Wal Mart.. Good or Evil

[kahuna]

Originally posted by racketboy@Jan 22, 2004 @ 07:07 PM

Now the one in Michigan where my parents live was turned into a supercenter a couple years ago. It's great. I don't really have any complaints.

West Michigan?

 

[racketboy]

Originally posted by kahuna+Jan 23, 2004 @ 05:17 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kahuna @ Jan 23, 2004 @ 05:17 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-racketboy@Jan 22, 2004 @ 07:07 PM

Now the one in Michigan where my parents live was turned into a supercenter a couple years ago. It's great. I don't really have any complaints.

West Michigan? [/b][/quote]

Lansing area

 

[racketboy]

Originally posted by ExCyber@Jan 23, 2004 @ 04:57 PM

you can't compete for the same market (people who only want the best price). You have to market toward another market -- richer, snobbier people -- or afficianados of a certain item. Look at designer clothes lines. They definately aren't cheap. But some people insist on getting them.

The problem is that nothing stops Wal-Mart / Sam's Club (the company, not the stores) from going after the same people (with proper marketing, nobody's going to care that Wal-Mart owns the store any more than people care that Oreos are owned by a tobacco company) you have little choice but to go complain to the government, try to stir up grassroots opposition, or close your doors and move on to the next niche that they haven't targeted yet. Your best bet is probably to get into nanotechnology/biotechnology so that you have some chance of outliving the usefulness of mass distribution of prefabricated consumer goods.

you could always start a business that supplies to or works with WalMart

I read in Money magazine that the companies that make Walmart's "store brand" stuff are making good money.

In addition, when you start your own business, you need to realize that it's a risk no matter what your business is. You can make money and you can lose money. If you don't want to take that risk, get a normal job working for someone else that will take that risk.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

I just think its a shame that a company that makes billion upon billions of dollars cant pay its employees a little bit better.. If you have little choice but to work at a place and you dont have benefits times can be tough.. I know its not wal marts problem.. but they act like the friendly nieghbor that is here to help.. and that just isnt the case..

Capatalism can be good to a point.. But i feel if any one company in any business becomes to big it can only mean trouble for everyone else..

 

[racketboy]

A Walmart job is better than no job.

There's always McDonalds too 🙂

Anyway, nobody forces people to work there.

There's plenty of other opportunities.

 

[ExCyber]

Anyway, nobody forces people to work there.

There's plenty of other opportunities.

Well no, there are not plenty of opportunites. If there were, people wouldn't be working for minimum wage.

 

[racketboy]

but there are also plenty of people who get paid more

 

[ExCyber]

"Plenty", even by the most conservative defintion, means at least enough. How is it that "plenty" of people are being paid substantially more than minimum wage and yet there are calls by labor organizations to increase the minimum wage? Why would anyone care about this if "plenty" of people are already making more?

 

[racketboy]

raising minimum wage would just increase inflation.

if minimum wage goes up, everyone else will want a raise

and then your dollar will be worth less

 

[MasterAkumaMatata]

:huh So to combat inflation, one solution is to lower minimum wage? :lol:

 

[ExCyber]

You're all but arguing my point for me - if raising the minimum wage causes so many problems, and hardly anyone depends on it anyway, why are large labor organizations pushing for it? Surely their memberships have bigger fish to fry if things are as you say.

 

[racketboy]

I'm just saying raising minimum wage isn't an easy solution

 

[ExCyber]

And I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm just saying that the problem of a job shortage is there in the first place, something that your previous posts seem to deny.

So to combat inflation, one solution is to lower minimum wage?

Perhaps. The economy is sort of like the "five blind men and an elephant" idiom, and the field of economics is based more strongly on ideology than on any kind of clear empirical basis, so it's hard to say for sure what would help and what wouldn't. Still, I'm inclined to think that Treasury, Federal Reserve, and import/export policies probably affect inflation quite a bit more heavily than the minimum wage.

 

[it290]

Too true. I think part of the problem is that when politicians deal with economic issues, they tend to speak of them as if they were cut-and-dry, when in fact the global enonomy is a system whose complexity and chaotic nature rivals that of the weather, or seismic movements.