Wal-Mart Economics

[Capitalist Lawyer]

This has been an issue for a long time now. People accuse Wal-Mart of advancing poverty by killing off Mom and Pop stores while under paying their employees. Facts are usually no where to be found in the argument, but it gets presented anyway.

The facts of the matter are that Wal-Mart "kills off" Mom and Pop stores that but those stores don't pay any better than Wal-Mart does. In the process, Wal-Mart offers lower prices to the community and therefore SAVES the community money. The poverty rate goes down because the standard of living has gone up because the purchasing power of each dollar has been raised.


Is Wal-Mart a problem?
Nov 16, 2005
by John Stossel

The Food and Commercial Workers Union hired Paul Blank, who was political director for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, to lead a campaign to convince people not to shop at Wal-Mart until Wal-Mart pays workers more. "The average associate at Wal-Mart makes $8.23 an hour," Blank told me. "That's not a job that can support a family."

Wal-Mart said its average pay is higher than that, but Wal-Mart workers do make a lot less money than Wal-Mart's owners.

"They have taken the values, the morals, the ethics, fairness that are the fabric of our society and put them aside and . . . put their profits before their people," said Blank.

That's foolish economics, and not very good morality. He is as wrong as the tycoon Michael Douglas played in the movie "Wall Street," who said: "It's a zero-sum game. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred."

That's a myth. Businesses create wealth.

Take the simplest example. I buy a quart of milk. I hand the storekeeper money; she gives me the milk. We both benefit, because she wanted the money more than the milk, and I wanted the milk more than the money. This is why often both of us say "thank you." Because it's voluntary, business is win/win. A transaction won't happen unless both parties benefit. Each party ends up better off than he was before. And when you have millions of successful transactions, you end up very well off -- like the owners of Wal-Mart.

Their becoming rich doesn't mean there's less for the rest of us. Sam Walton's innovations created thousands of new jobs and allowed millions of Americans to save money.

In earlier eras, John D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt were depicted as evil. But the condemnation rarely came from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained. And newspapers lapped it up, calling them "robber barons."

Vanderbilt got rich by making travel and shipping cheaper. Lots of people liked that.

No one was forced to buy the oil on which Rockefeller got rich. He had to persuade people by offering it to them for less. He offered it so cheaply that poorer people, who used to go to bed when it got dark, could now afford fuel for their lanterns.

These are "robber barons"?

"You could not find a more inaccurate term for these men than 'robber barons,'" said philosopher David Kelley. "They weren't barons. All of them started penniless. And they weren't robbers, because they didn't take it from anyone else."

Wal-Mart's critics act as if economic competition were a "zero-sum game" -- if one person gets richer, someone else must be getting poorer. If Wal-Mart's owners profit, we lose. But the reality is exactly what our ordinary language tells us: We make money. We produce wealth.

Wal-Mart created wealth. It started with just one discount store. Then, its owner, Sam Walton, invented new ways to streamline the supply chain, so he was able to sell things for less and still make a profit. By keeping prices low, Wal-Mart effectively gives everyone who shops there a raise, its own employees included.

Not all Wal-Mart workers support families. Some are retired. Others are part-timers, students or people looking for a second income.

"None of them was drafted. None of them was forced to work at Wal-Mart," said Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Cato Institute. "That means that if they're working there, presumably, that was the best job they could get."

Before Sha-ron Reese was hired at Wal-Mart she was on welfare. She'd lost custody of her kids and was homeless, living in her car. California store manager W.C. Morrison took a risk and hired her. "She had no references," he told us. "She had no work experience."

In her own words, she was "raw." But Morrison took a chance on her. That changed her life.

Today, Reese has two people working for her. She's got her own apartment. She's regained custody of two of her kids.

And she's a Wal-Mart customer. "Everything, just about, that's in my house," she said, "Wal-Mart sells."

