Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do liberals have such a hatred for WalMart?
 

proven fact...again and again and again

Now this is a surprise! I would think the local hardware store would be a real survivor in the Midwest. I now feel very fortunate to have several in the local area. I can walk 10 minutes in either direction and buy 8.8 metric hardware for my cars, quality lumber, paint, anything including high quality specialy tools you'd never find at Home Despot.

Living in a blue state just gets better and better! ;) :D

me, i could give a crap about walmart. it has nothing to do with me being liberal or whatever. i like the underdog. always, rooting for the little guy. nothing can make me kill time like browsing in a small neighborhood hardware store, book store, or music store. i love how the old school towns had a central downtown area, which encourages public transportation. i love when the owner of a store knows the product, believes in the product and maybe even USED the product. Walmart is just about moving product, and the basic savings of buying in bulk is killing mom and pops. it is ironic, people owning their own business's has got to be better for the economy than a bunch of folks working minimum wage at business juggernauts.

Obviously creates more off-shoot businesses...Come on, you have a car lot of 500+ cars, more traffic in the area, more tax dollars for roads, more service industries that service Walmart, more jobs...It is a simple LIE by the leftists to say otherwise.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Why do liberals have such a hatred for WalMart?
 

you need to work the math out on this one. Saying you are right and proving you are right with an example are 2 different things.

and the reason our cars are crap has little to do with union. Germany is HIGHLY unionized, so your argument falls flat there. U.S. cars are crap because American Bus. Management has no vision, no soul and is more of a slave to his stock quote than his buyer.

That's why U.S. cars are crap.

Especially when that friendly local book or music store doesn't censor the books/music like Walmart does...

Mike

No doubt some union representatives do a poor job of representing their membership. No doubt job protections have been abused. I understand hatred of unions, where the hater has access to just certain selected information/innuendo about union misbehavior. In my industry (construction) workers serve at the pleasure of management. They have no job security. Their season is about 8 months long. Their careers are maybe twenty (before their bodies give up). And yeah, there are better workers and there are not-so-good workers. But for the most part, a good construction company will actually WANT to deal with the labor unions. For a variety of reasons. The best contractors on our projects wouldn't dream of operating their businesses without that relationship, and the services provided by union representatives. No to mention the very much higher level of experience and training that union construction workers have compared to their non-union counterparts. I'm frankly proud of our union construction workforce here. And so are the very efficient companies that rely on them to build our buildings and roads. They work their asses off.

This is the irony of the neocon platform. They run on a ticket of "small business makes this country strong" and then supports big business which puts small business out of business. IMHO this squashes INNOVATION, which is one reason why this country is less competitive today. Cisco Systems doesn't really invent new tech, they just buy up small companies who have done the R&D, created new stuff. Then they just sit on it until their current inventory is down, then release some small version of the stuff they bought while someone else has already leapfrogged the original and the cycle continues.

I will say, nothing is better than running your own small business. OK, DEs are better, but they don't last as long and the rewards are fleeting.

Wal-Mart takes its profits out of the community. And that's the direction of American commerce. Wealth is being concentrated away from the ordinary citizenry. It's going to be a problem.

I'm no fan of unions either. There was a time when they were absolutely essential to America becoming the social and economic powerhouse it is today. If you are middle class, your station in life can probably be traced, directly or indirectly, to a labor union.

Their success made them bloated and corrupt. Maybe irrelevant. But they are not responsible for all the world's ills.

If you drive a Porsche, it was built by union labor.

Correct. So I decided long ago not be an ordinary citizen.

WalMart doesn't bother me much, but Home Depot drives me nuts. They started replacing the cashiers at the Home Depot near me with talking automated check out machines. The machines are much friendlier. I also can't stand it when I find something I want and its 35' off the floor, and all the hired help acts like its a major endeavor to go get a cherry picker and get it down for you.

