ilk away”. –Jason Furman, debating Barbara Ehrenreich about the effect of Wal-Mart on America’s working class
It is true walmart offers low prices but Those low prices cost us alot.
The reason many communities fight to keep walmart out is because of the jobs lost do to competition from the big walmart.
I believe that Wal-Mart practises and policies are hurting America. I also believe that China would have a much harder time competing if they played on an even playing field when it comes to worker safety, enviormental issues, fair wages and living conditions for their workers.
Good paying jobs are being replaced with low wage jobs in this country thanks to Wal-Mart.
They are also destroying the American family. Pretty soon we will all be working on Thanksgiving day and Christmas Eve at the Wal-marts of the world.
I believe that not shopping at Wal-mart is not enough. We must boycott these mockeries of business.
The pressure their putting on American companies is unfair, the “always low prices” facade is very misleading, and the manner in which Chinese business and political leaders are exploiting the situation & their own citizens is very disheartening.
Two national movements could stop Wal-Mart in its tracks: (1) Buy America, and (2) Support the union label. If Americans got behind these movements, US jobs could be saved. US corporations are being tempted oversesas because they can increase their profit margins and are allowed to get away with it. If all Americans stopped buying from those companies who take their jobs overseas, they would stop taking their jobs oveseas. Americans want to feel good about their country. They want to be patriotic. Supporting American jobs is one good way to do that. I make it a point in my own buying habits to buy American whenever possible and I buy foriegn last when there is clearly no other choice or ifsaid foreign company has a REAL presence in the usa,
Example: I do drive a honda, but that honda was made in maryville indiana, even though its a japanese company I wont however buy a ford maid in chile because american jobs are lost.
To be frank, I believe that the day that Wal-Mart got too large for the federal government to police - that is to say, watch over them with the same vigor and diligence that seems to monitor small business owners - their growth should have been curtailed legislatively.
I am a proponent of capitalism but stop short of capitalism at the expense of capitalism. In other words, they are just too freaking big and there is not a single or aggregate law enforcement agency large enough to police their activities while still enforcing the law for other, less able to pay, entrepreneurs.
In their current configuration and size, it would seem appropriate to me that at such time as any business gets too large to be adequately monitored, then tax levies and legal awards should be assessed in a much larger scale. Think of it as a kind of “price you pay” for getting too big. At their current size, Wal-Mart can afford to lobby, cheat on taxes, hire illegal immigrants and pay bribes for years and years without repercussion. I absolutely abhore what they have done and are doing to family life, religious life and our legal system - not to mention the entrepreneurs that have been carelessly discarded in their wake. …
Perhaps it is better to have more businesses than to have larger ones.
Where Walmart really has some explaining to do is in their labor policies - refusing to take people on for more than 35 hours/week to avoid paying statutory benefits - and in their use of eminent domain to secure plots of land that they later abandon when they decide to build a bigger store down the road.
Walmart should be taking the moral high ground by providing benefits for its low-paid employees instead of doing all it can to chisel everyone that supplies products or labor to it.
And is Wal Mart really passing on the savings of manufacturing their products in China? Not if they can mark an item up 80%. The only one benefiting from that is Wal Mart. They could have had the same product manufactured in the United States, sold it at a fair price and still made a profit. Instead, it looks as if they are selling products made in China at the same price as those made in the U.S. and pocketing the difference. I may be wrong, but how else do you explain an 80% markup on goods?
And a point many who are supporting Wal-Mart as part of “fair trade” are missing the that Wal-Mart has gone to court on the side of China based companies when American industry has filed lawsuits because these overseas companies are DUMPING products onto the American market in absolute violation of the world trade agreement — having the direct effect of pushing prices below market value where any company paying fair wages and benefits can’t survive.
Wal-mart does not pay their employees enough money to make up for the jobs that have been lost by there very effect on the economy.
Point being is it is clear that the distruction of our manufacturing sector has an adverse effect on the standard of living of our working class. Wal-mart does supply new jobs but it does not equal the number of jobs they have eliminated. Additionally, the standard of living of the working class is lowered. Wal-mart is obviously a major warrior in the war on American workers. The argument that destructive trade is jobs neutral just doesn’t wash. Replacing good paying manufacturing jobs with an equal number of opportunities to stock shelves part-time has a real effect on our economy and our way of life. The use of slave labor in Asian nations to replace high paid American workers is only beneficial to the common person if other jobs comparable to those which formerly existed on our production lines are created. Where are these new jobs? They don’t exist and they aren’t coming, where will this madness lead? What job opportunities will be available to the average American in the future? What kind of country will this be in ten or twenty years?
The cost to society will out weigh the savings of cheap inports.
The standard of living of the american consumer goes up ONLY if his/her income remains the same and consumer costs go down. If said person goes from 15 bucks/hour at Thomson to 6 bucks an hour at walmart, then his standard of living did NOT increase. Sure, he can get a cheaper TV but last time I checked, a television was not a requirement nor a life necessity. One does not need a PHd in macro economics to understand this.
It is far darker than fair trade and capitalism. It is a war against American industry and the standard of living Americans have enjoyed. Drive through middle America and look at the empty store fronts and businesses and then tell me Wal-Mart is good for the economy.