[which doctor]

Wal-mart encourages suburban sprawl. Wal-mart makes it's employees pay for healthcare. Wal-mart makes slaves out of its shoppers making them shop there to get what they need. Wal-mart destroys the enviroment. Wal-mart makes overpriced crap. Wal-mart exploits workers in third-world countries. Many of Wal-mart's employees are living under the poverty level. Wal-mart has enslaved the world to make them think that shopping at Walmart is OK. Wal-mart knowingly hires illegal immigrants. Wal-mart practices sexual and racial discrimination. Wal-mart destroys historic downtowns by making all the mom and pop stores go out of business. Wal-marts are built outside of towns forcing the people to drive further to get what they need. Wal-mart makes people buy more gas, which pollutes the environment more. The faster Wal-mart employees stock shelves, the more money the big executives make. Wal-mart does not care for it's shoppers, all they care about is $money$. Wal-mart has had many public relations scandals. Wal-mart censors some of it's materials and forbids others. When Wal-mart moves into a town there is a net loss in total jobs. Wal-mart gets revenge on towns that don't let it build there. I would write others but, I don't have much more time. As you can tell, I am very anti-Wal-mart. Wal-mart has taken over my small town and driven out many local businesses. They have also made brainwashed Wal-mart shoppers out of many citizens in my town except me.

You can't win against me Capitalist Lawyer so don't even try.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

From: Always Low Wages, Always Wal-Mart (http://freepeoplesmovement.org/fp11d.html)

It's annual sales of more than $250 billion make Wal-Mart larger, economically speaking, than Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation. Including the value of stock received, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott's pay package soared to an amzing $12.44 million in 2004. So why then are his 1.3 his million Wal-Mart employees, seventy percent of whom are women, paid so poorly that they can't afford the basic necessities of life?

Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the United States, pays it's employees an average of $9.64 an hour if they are full-time employees, according to Business Week. Yet even those full-time workers, who comprise only about 66% of Wal-Mart's workforce, may be scheduled for as few 34 hours weekly. Even at $9.64 hourly (which many cite as a very generous estimate), working 34 hours a week, a Wal-Mart employee earns only $17,043 annually, well under the $18,850 federal poverty guideline for a family of four in 2004. Using published studies on an "adequate but austere" budget for a family with one adult, one preschooler, and one schoolage child living in Salina, Kansas, writer Stan Cox conducted his own study into the possibility of a single mother supporting herself and her two children while working as a cashier at the local Wal-Mart ('A Wal-Mart wage doesn't go very far -- even at Wal-Mart' Alternet June 10, 2003). "We calculated the amount that our hypothetical three-member family would spend each month if as many of its essential needs as possible were supplied by our local Supercenter. Despite our best efforts, we exceeded our cashier's monthly income by $146". This, even after they "slashed some of the published budget items as much as 38%, based on the 'Always Low Prices' we found at the Supercenter", and despite the fact that "we couldn't have come that close had our cashier's family not been eligible for a State of Kansas child-care allowance that covers all but $22 per month in child-care costs for a such a family living on so low a wage", and that "Our cost-cutting left no room for 'luxuries': no travel outside of Saline County, no cable TV, no home telephone service, no movies, no newspaper or magazine subscriptions, no fees for community sports or classes, no saving at Wal-Mart's in-store bank in case the car had to be replaced, no eating out ... Most of what's available at the Supercenter was off-limits to us".

In her book "Nickel and Dimed", a first-hand account of trying to make a living in four working class jobs in four cities, one of them a Minneapolis Wal-Mart, Babara Ehrenreich recalls that one of her co-workers at the store constantly checked the price of a T-shirt (the type Wal-Mart required its employees to wear) to see if it was on sale, because she couldn't afford to buy the Wal-Mart shirt on a Wal-Mart salary.

So, how do jobs at Wal-Mart compare to those of other employers? An October 2003 AFL-CIO report finds that "While 66 percent of workers at large U.S. firms get health coverage on the job, fewer than half of Wal-Mart workers do"; and if union grocery workers' wages were slashed to match the wages of Wal-Mart workers, their communities would lose between $1.6 billion and $3 billion annually. Wal-Mart's virulent, and sometimes even unlawful, anti-union policies (also in her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich reports that when new employees start at Wal-Mart, they must first watch a video warning them against joining a union) prevent workers from earning family-supportive wages and benefits. According to a 2002 report by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, unionized workers in the retail food industry made more than 30 percent in hourly wages more than their nonunion counterparts.