You know, in retrospect, I think that part of the problem I experience is due to the fact that I usually do most things myself. It seems to me that we as a society are becoming more and more reliant on other people to do things for us. Especially when it comes to technical or skilled labor type projects. Maybe people are too caught up in taking little Johnny and Jane to 15 activities per week, that they don't have time to do for themselves anymore.
Seems a shame. Everytime I tackle a project that requires a bit of knowlege I don't possess, I feel extra good about being able to learn a new skill.
I also find that many of the Johnnies and Janes become more interested in thoes types of activities, rather than another soccer game where "everyone's a winner". At least until they become older and have leaned codependance...
No political staement here. More societal...
:)

The profits from a mom and pop store went to mom (and pop). Not to the employees. Not to the "community". When I was a kid I worked for the local food market. I got paid crap--no profit sharing, no ESOP. :D The store owner (one reasonably well-off guy) kept all the profit. Every person in the area served by a Wal-mart with $43 to spare can own a piece of WMT.

And let's not forget the positives. If you're a retailer that sells some of the 90% of consumer products and services that Wal-mart doesn't sell, you love them. Think about the retail traffic that Wal-mart concentrates. Banks, restaurants, hair salons, repair shops, plus all the retailers that sell complementary or higher-end goods. Case in point: Hibbett Sporting Goods (small footprint branded sports footwear and apparel stores--if you're in the south you know them) loves to locate in Wal-mart centers. Once the kiddies discover how crappy Wal-mart's sporting goods department is, they drag Mom right over to buy their new Nikes.

Sorry about the record/video store. Suck at the teat of fixed markups too long, and it makes you lazy.

They're thugs & crooks. And, I do have experience with them.

It's just that some, especially socialists, can't see them for what they are.

We are a lot more alike that we'd probably care to admit. :) A dying breed, making stuff, doing it yourself, learning how. You want to hear something scary RE: Johnny and Janie and the future? Many of friends say that their kids who are overly-activitied are also overly organized, that is, EVERYTHING is set up for them to "build their thing" or complete their task.

what do you think happens when the kids are left alone to just play?

THEY CAN'T (sorry for yelling). Yup, I have friends who say their kids can't play independently without being given something to do and direction on how to do it.

I grew up in rural CT in the 70s. other than splitting wood, being given something to do just wasn't an option. Tonka trucks, frogs and toads and turtles outside, Lego's and books inside. I think my strongest point, and many around me, is our innovative thinking, because that's what our brains did during the developmental years.

forget China, our country is doomed because it's being raised by a nation of nannies shuttling kids off to activities where they "learn" steps and processes.

THANK YOU!!

Shaun- That's the most interesting post I've seen in a long time. VERY interesting!

What percentage of kids have that problem? 1%? 2%? I have no idea, but I suspect it's much more common in certain regions/classes/socioeconomic groups than others.

Probably not a big issue among the kids of Wal-mart employees.

Conservatives and Liberals alike should hate Wal-Mart. Their employees are sucking up entitlement dollars:

Maybe slower in lower socio-economic classes, but they have their own versions of soccer practice.

Totally agree! Have set foot in a Wal-Mart once in the last year and that was to buy vacuum cleaner bags that no one else in the area had.

Could care less how much cheaper they sell things, they are running local business out of the area. Will not ever shop there unless I have no other choice.

JoeA

thanks Skip. what do you think when video games enter into this equation? these things cross every socio-economic line.

Here's the thing. You may say, "oh, this is just an issue around Shaun's liberal elite friends in the NE..." and indeed some friends are pretty well off, but most are in the high combined 5 figures and low 6, and then there's my sister, who I would consider a great mom, she stays at home, volunteers at school, very involved in the PTA, husband (GREAT guy... totally blue collar drives a truck in a small logging/construction outfit) is very middle class and while I LOVE my nephews who live in the Country (way out in Northwestern MA), they exhibit some of the same things. then there are my sort of crunchy natural friends in AZ, working class in IN, legal in MN, etc.... all over the country in quite different classes.

thing is, all their kids are dependent on their parents for things to do and sulk when they aren't having attention paid to them. Heck, when we were little kids, we'd show off for 10 minutes and then we were out of there getting into trouble. Kids today wait, and wait, sort of like the like guy on a date who's somehow got his uninterested date back to his apartment and he figures if he can just keep her there long enough, she'll break...

