Comments on: Wal-Mart Good for the American Working Class?

By: The Business of America is Business

The Business of America is Business — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:45:16 +0000

The Carnival of Wal-Mart I...

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Carnival of Wal-Mart. Fourteen posts have been carnivalized and they represent a broad range of perspectives on Wal-Mart and its impacts. I would greatly appreciate your adding to the body of your post, this HTML...

By: Rick DeMent

Rick DeMent — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:58:34 +0000

â��The most significant American business success story of the late 20th century may well be Wal-Mart, which has applied extensive computerization and a home-grown version of Japanâ��s â��just in timeâ�� inventory methods to revolutionize retailing.â��

Which will be wiped away substantially, if not all together, as fuel prices continue to go up. This is a perfect example of the kinds of productivity gains that are exclusive to a cheap oil economy that flat earth economists never include in their models. Unless a transportation fuel can be substituted with the same cost to produce and the same amount of energy production this very significant slice of productivity will be gone.

By: reliapundit

reliapundit — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:16:52 +0000

if you don't like walmart, then don't shop there.

no one is forced to.

the libs think people who do shop there are too dumb to know it's REALLYREALLYREALLY bad for them.

the libs would rather poor folks overpaid for stuff sold by mom&pop stores.

which is - what - pro-worker!? sheesh.

the anti walmart schtick is really all about bullies who want to tell everyone else where to shop.

the same impulse that makes them like the nanny state.

it's what makes libs libs, essentially.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 23:01:07 +0000

Floyd,

I'm not sure what country you're living in but where I live the ability to buy an incredibly high variety of foods and other products continues to escalate. We can get virtually any food anyone has ever heard of pretty much any time of the year just about anywhere in the country. And most people can afford most of it.

By: floyd

floyd — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:39:52 +0000

walmart has reduced prices while at the same time eliminating quality in a large variety of products.soon we will have no choice left but to buy orange and blue striped cropped top t-shirts, non-width rated shoes,and various other wash once articles of clothing. not to mention whole varieties of grocery items removed from our tables permanently.walmart revels in telling america to eat crap,wear crap, and buy non repairable items of all kinds. as the middle class fades in america we will be forced to to buy more and more crap as walmart's [price is all that matters] mentality,destroys the production of quality worldwide.you might say it's the buyer's fault, but in reality it is only the fault of a"critical mass" of buyers that tip the scales and leave decent products either out of reach of the middle class or out of production altogether.

By: Scott_T

Scott_T — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:56:15 +0000

is that the people who own Wal-Mart make a lot of money, and they are therefore evil. Letâ??s never forget that

As he said after he typed that on a keyboard he bought from Wal-Mart for $9.95. :)

By: The American Mind

The American Mind — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:27:53 +0000

Critics Gloss Over Wal-Mart's Cheap Prices...

Jason Furman, a self-professed progressive [PDF] who "instinctively recoil[s] at the big-box shopping centers spreading their uniformity across the American......

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:03:18 +0000

Legion,

I used to sell to people who made things for Wal Mart. They would always try to get me to lower prices for them. They would point to the big walmart deal that would generate huge volume as justification. I worked in an industry with relatively good cost information (how much it cost us to make something) and good margins (so we had room to work). My experience with the companies who won the big walmart deal and went out of business was they got to excited about the volume and didn't watch their bottom line. I had to walk from more than one deal because the numbers they wanted were to low (even with the volume).

Walmart used to have a strong 'buy American' policy. That is gone. But while they could kill a mom and pop store, they still tend to only cause companies to go under when they get to anxious for the deal with walmart that they don't think it through.

By: madmatt

madmatt — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:41:54 +0000

And exactly what foods are they looking at...walmart has several loss leaders that they sell much cheaper than their competitors...however the other products they carry are the same price or more than target, sears etc. As a matter of fact that is the first thing one of your studies mentions...do you read them or just the headlines...and that "MOST CAREFUL ECONOMIC STUDY" is done by a shill company that is FUNDED BY WALMART...why didn't you mention that fact?

By: don surber

don surber — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:29:29 +0000

Well, of course it is. Union-generated inflation in the 1970s wasn't. End of story

By: legion

legion — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 20:17:40 +0000

Unfortunately, there's a side of this coin the various authors don't want to add into their calculations... If your job has been eliminated by the surfacing of the Wal-Mart whale in yuor economic puddle, you likely don't have much of an income to shop with. Wal-Mart could be selling Ferrari's at half-cost, and I still wouldn't be able to buy one...