While Wal-Mart keeps its workers in a state of poverty, they also impoverish entire communities. An analysis by the United Food and Commercial Workers shows that "In the top 100 cities where Wal-Mart's share of the grocery industry grew more than 20 percent between 1998 and 2002, the number of cashier jobs fell as much as 2.3 percent. And everytime Wal-Mart expanded its market share by 1 percent in the grocery business, retail food cashiers' wages dropped an average of 5.5 cents per hour." An October 2003 report prepared for the city of Los Angeles concludes that as Supercenters tend to convert communities' union-scale retail jobs to fewer lower-paying retail jobs, the difference in overall compensation is "as much as $8 an hour."

Women receive even lower wages than their male counterparts at Wal-Mart. While working in a Pinellas Park, Florida Wal-Mart, Ramonda Scott was told that the reason men doing similar work earned more than she did was that men came there to make careers, and housewives just needed to earn spending money. A class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 1 million women, including those currently working at Wal-Mart's more than 3,000 stores. Documents of the lawsuit describe a corporation in which women are paid lower wages and promoted less than their male equals, and where women are steered into "female" departments, including requiring them to retrieve coffee for their male counterparts. There are also reports that those who dare complain about their unequal treatment are demoted.

Keeping all of this in mind, the wages Wal-Mart payes its employees in the United States seem outstanding in comparison to those paid by many of its suppliers around the world. While "Daring to Save You Even More" Wal-Mart supports, and even encourages this by forcing its suppliers to lower costs by any means, threatening to take their business elsewhere. A Bangladeshi factory worker who makes clothing for Wal-Mart would be hard pressed to make even a single purchase at a Supercenter.

While Wal-Mart often implies that any raise in wages paid to their workers would hinder their ability to continue to provide such low prices to consumers, according to the UFCW, if Wal-Mart paid each employee $1 an hour more, it could maintain its profitability level by increasing prices a mere half penny per dollar. This would mean the price of a $2 pair of socks would increase to $2.01.

This is the face of capitalist America, embodied by its largest private employer, exploiting the working class in it's never ending quest for profit.

[FleasTheLemur]

John Stossel? Pfft. I usually don't instantly discredit people by name, but that guy is a neo-liberalist with a skewed agenda and a bottomless wallet. He had me hopelessly believing in American Libertarianism for a short while.

[KC]

Anyone hear about the newest Walmart scandal? Where they make the people that they deem unfit to work there any longer do the most physically demanding work (such as taking all the carts in from the parking lot in the middle of the winter; think of what that would do to a 50 year old with a heart condition).

[dakewlguy]

I don't see the big deal with small local shops being swamped by these big stores. If consumers don't want to shop at the small shops, then hey, tough luck. People can't enjoy economies of scale AND cosy little family-stores at the same time, sorry.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2005, 06:50 PM
I don't see the big deal with small local shops being swamped by these big stores. If consumers don't want to shop at the small shops, then hey, tough luck. People can't enjoy economies of scale AND cosy little family-stores at the same time, sorry.
Capitalist competition isn't by biggest concern about Wal-mart either. You are correct, the pressures of capitalism generally encourage monopolization, so wal-mart isn't the cause of this effect, just the current vehicle. If walmart was gone all of the sudden, it would be K-mart or any other number of chains to step up to take Wal-Mart's place.

My major problem with wal-mart in particular is how anti-union and therefore anti-worker they are. They are infamous for harassing all employeese if they even suspect someone once thought about trying to bring in a union. They also put pressure on their workers to make them work overtime, but then tell them they won't be paid overtime hours.

[Capitalist Lawyer]

Typical communist bullshit, I'll dissect your crap in one posting.

Happy reading!



