What do you think about Wal-Mart?

Post Reply New Topic

Walmart is the antichrist for someone like me. It's like going to Disney. I'm grocery store phobic, so compound that one hundred times and you have Walmart. I'd rather pull out my own toenails with pliers than go in there. Just the parking lot makes me get hives.

Walmart is just a store folks. A freaking building with people.

It must be fun living in that world of danger and intrigue.

I could go into how Capitalism works, how business works, the current state of the economy, the current state of inflation, the current standards of living, my personal observations about how Wal-Mart has changed things around here, et cetera...

But, I've given up on trying to convince people on the internet of anything long ago. I live with enough frustration in my life. Get back to me when the world is still here thirty years later and exactly nothing has changed.

Here's my big question for you SO?

I COULD talk about how a bunch of jerks created a STUPID rumor mill in the late 1990s that drove stock prices SKY HIGH and another idiot didn't like that so he boosted the fed funds rate SKY HIGH destroying the economy causing stocks to PLUMMET and MANY viable companies to go BANKRUPT! I could ALSO talk about how he forced the funds rate VERY low and caused the DOLLARS value to plummet! I could discuss about how countries are talking about ABANDONING the dollar! I could talk about how we could have had a MAJOR collapse if not for curbs instituted in the 1987 crash.

I could ALSO talk about how the new lower rate encouraged home "investment", artificially increased prices, etc... I could talk about the people that WEREN'T overextended already that were encouraged to switch to interest only low interest variable loans. I would also mention about how these were generally abandoned in the 70s after they destroyed the economy THEN!

I could ALSO mention that a LOT of people lie! The Airline industry, for example, has NEVER recovered! The "planes are full" because they have fewer flights, and smaller planes!

I could ALSO mention that a lot of idiots revel in how the US is becomming a "service economy". There is NO SUCH THING! WHAT service? Selling? Shipping? Info?(Even films, etc... are being moved elsewhere, etc....) Packaging? So we just shift product? You can NOT survive on that, yet that is where we are headed.

Thirty years? The US has changed a LOT in only 5 years! It changed more in 10 years. HECK, I wonder how long my industry will be here! In the US, it used to be(9 years ago) nearly 100% DOMESTIC!! TODAY? It is less than 40% domestic! The 40% that exists is now making HALF of what it used to per hour! MY GOD! Even TECH SUPPORT moved off shore. SURE, some SUPPOSEDLY moved it back, but most DIDN'T! Get back to me in 20 years when you are laid off from walmart, and having trouble finding work!

Steve

Steve gets it and anyone thinks it's just a store is clueless.

They had a month to fill my order and they cancelled it and said they couldn't fill it. I will never go Wal-Mart again. Now I order everything online.

Wal-Mart = Sweat shops and end of local businesses

Will you guys just THINK before spouting off rhetoric?

Wal-Mart is one of the great shining examples of what a market economy can achieve. If I were to give a tour of the United States to visitors from a socialist country, who are used to experiencing chronic shortages of almost everything, Wal-Mart would be one of the first places I would take them. It is a perfect symbol of one of the most remarkable things that we have — an enormous variety of high quality, low cost products that are available to virtually everyone throughout the United States.

Wal-Mart stores are indeed impressive sights, housed in gigantic structures, capable of serving many thousands of customers every day. Wal-Mart's most common type of store — the Supercenter — offers customers an indoor, air-conditioned shopping area larger than three football fields. These shopping behemoths provide so much — such a staggeringly huge range of well-made products — that a person could practically live his whole life without having to shop anywhere else.

Walk into a Wal-Mart Supercenter and look around; the place is amazing! It boggles the mind to think of the enormous complexity that must be involved in running a store that accomplishes all this, which is truly responsible for an improvement in our standard of living. For Wal-Mart to provide so much, for so many, as efficiently, reliably, and inexpensively as it does is an economic miracle. Never in human history have so many people had such affordable and convenient access to all the products that Wal-Mart offers, and the number of people with this access is growing all the time. As Wal-Mart's late founder Sam Walton said:

"…we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished; we've just begun."

This is a company that deserves to be praised and admired the world over.

To understand Wal-Mart's economic significance, the concept of wealth must first be understood. Economic progress means an increasing level of wealth, both for the individual and for the entire economic system. Wealth, in an economic sense, is material goods that have been produced by human labor. This includes cars, houses, lipstick, silverware, garden hoses, television sets, and anything else that has been taken from nature and changed by man into something that is more valuable to man. It can include land or natural resources to the extent that humans perform labor to make them useful.
"Wal-Mart is one of the great shining examples of what a market economy can achieve."

Wealth is not the same thing as money. Money is simply a medium of exchange for wealth. Money derives its value from the wealth available for trade in an economic system. For example, if someone were stranded alone on a desert island with few supplies, it would not be accurate to call this person wealthy even if he had $5 million in cash with him on the island. His money is valueless here because there is no wealth on the desert island for him to buy. Since money derives its value from wealth, as an economic system produces more total wealth, its money supply becomes more valuable.

To learn what policies would create the most wealth is the most fundamental concern of economic science. It is not primarily concerned with consumer spending, or jobs, or interest rates, but with wealth. And it is not about how to make some particular group wealthier; rather, it is about how to make the entire economic system wealthier. It is no coincidence that one of the most influential economics books ever written is titled The Wealth of Nations. This innovative work was one of the first to focus not on the wealth of steelworkers, or the wealth of blacksmiths, but on the wealth of entire nations. We should use this same focus in deciding whether or not "Wal-Mart is bad for America."

I got my ears pierced at a Wal-Mart. They didn't use stainless steel piercing tools and now 10 years later I am still negatively effected by that in the form of a nickel allergy. Also, I don't know if anyone has stated this yet, but has anyone noticed how Wal-Mart is all weird about music CDs that have the explicit lyrics sticker on them yet they sell R rated movies and have their hunting supplies right next to the toys? Not like I care or anything, but it is very odd and hypocritical of them. Also, their selections suck. Ever take a look at their bedding and curtains? Ew.

I still shop there however. Best to go at like...1-4am, it is soooo empty and peaceful.

Last edited by euphrosyne on 07 Feb 2007, 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

shop there every day.



wish i didn't have to but they're cheap and have the food and what not i like.

Wal-mart is the creation of globalist,capitalist scum.

I only shop there when i have to,other than that,meijers,best buy and target FTW!! !! !

Unless somebody lives in Bugtussle Arkansas everything wal-mart sells was already available in metropolitian areas from stores like sears & k-mart and the grocery stores. Those store's offered jobs to many more people at a decent salary & provided decent health care insurance. It's not just the stores, the warehousing & trucking end of it has also caused millions of people hardship. If somebody is so hard up over saving $2.00 a week at the store that they think wal-mart is all it, maybe they are freaken losers and get their jollies out of knowing other people got dragged down to their level.

The people who get the biggest benefit from the slave wages are those with the most disposable income, so in effect the working poor are slaving away for yuppies for pennies so the yuppies can have an even higher standard of living at the expense of the working class.

I don't like 'shopping' there very much.
I do like seeing a place where the elderly and disabled are welcomed to work-cart at the door-?-thank you 'grand mother'.
I do like their eye shop. ooh! which reminds me...

Other than that, I've always been bothered by their marketing phrases ultimately in the form of that annoying yellow face gladly listing a not so incredibly low price-not low enough for all that 'who-rah'.



I have no grudges against them. Not certain why anyone does. How are they so different from say KMart or Target?

And-KMarts better.

http://wakeupwalmart.com/

The people stand around talking, when they're supposed to be helping their customers. That's why I don't care for Walmart. I do admit that they have good prices, though.