Well since you did a case study, you should be able to provide us with convincing details on how WalMart's HMO plan is similar to your Pizza Hut plan. I don't expect these details anytime soon, because there is no comparison. Please give us some details of your "case study", or admit you are simply lying.

Let me ask a question of all the pro Walmart people.

If WalMart is such a great godsend to the poor class, how come WalMart was voted down in California when trying to build a supercenter. And this was in a poor neighborhood which supposely(according to your arguments)should have benefited greatly by the low prices.

Also, what about the many areas that have voted down or banned WalMart from building in their communities. Maybe it has something to do with being the 900 lb. gorilla. Their attitude is the hell with you, we know what is best for you.

Maybe I didn't see it, but I haven't noticed K-Mart or Target using this tactic.

In my state Walmart has been denied zoning quite a few times. Why? In my community there is a enclosed mall and strip malls on one side of the interstate. There are several blocks of vacant land(one is 30 acres)in this area. On the other side of the interstate there is a gas station and a convient store and the rest is residential. Guess where WalMart wanted to build? Right!!!! The zoning board changed the zoning from residential to commerical without giving advance notice on the zoning meeting. I wonder what exchanged hands under the table.

Now there is a traffic jam on a narrow 2 Lane road that can never carry the traffic. Who cares. Walmart got their way. But they are so positive for the neighborhood. BAH!!!!! Tell that to someone who believes that garbage.

It just sounds like you had a bad experience. I am not saying WalMart is a godsend, but ask yourself what corporation - including KMart and Target would not want to switch places with WalMart right now?

It would be bad business sense to think otherwise. No one said WalMart does not hurt neighboring businesses. WalMart has been in my town for years, but when Super WalMart moved in with its grocery stores, many of our 24 groceries had to cut back on hours. There is no doubt that competition eats away at your "hold" of the community, but that is why there IS competition, free-enterprise, a market economy.

I just do not understand why people single WalMart out for being so evil. I wonder if it is the same people who hate Microsoft and cannot stand to drink Coca Cola. Don't get me wrong. I love being for a cause as much as the next guy.

But this isn't a cause. It's an effect.

Government isn't so much clubbing communities over the head and forcing them who to patronize. Rather, government is (should) merely act as the referee between two pugilists. We don't have featherweights fighting heavyweights, and there is a reason for that. Likewise, it's unrealistic to expect that mom and pop grocery stores have a slight hope of surviving against a mass retail chain store in a small community that can depress the cost of their goods because the other stores across the country will help them out by supoorting the local chain store until competition is wiped out. Wal-Mart's practices are monopolistic and reek of 19th century corruption.

Hey!!! look you don't have any reason to say that. I *did* do a case study on WalMart's *marketing* program for a marketing class. I had a problem with it because I had to sift through dozens of "bad" stuff about WalMart before I could find info about their marketing tactics.

My "case study" wasn't on their health plan, but in looking for info about the company I found several anonymous employee boards for people who work for WalMart but who are afraid to say anything about them publicly. The detail was sufficient enough (concerning operations and employee review etc...) that it was pretty clear the boards were real.

I know someone who works for WalMart in CA and she laughed when I told her about my pizza hut story and she said the WalMart plan was quite similar.

I can go searching for these things and if you like I will. But there isn't any reason to accuse me of lying about them Hugo.

Please remember that what the initial question was had to do with whether or not WalMart was Bad For Communities. This is a completely different question than whether or not WalMart should be allowed to do whatever they want.

Another thought on WalMart: Some people seem to be saying that WalMart has the right to refrain from selling whatever they want. They are a corporation and they can choose what to sell. But to be logically consistent one would also have to say that a corporation can also sell what they want to sell too.

If you think about the nearest property to your home...possibly the street corner that leads to your subdivision for instance, would this same standard apply. What if that corner was purchased by a corporation that wanted to sell sex toys? Do they have that right? If you were to be logically consistent you would have to say that it is their property, their company and they can sell whatever they want.