Using published studies on an "adequate but austere" budget for a family with one adult, one preschooler, and one schoolage child living in Salina, Kansas, writer Stan Cox conducted his own study into the possibility of a single mother supporting herself and her two children while working as a cashier at the local Wal-Mart ('A Wal-Mart wage doesn't go very far -- even at Wal-Mart' Alternet June 10, 2003)


Stan Forgets to ask one very important question.. where is the Dad? And how much is mom collecting in benefits from the government?



And everytime Wal-Mart expanded its market share by 1 percent in the grocery business, retail food cashiers' wages dropped an average of 5.5 cents per hour.


Thats what... $1.87 per week, for a 34 hour week?

amazing, how numbers look good, until you actually DO THE MATH....




they must first watch a video warning them against joining a union)


A friend of mine has watched that video. It doesn't WARN against joining a union, it simply sets forth, the advantages of a "right to work" shop, ie, you don't get screwed out of 6 months earnings, if a few dozen disgruntled workers can garner enough support to hold a strike.

One of the models it uses, is the Ralphs strike in California, where the average worker lost $24,000 in wages and benefits, to gain an additional $1.86 per hour. That works out to 322 weeks at 40 hours per week, to recoup, just WHAT THEY LOST by following the strike.

Yeah. Unions R UR Friend....




Keeping all of this in mind, the wages Wal-Mart payes its employees in the United States seem outstanding in comparison to those paid by many of its suppliers around the world. While "Daring to Save You Even More" Wal-Mart supports, and even encourages this by forcing its suppliers to lower costs by any means, threatening to take their business elsewhere. A Bangladeshi factory worker who makes clothing for Wal-Mart would be hard pressed to make even a single purchase at a Supercenter.



It isn't Walmart, that is telling "rubbermaid" to head overseas, it is Rubbermaid, doing so. The consumer demands the lowest prices, and Walmart would put itself out of business if they only purchased from American manufacturers.

If the consumer has a beef with where the products come from, let the consumer lead the charge, and refuse to purchase rubbermaid products. Walmart can easily find a US supplier, if the consumer is willing to pay the increased costs.




While Wal-Mart often implies that any raise in wages paid to their workers would hinder their ability to continue to provide such low prices to consumers, according to the UFCW, if Wal-Mart paid each employee $1 an hour more, it could maintain its profitability level by increasing prices a mere half penny per dollar. This would mean the price of a $2 pair of socks would increase to $2.01.



It s a fucking shame, that the unions can't see the same thing in reverse.

If they told their autoworkers, and those in the supply business to auto plants, to take a .50 cent per hour pay cut, the price of a domestic automobile would drop significantly, and there might be just a few more autoworker jobs, instead of plants closing, and EVERYBODY out of work.

Go Unions... Go GET ME THAT $37.00/HR job... and then the friggin' plant closes 2 months later, because it can't afford the wages or the pension plans... But hey, U guys are the G8test...




Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott's pay package soared to an amzing $12.44 million in 2004. So why then are his 1.3 his million Wal-Mart employees, seventy percent of whom are women, paid so poorly that they can't afford the basic necessities of life?




Lets do a little math commies.

Ok.. fire the CEO, and distribute his salary, among the peons. Each and every walmart employee would get an additional $9.75 per year.

Awesome dude.... You've found the key to making everyone rich. Fire the fucking CEO's....

or, lets just give every one of those 1.3 million walmart employees, and extra .50cents per day. Figure they work an average of 20 days per month, x 12 months, x 1.3 million.

That's $156,000,000.00 per year.

or... lets see, Walmart did 250billion in sales last year, of which roughly 3 billion of that was profit. Lets see how much we could pay these employees, to take up the slack in that profit. That works out to about $2300 per employee, per year, or about $1.19 per hour raise.

So, if every Walmart employee got a $1.19 per hour raise, there would be no profit, in fact, the store would lose money, about 1.1 billion per year, on employee withholding, the stockholders wouldn't have any incentive to keep their stock, there would be no profit to open up additional stores, and hire additional people, and if all the walmart stores closed, there would be a huge vacumn in the retail market.