I think it's the way kids are being taught in schools these days coupled with video games coupled with scheduled everything with childcare/nannies, two-parent working homes. All of these things conspire to a brain dead future for our kids.

I want a mom or dad at home until 5-7, I want tax breaks for them, I want someone taking a look at how are kids are taught, I want kids out in the country more...

What?!?! And risk them catching red-state-itis??

Seriously, though, this is a good thread. Agree with most of what you've said here.

Yes, boarded up shops and business's that went bankrupt.

Ask people in smaller town what happened when wallyworld moved in...

JoeA

Subway Sandwich shops.
More of those freakin' Curves Spas.
Nail Salons.
Mortgage brokers.

There are plenty of washing machines in the front yards of MA! :)

and cash advance places - stacked one on top of the other

:D :D :D

Are you kidding? The more cushion the better the pushin'.

When Walmart doesn't provide benefits for their employees, guess who pays for their health care? That's right. Taxpayers - you and me. BTW, the top ten billionaires (according to Forbes) in the country are Waltons. Collectively, twice as wealthy as B. Gates who is numero uno.

Walmart is a business model observed by many large corporations looking to increase profits. Is this the type of business model we want to support and strive for?

http://walmartwatch.com/blog

Do you think your job is immune from this business model?

Sherwood

Two sides to every story: who would be paying their healthcare if they weren't working at all? Wal-mart provides employment to some very marginal workers.

Like their illegal alien cleaning crews that the managers lock up in the store overnight?

Right. You can't have it both ways. Wal-mart's providing jobs to people who would otherwise be on public assistance or have other low skill, low wage jobs with no health insurance. It's a lousy, low pay job at a friggin discount retailer--and people complain that they don't get Blue Cross???

My comment wasn't a justification--it was a twice-damning example of Wal-Mart's criminal business practices.

This is a false front for the real issue, and that real issue is union jobs...that is the only reason this story gets any traction...If unions or Democrats cared anything about wages and health care they would be full tilt trying to stop the flow of illegal aliens...If Democrats or unions cared for the little guy they would stop their frivolous lawsuit buddies rape and pillage of the medical industry and pharmaceuticals (lowering medical costs)...If Democrats or unions cared for the little guy they would appreciate the little guy being able to buy products for a cheap price.

Right, these lefties want to keep people down by paying them beyond what the job is worth and make career jobs out of jobs that are typically entry level employment.

So, Mul and RallyJon, you're okay with a business that is wildly successful, essentially by paying its workers so low that their lives still need to be taxpayer-subsidized? The conservative position is: Wal-Mart is an inspirational business model by using federal food stamp and medicare dollars to pay its workers.

Y'know, I coulda swore that you had a little problem with entitlement programs in general, so I'm a bit surprised to find that you support a business model that takes advantage of your tax dollars and drives small businesses bankrupt. I guess I still don't understand the conservative position. Perhaps you could outline it again for us in using this Wal-Mart model as an illustration. Please.

It's not just Wal-mart. It's most available entry level jobs for non-skilled workers. I think the conservative position, if you want to call it that, is that any time you can get someone showing up on time, punching a clock, and seeing a correlation between making an effort and getting some reward, that's a good thing for society. Full stop.

Would it be better if the local manufacturing plant was hiring and training high-school dropouts and paying them a good wage and full benefits? Sure. But back to reality...

You mean the cleaning crews that the liberal border county politicians want to have free unfettered access to America, driver's licenses, free school and medical care?...The illegal cleaning crews that eventually work their way up to having their own businesses?...You are in some intellectually dishonest way trying to say they are slave labor?

More liberal problem creating and solution offering at work...schizophrenic in its logic.