But let's not even go that far. In a town in South Carolina (Laurens), a small corporation/company opened up a "Confederate and War Memorabilia store". The store is draped outside with six Confederate Battle Flags. Inside they sell a bunch of white supremacist "memorabilia", things that are pretty outrageous and offensive. They put a lot of segregationist posters in the window too. They also sell Nazi war stuff . The town is mostly embarrassed by this, but there wasn't anything they could do to stop them from setting up shop and now Laurens has become a tourist attraction stop for racists.

Now suppose this kind of a store opened up on that corner that leads to the entrance to your residential community. Who would want that?

What about a salvage yard, or a used car lot with plenty of hubcaps for sale? A strip club, a pawn shop?

I can think of plenty of things that companies could sell in your community that almost anyone would object to if it was in their neighborhood. That is why most businesses don't put their stores in locations that the community will find offensive. They have the right to do so, but they don't want to fight long legal battles.

WalMart can fight the legal battles. The citizens are protesting the opening of a WalMart on many of the same grounds...traffic, eyesore, destruction of the town's image or well being etc.. WalMart doesn't care about whether or not the citizens want them there.

So WalMart may have the right to do whatever it does, and carry or not carry whatever merchandise they want, in a strict sense. But WalMart is violating the covenant between the public and the company by refusing to carry goods they deem immoral or wrong in the same way that another company would CARRY goods that the community would deem to be immoral or wrong.

They force themselves on communities that do not want them there, in the same way that a porn shop would be forcing themselves on a community that did not want them there.

In order to be logically consistent you must allow that a company's rights may not be subservient to community wishes when it comes to the products they carry or don't carry, and the company's rights to locate where it chooses should not be infringed by the community either.

Gosh, it just amazes me how many people complain about wal-mart.

Just in the last 9 months moved back to the big city, before lived out west on the Navajo Reservation. The nearest town was 30 miles away, where non-native americans must see doctors, receive medicine etc. And I loved the Wal-Mart super center. It was a one stop shop. Could change your oil, buy groceries and do other shopping all at once. Sometimes even got a hair cut. After driving the 30 miles it was nice not to have and stop at every stoplight, burn gas, and time sitting there.

I used to work for K-mart, but those who run Wal-mart had more vision than did K-Mart. As evident by K-Mart bankrupcty.

Living here in the big city(St. Louis) I miss my super Wal-mart. Haven't found a grocery store here yet that I like. Never thought I would see the day that I missed something from Gallup, New Mexico, but I do!!

After reading through this thread my opinion of walmart has been lowered...further.

Mrs. Pigpen noted that Walmarts tend to trash up an area...and I'm not sure if the Walmart is responsible but right around the time that it came to my parents area low income housing started springing up all around the area. It came along with the rest of a brand new shopping center...

The shopping center where the Walmart is located also has a Kohls, Target, Blockbuster, Giant, Subway, Starbucks, Best Buy, Borders (where did all the small bookstores go?), Home Depot, and PetsMart. (across the street a McDonalds and an Exxon) Notice anything? All big name big business chain stores. This shopping center virtually put out of business a smaller older shopping center up the street which consisted of ... well gosh I can hardly remember what it used to have. Now its a unpopular Giant (older and not as glamourous as the new), a popular Fitness First that replaced what stores I can barely remember, and an Asian Sushi Restaurant. It didn't help that a community road leading to the shopping center was shut down and a big new highway built that made the new shopping center all the more convenient. I'm positive there used to be a Rocky Video (a smaller video store) there among other things. Blockbuster also drove out of business a cheap and wonderful video store a few miles away...probably now the sight of a Curves (up and coming to put a bandaid on the fast food problem) While I must say I do shop at these big corporate stores listed above, unavoidable often and cheap (well sometimes), I can't say I'm pleased. The constant housing construction, new bigger roads taking the place of older winding (and actually fun to drive on roads), chain stores, and deforestation are all depressing. A raging deer problem has developed.

Conclusion: Walmarts aren't healthy...they may be cheap but in the longrun they are regrettable additions to the community along with the other chain stores.