"Our cost-cutting left no room for 'luxuries': no travel outside of Saline County, no cable TV, no home telephone service, no movies, no newspaper or magazine subscriptions, no fees for community sports or classes, no saving at Wal-Mart's in-store bank in case the car had to be replaced, no eating out ... Most of what's available at the Supercenter was off-limits to us".




errr... where does it say, in writing, ANYWHERE, that any of the above items are "mandatory"? I've done without many, or most of the above, for most of my life. I don't have cable tv, I don't have magazine and newspaper subscriptions, I don't eat out often, and I don't travel outside my county, unless it's for a job opportunity...... is there something written in the citizenship contract that I'm missing???




An October 2003 report prepared for the city of Los Angeles concludes that as Supercenters tend to convert communities' union-scale retail jobs to fewer lower-paying retail jobs, the difference in overall compensation is "as much as $8 an hour."



And how many of those "union" employeed stores go out of business every year, because they are not profitable, thereby putting ALL of the workers, out of work.

I've seen a shitload of stores, and chains go out of business and close stores, but I've yet to see a walmart close. Perhaps because they know what retail labor is worth, and pay accordingly.

Funny thing is, even with all the bad press about the "low wages", there is hardly ever a shortage of workers wanting to get hired on at Walmart, and there is always a waiting list of willing applicants.

Perhaps these folks that have the Walmart Hard-on, are just not looking for the right problems to the wrong solutions.




This is the face of capitalist America, embodied by its largest private employer, exploiting the working class in it's never ending quest for profit.



This, from someone who has little concept of what capitalism is all about. We read a "hit piece" about Walmart, and we suddenly know EVERYTHING.

When you talk about "exploited workers", just remember one thing. Your average welfare queen, can take home more money, by just staying the fuck at home, and sucking on the government teat. People working at Walmart,.... WANT TO WORK, and they're a shitload happier about their lot, than you want to imagine that you'd be, if you were in their shoes.

But then again, you're probably the type that buy $200 pairs of Nikes, and wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of Walmart sneakers.

[Ownthink]

Bomb Wal-Mart's. Really, it would solve alot of this debating. Just blow the places up. Of course, when they have no workers in them. Maybe just the non 24/7 ones.

Or something.

[gewehr_3]

Everyone should watch "Wal*Mart the high cost of low prices"
It is very informative

[RadicalLeft62]

Concerning Wal-Mart CONSUMERS:

To an imperialist walmart is good because it buys out all competition. To a moralist capitalist, walmart is bad because it suppresses the ability of small businesses to prosper. To a marxist, it isn't a big deal in that it is cheap.

Concerning Wal-Mart WORKERS:

Both capitalists don't give a shit, the marxist is pissed off for low wages and inability to make a living.

[RadicalLeft62]

Scratch the "imperialist" under consumers and change it to the Wal-Mart CEO.

[Guerrilla22]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 02:05 AM
Everyone should watch "Wal*Mart the high cost of low prices"
It is very informative
Yes and the people in the film are not over zealous progresive types, but seemingly fairly conservative small town people.

[rioters bloc]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 01:05 PM
Everyone should watch "Wal*Mart the high cost of low prices"
It is very informative
theyre screening it at my uni next week :)

ill post back when ive seen it :P

[RadicalLeft62]

All i can say to you, Capitalist Lawyer (yuck!), is that everything you have said has an overwatcher's POV. You sound like a rich white lawyer making way more than u need, and u think by throwing a lot of numbers around and tellin workers to "suck it up", that you are right.
Your response is disgusting in that it aims to maintain the low quality of life the worker's live. It's that simple.

[Capitalist Lawyer]

All i can say to you, Capitalist Lawyer (yuck!), is that everything you have said has an overwatcher's POV. You sound like a rich white lawyer making way more than u need, and u think by throwing a lot of numbers around and tellin workers to "suck it up", that you are right.
Your response is disgusting in that it aims to maintain the low quality of life the worker's live. It's that simple.

*YAWNS*

Does anybody have an intelligent rebuttal to the article and to my dissection of that crap from the communist website?

[Delirium]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 01:47 AM
Bomb Wal-Mart's. Really, it would solve alot of this debating. Just blow the places up. Of course, when they have no workers in them. Maybe just the non 24/7 ones.

