[Tanada]

Walmart is more interested in increasing their shareholders net worth, namely the Walton family, rather then that of their underpaid employees.

Around here the Wally World stores seem to have enough staff to stay open and they are always busy with customers. I don't shop there often, but when I do the stores are full of customers and I can usually find a staffer if I have a question about where something is located. If they are imploding the effect hasn't reached Monroe MI or Toledo OH.

[Lore]

Walmart is more interested in increasing their shareholders net worth, namely the Walton family, rather then that of their underpaid employees.

Around here the Wally World stores seem to have enough staff to stay open and they are always busy with customers. I don't shop there often, but when I do the stores are full of customers and I can usually find a staffer if I have a question about where something is located. If they are imploding the effect hasn't reached Monroe MI or Toledo OH.

Actually the implosion happened years ago when Walmart took away all the retail jobs from the mom & pop operations that use to be the backbone of local commerce.

The Walmarts are full of customers, like the old mining town company run stores were. Many people can only afford to shop at Walmart to spend their Walmart wages.

It's a death spiral and a race to the bottom, because you can never get cheap enough. One of the worse business models for any company to follow; an absolute dead end.

[agramante]

A friend of mine from Oklahoma said that Big Evil had run all competition out of the state. I'm sure that's not 100% true, but even something close is a basic monopoly. And unlike another monopoly we've known, Standard Oil, where Rockefeller would then jack prices back up to his own liking, Big Evil seems to stay true to bare-minimum pricing. But you're right on, lore: it's a race to the bottom, happening in retail and other industries. Free-trade agreements exacerbate it, as Americans' effective competition for manufacturing and other exportable work has become the cheaply-priced labor elsewhere in the world. And since Wal-Mart can't offshore its in-store jobs, it does the next best thing: it violently opposes all efforts to unionize.

So the thread title is speaking a bit wishfully, perhaps, in saying that Wal-Mart's model is imploding. When I gathered the numbers for my little exercise a few posts ago, I noticed that Wal-Mart's 2013 numbers were still better than 2012. Since Big Evil's fiscal year runs from February to January, it's possible that their year 2013 concluded last January, and that they're no in their fiscal year 2014, and that year will start to show negative results. I don't know. I've read reports of sales being down at many individual stores as well, but I'm not sure that's a truly nationwide phenomenon. I wouldn't be surprised if the downward mobility encouraged by the presence of a Wal-Mart has led to such poverty that some stores are genuinely suffering from lack of sales: the locals simply can't afford to shop much any more. That doesn't seem to be the case where I live in Maine, but then again, I live in a reasonably popular tourist region which still has a bit farther to fall.

[dsula]

Many people can only afford to shop at Walmart to spend their Walmart wages.

Probably true, but I think walmart is also full of people shopping who could afford to pay more.
Is that still walmarts fault? That better off people shop there too?

worse business models for any company to follow; an absolute dead end.

I think the Wallys are pretty rich. Their business model can't be too bad, I think. At least it's better than mine, because I also own a business, but I'm not rich.

[dsula]

it violently opposes all efforts to unionize.

There's nothing more lazy than union members. And the worst thing? Unions enforce laziness. You do a proactive job which is not explicitly stated in your work contract. The union won't be pleased.

[dsula]

the locals simply can't afford to shop much any more.

That's good news then, finally. PO enforces conservation instead of consumption.

[Lore]

Many people can only afford to shop at Walmart to spend their Walmart wages.

Probably true, but I think walmart is also full of people shopping who could afford to pay more.
Is that still walmarts fault? That better off people shop there too?

worse business models for any company to follow; an absolute dead end.

I think the Wallys are pretty rich. Their business model can't be too bad, I think. At least it's better than mine, because I also own a business, but I'm not rich.

I've never known a business to succeed by always being the cheapest guy around. Walmart has confused low prices with value. People, by the looks of the original OP, are starting to wake up to this.

The difference here is they've eliminated all their competition. So now, people in most small communities have to eat shit and like it.

[dsula]

Walmart has confused low prices with value.

I don't think walmart confused that. People that made the CHOICE and shopped for cheap were confused.

So now, people in most small communities have to eat shit and like it.

Yes, but that's a direct result of people's choice to shop at walmart and making it a success. Tough luck. There was a time when people still had good jobs and good money and could have chosen not to shop at Wallys.

[Lore]

Walmart has confused low prices with value.

I don't think walmart confused that. People that made the CHOICE and shopped for cheap were confused.

So now, people in most small communities have to eat shit and like it.

Yes, but that's a direct result of people's choice to shop at walmart and making it a success. Tough luck. There was a time when people still had good jobs and good money and could have chosen not to shop at Wallys.