Wal-Mart has a long history of sticking it to the commons and the people who work for them. Most recently, Wal-Mart got nailed for violating the federal clean water act at 24 sites in 9 states. In terms of their workers, Wal-Mart cheated 83 people out of over-time pay. A study in early 2004, found conclusive evidence that the public taxpayers make up the difference in poor pay and medical benefits of Wal-Mart employees. Yes, I enjoy Wal-Mart and the low prices. At the same time, I'm more and more coming to the conclusion that low-prices are leading to a karmic low-lifestyle for thousands of people who are on the other side of the check-out line.

It appears that WalMart is on the right track, especially with the Vice-President.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18704

This guy is full of anti-globalization crap. Ordinary people are not protesting WalMart in Chicago. The local alderman voted FOR the WalMart, and the committee chair in the city gov't vetoed it without a hearing, because she is beholden to the UNION LOBBY. Now, I don't like WalMart's labor policies either, and sure wouldn't if I was in a union, but the fact remails, this was not local people or a grassroots anti WalMart effort. This was poor, under-served city residents that deserve a nice store with affordable goods, whether WalMart or someone else. I wouldn't be surprised if the local food chains lobbied against it in the back room as well.

And just where would these people be working? They would be lined up 10 deep to apply for $8 / hr. at WalMart because there is no business in the inner city. The Food and Liquors stores are all mom & pops paying $5.15 or exclusively employing family members. I don't hear anyone compaining that "Joe's Grocery pays minimum wage and doesn't have health insurance" even though it's mostly true.

Is WalMart bad for communities? Sometimes.
Can it be good for communities? In the case of inner cities, I'd say always.

I think it is healthy for a community. A Wal-Mart supercenter can employ many people whereas a "mom & pop" type store can only employ only maybe a few people. Also, communities are going to have to change with the economic and corporate changes that are occuring in the US or they will become ghost towns. Some small towns don't have anything big in the way of businesses, so a big store like Wal Mart, which could employ many people, can help pick it up

GA

I disagree with your assessment of WalMart. Especially in your comparsion with the "Mom and Pop" stores. Usually when WalMart comes to a town they definitely replace more than 1 or 2 or 3 stores. I have read somewhere that WalMart never hires as many people as the jobs they destroyed in the town. I only found 1 reference to that fact which is as follows:

http://www.gojefferson.com/banner/opinion/...dex_200211.html



This study showed that for every job that WalMart creates , 1.5 jobs are lost elsewhere

Money made in the "Mom and Pop" stores remains in the community where most of WalMarts profits are sent back to headquarters

Full time jobs at WalMart are no more than 28 hours.

I have seen facts similar to these in other sources. I will post them as soon as I find them.

The abstract of a study of the impact of a WalMart to rural communites in West Virginia.
The Locational Impact of Wal-Mart Entrance:
A Panel Study of the Retail Trade Sector in West Virginia
Michael J. Hicks, Ph.D.
Director of Applied Research
&
Kristy Wilburn
Graduate Research Assistant
Center for Business and Economic Research
Lewis College of Business
Marshall University
400 Hal Greer Blvd
Huntington, West Virginia 25755
(304) 696-6251
hicksm@marshall.edu
Key Words: Economic Growth, Market Structure, Retail Trade
Abstract: This paper examines the retail trade sector in 14 West Virginia counties from 1989 through 1996. A series of random effects models are tested on these panel data to measure the effect of the entrance of Wal-Mart stores in the county and in adjacent counties, and business cycle effects. This paper differs from earlier
research in that it controls for endogeneity in the entrance decision of Wal-Mart in faster growing counties.This research finds a dramatic net increase in employment and wages in the Retail Trade sector (SIC 52) and a mild increase in the number of firms. The study finds a per capita wage increase in this industry, which is
surprising but small. The paper concludes with further research recommendations.
(end of abstract)

People should check out this study. Yes, Wal-Mart increases jobs and raises wages in rural communities. It also actually increases the number of firms, all this while lowering prices, thus increasing the real wage of Wal-Mart consumers.