Or something.
That has been the dearist ambition of mine for years, i'm glad to know it is shared!

[RadicalLeft62]

Originally posted by Capitalist [email protected] 29 2005, 02:01 AM

All i can say to you, Capitalist Lawyer (yuck!), is that everything you have said has an overwatcher's POV. You sound like a rich white lawyer making way more than u need, and u think by throwing a lot of numbers around and tellin workers to "suck it up", that you are right.
Your response is disgusting in that it aims to maintain the low quality of life the worker's live. It's that simple.

*YAWNS*

Does anybody have an intelligent rebuttal to the article and to my dissection of that crap from the communist website?
Capitalist Lawyer, i could throw digits and values around and find some small strand of a rebuttal over you in that way that you did. Unfortunately for you, you are an crappy person because YOU ARE AIMING TO KEEP THE WORKER'S IN THE POSITION THEY ARE CURRENTLY IN. It is a fact they are fucked, and if you want to keep it that way then your integrity as a human being is nothing.

[redstar2000]

The Wal-Mart "Business Model" and the American Working Class (http://www.redstar2000papers.com/theory.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083586725&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&)

http://www.websmileys.com/sm/cool/123.gif

[OkaCrisis]

Stan Forgets to ask one very important question.. where is the Dad? And how much is mom collecting in benefits from the government?

You forget to look at any facts- that most women are abused in their own homes by their partners. Is it the mother's fault that her abusive, deadbeat ex-husband won't pay child-support? That is, IF the father even knows where the mother and child now are, because if he found them, he'd probably kill her for walking out on him.
In that scenario, he gets the house. She gets a year in a shelter and on a waiting list.
And the "social safety net" in benefits that she recieves probably doesn't even cover her rent, not even to mention any childcare costs that she has to absorb just to work at the Walmart that she can't even afford to shop at. Welfare benefits in Canada and the US are around one-third of the poverty level. Yeah, that's a living!

Yep. This government benefit collecting low-life deserves to be poor, since You, and Walmart "know the value of retail labour".


It isn't Walmart, that is telling "rubbermaid" to head overseas, it is Rubbermaid, doing so. The consumer demands the lowest prices, and Walmart would put itself out of business if they only purchased from American manufacturers.

If the consumer has a beef with where the products come from, let the consumer lead the charge, and refuse to purchase rubbermaid products. Walmart can easily find a US supplier, if the consumer is willing to pay the increased costs.

I'm not sure if you fully understand the cyclical nature of capitalist markets... You see, Rubbermaid would have moved it's manufacturing jobs from the US to the Third World a log time ago in order to reap the advantages of sweatshop labour and non-existant environmental regulations (Go Free Trade!). This put maybe 30 or 40,000 people out of a job? So those people are now poor and can no longer afford to buy from local mom-and-pop stores that sell products from American suppliers becuase their livlihoods have disapeared over night. SUDDENLY there is a demand for cheap, imported products... Enter Walmart.

SO THEN, Walmart moves to town and puts all of those mom-and-pop local businesses out of business. What were once well-paid entrepeneurs are now poverty level - guess what!- Walmart employees. OF COURSE they as well demand the lowest price, because they can't afford anything more.


If they told their autoworkers, and those in the supply business to auto plants, to take a .50 cent per hour pay cut, the price of a domestic automobile would drop significantly, and there might be just a few more autoworker jobs, instead of plants closing, and EVERYBODY out of work.

Go Unions... Go GET ME THAT $37.00/HR job... and then the friggin' plant closes 2 months later, because it can't afford the wages or the pension plans.


Plants don't close because workers refuse to take a .50 cent paycut. They close because Free Market Capitalists know that they can manufacture the same car in a Third World country for next to nothing, and then ship it back to America and sell for huge profits. And this is because of low fuel and transport/shipping costs. I'm just watching and waiting to see what will happen now that the cost of fuel is increasing so drastically.


errr... where does it say, in writing, ANYWHERE, that any of the above items are "mandatory"? I've done without many, or most of the above, for most of my life. I don't have cable tv, I don't have magazine and newspaper subscriptions, I don't eat out often, and I don't travel outside my county, unless it's for a job opportunity...... is there something written in the citizenship contract that I'm missing??