We can talk all about the new economy and free trade until we are blue in the face, but, in my opinion, the fact remains that there are not enough high paying jobs with benefits in the labor-based economy to maintain the average American’s lifestyle. The middle and lower classes are squeezed now and will continue to be squeezed and there may very well be blood in the streets in the near future. And even with the coming devalued American dollar, it will do little good in creating exportable goods and jobs if the majority of the American manufacturing base has moved off shore.
I disagree.
que lastima lol.
I figured you would lol.
The lower prices at the big W mean that consumers have more $$ available to spend on cars, housing, entertainment, etc., thus employing more people in those fields. Or alternatively they can save or invest it.
Not too bad a trade, if you ask me.
I dont think the laid off workers from any of the closed down and moved to china factories in america will agree.
Point being is what good does it do to have lower prices if you are unemployed?
Walmart and other big box retailers threaten manufacturers into moving abroad so they can sell items for less, and it would not be as bad if the savings were passed down but they are not, most items in any store discount or not is 50 - 80%.
If you loose a $15.00 an hour job and can only find a $6.00 an hour job the savings dont ring true.
I’m not a big fan of the “Buy American” campaign. At heart, I’m a free-trader.
But I have to agree with Mortalez that it is not right for Wal-Mart to avoid paying benefits to employees by keeping their hours under 35/week. That’s just wrong. I could be convinced to boycott Wal-Mart just on those grounds.
Mortalez,
Even on an employment justification you cannot condemn Wal-Mart. For one, Wal-Mart is one of the few stores that opens up in ghettos and areas with high unemployment, see here. I grew up in a high unemployment, high crime area, and I can tell you that companies openning up there are a God sent. What is far more common is for empty lots to remain empty for year after year, leaving many in the community without opportunities that other areas have - available entry level jobs.
Second, while Wal-Mart does run out many small businesses, it also offers a higher average wage (and higher number of jobs) than those small businesses. Remember, it is primarily small businesses that pay the minimum wage. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, pays its employees an average of $10/hour. Significantly higher than those small businesses it runs out.
Thirdly, while Wal-Mart runs out many small businesses, this is not the full picture. It also brings in many complimentary small businesses as well, see here.
Add this on top of the already evident fact that Wal-Mart provides the poor with much needed food and housing essentials at a significant lower price, and you can understand why Wal-Mart is the company that both, hires more blacks and mexicans and has as its customers more blacks and mexicans than any of the other food chains.
Wal-Mart is not the enemy of the poor and minority, Wal-Mart is the friend.
LaurenceB,
Wal-Mart doesn’t just “avoid paying benefits to employees by keeping their hours under 35/week”, it also hires and moves into areas that other big box stores will not go. Maybe that is only possible by keeping costs significantly down, I don’t know. But I do know that if you force Wal-Mart to pay more for its employees than you make things worse both for Wal-Mart, which will be forced to higher less employees, and for the employees themselves (what would you rather have, a higher wage or a lower wage with the remainder being used to pay for something you already had anyway?).
Or worse yet, having them pay for more benefits might mean that moving into some areas, probably those areas that most desperately need it, is not cost effective, thereby leaving those areas with less, not more.
From my own post on another thread:
I dont know where you guys live , but in my area walmart left the hood 6 years ago, they used to have a store in the edgewood/stop six area, this is a mostly black part of town on the east side of FT.Worth texas They moved 10 miles up the road to east chase which is a mostly white area.
True-Liberal,
My great-grandfather was a successful insurance agent in Ogden, Utah just before the Great Depression. To make a long story short, his business fell apart, he lost his job, and most of his wealth. He committed suicide in his forties.
But, as you say, “jobs come and go”.
I don’t mean to be overly dramatic here (I never knew the man, obviously) - I just mean to point out that there are people behind the jobs.
It is certainly true, as you and HP have argued, that the invisible hand of Adam Smith is always at work, and lost jobs, or bad jobs, may ultimately work to the favor of the common good, or even the individual good. But it is just as true, that often in the meantime there are workers that are in real bad shape. Dire straits. Working hard to make ends meet and not being able to. Real, live people.
I’m sure you understand this, and I don’t mean to get all holier-than-thou, but sometimes it seems to me that this is a good thing for us to remember. Myself included.
mortalez,
Thank burdensome regulations, the minimum wage, and public schools for that. I am not saying that Wal-Mart can operate in every single high unemployment neighborhood - certainly there are some neighborhoods where high regulation liberals have done so much harm that not even Wal-Mart can operate there - my only point here is that Wal-Mart does it at a much higher level than many other companies.
Which is why you won’t find me condemning Wal-Mart. A company that hires more poor minorities, operates in more poor minority neighborhoods, and serves more poor minorities than most other companies is my friend, not my enemy.
Hires them but does not pay them a fair wage..
Wal-Mart pays an average of $10/hour…which is significantly higher than many other businesses in the area.
LaurenceB wrote,
Nor do I mean to be overly crass and unsympathetic to the dedicated worker who finds his livelihood threatened.
But once an economic system takes on the task of providing job stability for all, it starts us down the road to stagnation. Political sway then means more than economic reality, and progress becomes more and more of a threat than a vision.
That’s why I am very skeptical of highly focussed “career training” programs which tend to lead one into the career du jour, and ill-prepared for a variety of jobs over his lifetime.
With friends like Andrew Young, who needs enemies?