It is quite possible to say that where there was nothing and you put SOMETHING, things are better.

"This research finds a dramatic net increase in employment and wages in the Retail Trade sector (SIC 52) and a mild increase in the number of firms"

This too would seem self-evident.

Along with the WalMart comes the other corporate chains which is also self-evident.

I have no problem understanding that WalMart's at an Oasis in the desert would be a good idea.

Well, I guess if I can get Popeye to agree with your stance I got this debate won. Somehow I think he will disagree. Of course your assertion that Wal-Marts, in this study, are an "oasis in the desert" is as undocumented by evidence as your healthcare comparisons with your great Pizza Hut plan.

[QUOTE]Along with the WalMart comes the other corporate chains which is also self-evident.

Really? So you are arguing that Wal-Mart increases jobs and increases competition? Seems like win/win here for workers and consumers. God bless Wal-Mart.

I know I said I was bowing out of the whole Wal-Mart brouhaha, but this was just too rich not to share!

A whole FREAKIN' state is "endangered" because of Wal-Mart! Oh, it is just too funny!

On a serious note the following was in several news sources:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18816



So WalMart is receiving welfare and quite a few of their employees are receiving free health care from the state. I guess that makes sense.

On a less serious note, I had a kitchen light fixture that had 3 circle florescent lights in which 2 were shot. I decided to replace all three and went to Lowes. On the way back home I was going by WalMart and was curious and decided to check on the price of the florescent lights. On each of the 3 lights WalMart was approximately $1.75 higher. I was surprised at the difference. I know this was only 3 items but maybe WalMarts aren't the lowest price that everyone thinks they are.

I believe it is sort of healthy for a community. Wal-Mart has low prices. I purchased a titanium razor for less money at Wal-Mart than what would have cost at Mar-Beck. Aside from Wal-Mart's auto service, the only thing I don't like about Wal-Mart is its salespeoples' ability to understand their own products. That's why I usually shop at a "mom & pop" store because they usually understand their own products and can explain them to me.

Judge approves class-action discrimination case against Wal-Mart.





I believe this was alluded to earlier, but this newest ruling certainly gives some creedence to the claim, a judge felt there was enough evidence to proceed with the class action suit.

I read the article this morning at The New York Times website too Cube Jockey. The article did give more than one study that showed quite a difference in the number of female managers to male managers as compared to other retailers. Wal-Mart claimed the statistics were wrong, but UC-Berkley researchers aren't exactly the dumbest people on the planet. If that research finding was flawed, it would've been pointed out by some over-zealous, tenure-seeking,reputation-desiring troll in a peer-reviewed edited publication. Anyone with even a trace of how college publication works would know that Wal-Mart's claim is truly lacking given the college peer-review process. Wal-Mart should have discredited the claim through research of their own, evidently they resorted to an "is not!.." kind of childs argument since no statistics were put forward to rebut the researcher's claims. Their response as listed in the Times would not have passed muster here at A.D., since we demand actual sources and backing-up one's claim.

Im gonna just spit out some easy rhetoric for this one....

The American Dream is more or less to do what you want to, and to be guarunteed to reap the benefits of your efforts, and the consequences. That said I think on a fundamental level corporations like Wal-Mart destroy this 'dream.' Larg e Business crushing small business is no new thing, but it has become so grossly exaggerated, and Big business so powerful that some towns could run entirely on Wal-Mart and never have need for, or want for local small businesses. Large chains are simply more convenient, and gurantee a certain product selection that most people are confortable with. That aspect is all right... just the fact that thanks to Wal-Mart anyone who is interested in becoming a grocer (fulfillment of their dream) had better wake up and smell the Starbucks, the big boys don't make room for competition, it's bad business.

Do you think this is healthy for a community?
It depends on the community but on average no, since it will ultimately displace small business. That and for all the reasons cited previously, Wal-Mart is evil. I will point again to Barbara Ehrenrich's Nickled and Dimed, where barbara herself was emplyed by Wal-Mart and met some of the most troublingly defeated people, whom barely flounder in the lower class living in abject poverty. Wal-Mart could afford to pay its 'associates' more, and provide more benefits, but it doesn't. That fact alone is bad for a community who is employed through such a company.