Sure, but I bet you've never felt the sting or the inconvenience of not having a home telephone, one of the most basic necessities of life. Try getting a job without a phone number, I dare you. Your ignorance of the destitution in which some people have to live to sustain capitalist economies is sick. No wonder you're a lawyer.


So, if every Walmart employee got a $1.19 per hour raise, there would be no profit, in fact, the store would lose money, about 1.1 billion per year, on employee withholding, the stockholders wouldn't have any incentive to keep their stock, there would be no profit to open up additional stores, and hire additional people, and if all the walmart stores closed, there would be a huge vacumn in the retail market.

GOD FORBID all the Walmart stores would close! A "huge vacuum in the retail market"? Hardly. More like individual mom-and-pop style entrepeneurs would get their jobs and their livlihoods back. Sure, your capitalist Machine of an "economy" would suffer because these establishments can't bring in billions of dollars in profit, but I doubt anyone here ever sees the benefits of those billions anyway.


When you talk about "exploited workers", just remember one thing. Your average welfare queen, can take home more money, by just staying the fuck at home, and sucking on the government teat. People working at Walmart,.... WANT TO WORK, and they're a shitload happier about their lot, than you want to imagine that you'd be, if you were in their shoes.

You're an asshole. I've already addressed why this is wrong. But I just wanted to point out that you truly believe this shitty stereotype, and that makes you an asshole.

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2005, 11:10 AM

Stan Forgets to ask one very important question.. where is the Dad? And how much is mom collecting in benefits from the government?

You forget to look at any facts- that most women are abused in their own homes by their partners. Is it the mother's fault that her abusive, deadbeat ex-husband won't pay child-support? That is, IF the father even knows where the mother and child now are, because if he found them, he'd probably kill her for walking out on him.
In that scenario, he gets the house. She gets a year in a shelter and on a waiting list.
And the "social safety net" in benefits that she recieves probably doesn't even cover her rent, not even to mention any childcare costs that she has to absorb just to work at the Walmart that she can't even afford to shop at. Welfare benefits in Canada and the US are around one-third of the poverty level. Yeah, that's a living!

Yep. This government benefit collecting low-life deserves to be poor, since You, and Walmart "know the value of retail labour".


It isn't Walmart, that is telling "rubbermaid" to head overseas, it is Rubbermaid, doing so. The consumer demands the lowest prices, and Walmart would put itself out of business if they only purchased from American manufacturers.

If the consumer has a beef with where the products come from, let the consumer lead the charge, and refuse to purchase rubbermaid products. Walmart can easily find a US supplier, if the consumer is willing to pay the increased costs.

I'm not sure if you fully understand the cyclical nature of capitalist markets... You see, Rubbermaid would have moved it's manufacturing jobs from the US to the Third World a log time ago in order to reap the advantages of sweatshop labour and non-existant environmental regulations (Go Free Trade!). This put maybe 30 or 40,000 people out of a job? So those people are now poor and can no longer afford to buy from local mom-and-pop stores that sell products from American suppliers becuase their livlihoods have disapeared over night. SUDDENLY there is a demand for cheap, imported products... Enter Walmart.

SO THEN, Walmart moves to town and puts all of those mom-and-pop local businesses out of business. What were once well-paid entrepeneurs are now poverty level - guess what!- Walmart employees. OF COURSE they as well demand the lowest price, because they can't afford anything more.


If they told their autoworkers, and those in the supply business to auto plants, to take a .50 cent per hour pay cut, the price of a domestic automobile would drop significantly, and there might be just a few more autoworker jobs, instead of plants closing, and EVERYBODY out of work.

Go Unions... Go GET ME THAT $37.00/HR job... and then the friggin' plant closes 2 months later, because it can't afford the wages or the pension plans.