Walmart is great. If offers me cheap prices on good I wish to purchase. What more could I ask? It hires a ton of people too. Let's face it, its not like the clerk at the mom and pop store was making great money. He could do no worse at Walmart in most cases. And like most companies, Walmart will look for ways to increase their profit. They will do this by raising prices when the competition has been wiped out. Blockbuster sort of did this someone noted. That is the wonderful thing about competition and a free market. As Blockbuster has become increasingly expensive, other companies have ways to compete. For $20 a month one can subscribe to Netflix and get all the movies your want, with no late fee charges. There are now Pay per view services through cable and satellite to compete as well. In response, blockbuster has become more liberal in their return policies. Movies not on the new release list can be held a week without additional fee. Remember when it is 2 or three days? I can't predict who will come in to compete with Walmart or what technology will be used. All I know is that someone will try and the consumer will benefit. In the meantime, I will keep saving money by shopping at Walmart.

I wouldn't say that Wal-Mart is a paragon of virtues, undoubtedly consumers do get low prices, but consumers end up paying more after all.



and...



-Arizaona Central article

I agree that the government should provide a safety net for those at the bottom without means of their own, but to create such a system is just incredible. There are good things about Wal-Mart, don't get me wrong, but the sales clerk who works a ton of hours should not have to use government aid in any way to compensate for a lack of pay and benefits so that someone can buy a Shrek doll for $10.00 less.

The people at UC Berkeley who made this study obviously have an axe to grind. They also buy into the socialist principle of a "living wage". This is a classic situation of "is the glass half empty or full?" Does Walmart hurt Californians or benefit Californians? The study says the cup is half empty, that Walmart hurts Californians because some of its employees supplement their income through government assistance.

The glass-half-empty crowd is wrong on this one. Metaphorically speaking, it is better to have some water in the glass than none at all! If Walmart suddenly packed its bags and moved out of California, 100% of its 44,000 employees would cost taxpayers a whole lot more since they would then require complete government assistance. So in that light, Walmart is actually saving taxpayers money! Thank goodness Walmart exists in California.

I'm curious why you think that is a socialist principle, or that paying a "living wage" is a bad thing?

Put another way, you live in San Jose -- you know how expensive it is to live there and you also know how expensive it still is if you move way out to the middle of nowhere. People commute from Stockton, Tracy, suburbs of Sacramento to work in the Bay Area every day (thats about 4 hours a day of commute) and the houses they live in still cost 400K.

Now given the fact that people work at places like WalMart fulltime as their career are you just going to tell them ok well you spent your entire day with us but that isn't good enough, you can either pay rent this month or eat, you decide.

The concept of a living wage isn't that you are rich, it is that you can afford the most basic accomodations if you choose to work somewhere fulltime. I can't possibly see how you would consider that wrong.

I can see how you might possibly be on WalMart's side as far as paying their employees low wages as "good capitalism". But, they chose to do business in California, they know how expensive it is here and they have a certain responsibility to their workers to help them live. If they don't like it they can pack their ugly stores up and head somewhere the cost of living is cheap.

How does having under-employed people who can't pay the bills improve our way of life? While it may bring down the unemployment statistics, it raises the statistics of those who have to avail themselves of public assistance, particularly housing projects and health departments. Wal-Mart, while it provides brand-name goods on the cheap, is actually perpetuating more economic problems than it is solving.

The Bible says, "The laborer is worthy of his hire," and "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox while it treadeth the corn." Is the Bible a socialist document?

Can anyone refute the following?
everything bad said about WalMart so far in this debate can also be said about other major businesses, even if to a lesser extent.
Same for small businesses as well.
I watched many of my friends children over the last 20 years graduate from High School and go looking for jobs. Mom/Pop and very small businesses rarely offer health insurance, and the minute they don't need you, you are out the door.
Bigger businesses, especially the ones that require some skills of their employees, are more likely to treat them better.
I suppose if we have minimal skills, then we are going to continue to be victims of this kind of situation.
And as long as so many of us think we can get by on minimal skills, these businesses have an easy time "abusing" us.
I submit that most of our problems are self inflicted, and we should not be surprised if there are others out there willing to take advantage of our situations.

deerjerkydave



Aren't you forgetting something in your equation. If there was no Walmart then thousands of individuals would not have lost their jobs in the first place. So those 44,000 employees you mentioned were probably working at another retail store or grocery that was run out of business or lost business and had to cut the number of employees.

So in that light, is Walmart saving taxpayers money? I think not.

The excessively high cost of living in California is artificially caused by socialism. The solution isn't more socialism. It is not just coincidence that the liberal areas of our nation also have the highest cost of living. Why is that? A fundamental principle of socialism is the elimination of private property. The state of California spends tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars every year to buy up private land (as does our federal government). At the same time, housing developers are slapped with oppressive restrictions on development. Because the supply of property is artificially low and the demand to live in California is high, the price of property goes up up up. The solution is to loose the market from the chains of socialism so that the housing development can meet the demand of the public, where cost of living can become affordable to all, even to those with low skills.

I used to believe in the idea of a minimum/living wage. I now realize that it ends up hurting the very people it is designed to help, as well as the consumer. The reality is that zero dollars an hour is the true minimum wage. If someone's skill set is worth less than the government imposed minimum wage, they will be unable to find work and they default to the true minimum wage of zero. There is no in between. I grew up here in San Jose. I never saw people loitering in front of the hardware store for lack of work until a few years ago when the minimum wage in California rose to 6.75/hour.

A realtor friend of mine just told me that this year there are half the homes on the market in the bay area than there were last year, and demand has remained the same..

Socialist Party USA supports living wages:
http://sp-usa.org/about/platform/economics.html

Socialist Party USA calls for government ownership of all "natural resources" (which is land):
http://sp-usa.org/about/platform/environment.html

California spends hundreds of millions on land acquisition:
http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2002/resour..._3790_anl02.htm
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews.../6904340.htm?1c

Just because other companies engage in sexual discrimination(see my earlier posting for documentation) doesn't excuse Wal-Mart from engaging in it. The "everybody's doing it" line of reasoning shouldn't be an exercise in washing away the sins of Wal-Mart.

agree, but why is WalMart the bad guy so often?
I can agree that the Mom and Pop businesses getting overwhelmed is a bad thing, but in my experience the smaller business in small to mid sized towns will take advantage of their having few or no competitors and ill treat the customer and employee just as quickly. I have even seen employees get treated badly in family owned and run businesses, by their own kin! Greed exists everywhere.
Perhaps WalMart is close to perfecting it.

Here's an interesting link regarding wal-mart stores recieving over $1B in local subsidies. The report also states that walmart returns $30 to the community for every $1 in subsidies.

Competition for work drives the price of labor lower. As long as there are unemployed people who are willing to work, the price of labor will be a minimum, this is particularly evident in non-skilled work. Ideally, the laborer's wages should approach his productivity. This will never happen as long as there's significant unemployment.

Minimum wages keep people out of work, there's probably not an economist on earth who would disagree with this. The real problem is that employers can pay people less than they're worth.

As an example, let's look at a generic publicly-traded superstore in an excellent retail location, making lots of money. We'll compare this one to a similar store in a less desireable location.

Out of the gross profit store has to pay wages to the laborers, interest to the lenders, and taxes to the government.
Competition between laborers means that the wages will be as low as possible: despite the fact that, at this particular location, labor is fairly productive; the store could simply hire retail workers from the less productive store down the road. Relative wages tend to be set at the least productive location in use by any industry.
For the sake of argument, we'll say taxes are similar for each location.
Once the wages, interest, and taxes are paid, the profit goes to the owners.

Why do the owners of the one store make more than the owners of the other, despite the same amount of work put forth by all concerned?