Plants don't close because workers refuse to take a .50 cent paycut. They close because Free Market Capitalists know that they can manufacture the same car in a Third World country for next to nothing, and then ship it back to America and sell for huge profits. And this is because of low fuel and transport/shipping costs. I'm just watching and waiting to see what will happen now that the cost of fuel is increasing so drastically.


errr... where does it say, in writing, ANYWHERE, that any of the above items are "mandatory"? I've done without many, or most of the above, for most of my life. I don't have cable tv, I don't have magazine and newspaper subscriptions, I don't eat out often, and I don't travel outside my county, unless it's for a job opportunity...... is there something written in the citizenship contract that I'm missing??

Sure, but I bet you've never felt the sting or the inconvenience of not having a home telephone, one of the most basic necessities of life. Try getting a job without a phone number, I dare you. Your ignorance of the destitution in which some people have to live to sustain capitalist economies is sick. No wonder you're a lawyer.


So, if every Walmart employee got a $1.19 per hour raise, there would be no profit, in fact, the store would lose money, about 1.1 billion per year, on employee withholding, the stockholders wouldn't have any incentive to keep their stock, there would be no profit to open up additional stores, and hire additional people, and if all the walmart stores closed, there would be a huge vacumn in the retail market.

GOD FORBID all the Walmart stores would close! A "huge vacuum in the retail market"? Hardly. More like individual mom-and-pop style entrepeneurs would get their jobs and their livlihoods back. Sure, your capitalist Machine of an "economy" would suffer because these establishments can't bring in billions of dollars in profit, but I doubt anyone here ever sees the benefits of those billions anyway.


When you talk about "exploited workers", just remember one thing. Your average welfare queen, can take home more money, by just staying the fuck at home, and sucking on the government teat. People working at Walmart,.... WANT TO WORK, and they're a shitload happier about their lot, than you want to imagine that you'd be, if you were in their shoes.

You're an asshole. I've already addressed why this is wrong. But I just wanted to point out that you truly believe this shitty stereotype, and that makes you an asshole.
Holy shit, that was the best post so far in this thread. Bra-fucking-vo!

[OkaCrisis]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2005, 04:33 PM
Holy shit, that was the best post so far in this thread. Bra-fucking-vo!
:blush:
Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, Comrade!

[Capitalist Lawyer]

1. So, the vast majority of women who have children out of wedlock, do so, because some man beat the shit out of them.

Uh huh... right....

and you need to double check your figures on benefits. A welfare queen in Mississippi with two children, brings home about $18,000 a year in benefits, and that's just the direct payments, not the "subsidized benefits".

2. 5% unemployment rate, shows that the capitalist free market IS WORKING, vice the other way around. And this is 5% unemployment, AFTER you take into consideration, an huge illegal immigration problem. Yep. I'll take the capitalist free market, over the socialist model any day.

Not to mention, poor workers around the world REJOICE, when an American plant moves to their country, because they are getting jobs, which helps reduce their 35-50% unemployment ratio.

3. Hmmm... seem to remember the Unions fighting every cost cutting effort by the auto plants, ie, robot welding machines, and other innovations, because it cuts jobs.

Good deal. Now that the unions have a stranglehold on the auto makers, there are NO JOBS. They're so stupid and anal in their demands, that they'd rather force the issue, lose 10,000 jobs, rather than give up 100. So, not only do the 100 get pink slips, but there are now 9,900 other UNION WORKERS, sitting around with their thumbs up their ass going... What now?

4. I've had plenty of jobs, without a "telephone number". It's quite simple actually, you SHOW UP, when you're supposed to, check your schedule, and if the boss asks you to call to check, that is what payphones are for.

It's even easier today, since there are a plethora of "pre-paid" cell phones on the market, that for the cost of a few meals at Popeye's, can give you a "phone" for use in emergencies, and giving your employer a "number".

5. Billions in profit? Check the financials on Walmart. You've been reading too much propaganda again.

6. Yes, I'm an asshole. I have to be, because there are a lot of stupid people in this world, like yourself, that refuse to see, or hear, reality, in a sea of propaganda, force fed to those like you, by any nutjob with a particular fetish.