Believe me, I'm not excluding the culpability of human nature to get something for nothing. We did it to ourselves. That doesn't exclude the dire consequences of those choices for both the business or the consumer. The outcome is what it is.

An analogy would be a drug pusher selling to children. Do you blame the pusher for taking advantage of their naiveness, or the children for taking it.

[dsula]

An analogy would be a drug pusher selling to children. Do you blame the pusher for taking advantage of their naiveness, or the children for taking it.

No no no. I hope you don't compare innocent children with adults, who fought a war to free themselves from kings and oppression. TO BE FREE. Too bad with freedom also comes responsibility.

That's what the whole world is always screaming for, FREEDOM. But I think that's a mistake, most people don't want to be free. They just want more stuff.

[agramante]

Since the rise of the labor movement and unions have an awful lot to do with current work conditions--40 hour week, minimum wage--and the assault on unions has produced conditions like at Wal-Mart, where employees are forced to work through breaks and vacation days, and given no benefits, then I think it's pretty safe to say that unions are not 100% bad. Caricaturing them as the roots of all laziness is somewhat less than accurate. And there's the small matter of how Wal-Mart has broken the law, in many different instances, by retaliating against employees for trying to unionize, or for reporting bad work conditions. They've locked employees in at night and used their market position to enforce the same illegality and cruelty at their suppliers. Against the law, all of it. But then, Rockefeller gladly broke the law again and again in building his empire.

Most of our current problems are linked to our willingness to buy more stuff, to be commercial. The Waltons have exploited that trait pretty extensively, and made themselves quite rich doing so. It's an economic might-makes-right situation that social darwinists likely applaud. I for one find it repulsive. They're deliberately taking advantage, especially now that the economic consequences are clear for everyone to see, of people of limited means. Trickle-down economics, of the sort practiced by the Waltons and their like, leads to ancient Egypt. That sort of outcome isn't necessary now, and I don't applaud those helping to make it real.

[careinke]

The only way to win this game, is not to play. Extract yourself from the matrix as much as you can.

[efarmer]

Wal Mart has long sought welfare in communities to make new shrines to selling American Consumers to Asian OEM manufacturing. It worked like a champ for some decades but it depends on cheap credit for people who want poor quality abut cheap goods on credit 24 hours a day. This is a race to the bottom, and Wally World has arrived to join the whale bones, Titanic, and the crap that fell out of Davy Jone's locker on the way down. When you sell American consumers to Asian OEM people and make huge profits you are a monster middleman of some duration, and like pimples and pikers, middlemen always get squeezed to death. IMHO it is the business model of Dell and WM and others who think you can sell with local real estate development subsidy forever.

JC Watts, R. of Oklahoma said this thing the best, "When your outgo exceeds your income, your uplift become your downfall". He quoted his sharecropper Dad on this one. This man was calling it like he saw it, in a town full of floozies and gadflies.

It is really simple, if you make a huge business to sell incredibly cheap Asian stuff with Asian Government subsidy and labor prices offset by low wages with Asian government backup and free (if poor) health insurance, you are indeed working directly for foreign governments against local people and at some point it goes snake on you and you lose. If you do this for military reasons it is clearly traitor and terror territory, if you do it for business it is simply hard to explain and dicey. I see it as about the same. Your opinion?

[agramante]

I'd go with the hard-to-explain and dicey, efarmer. Simple greed, and not elaborate military conspiracy, is sufficient to explain Wal-Mart's practices. And in the end, I'll agree with you again: it's like peak supply of oil versus Yergin's insistence on peak demand: what's the difference? Their actions are the same, whatever the reasoning.

[dinopello]

Cheap prices are nothing new. Somehow, the Walmart empire feels different than Woolworths though. The Woolworth's building in my town, built in 1936 was nothing that special, but it has a modest limestone facade and people love it. It's now used as a nightclub



The Woolworth headquarters was the tallest building in the World when built in 1913 and just had it's 100 year anniversary



Walmart will be gone eventually. What will its legacy be ?

[Rod_Cloutier]

This discussion reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92gM_NMAbk

Walmart hatred

[vision-master]

Wal-Mart greedy Walton family exposed + underground bunker!

[C8]

This thread seems to be running under the constant assumption that Wal-Mart is the cheapest, it is not and this has been proven in many price studies. And if you factor in the gas and the work time lost traveling to a distant Wal-Mart and waiting in line forever vs. going in and out of an Aldi's or dollar store the comparison gets even worse. The internet (Ebay, Amazon) consistently beats Wal-Mart- even with shipping costs. Ever tried to return something at Walmart? Usually 20-30 minutes you could be working and earning salary.

[dinopello]

This discussion reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghrDIQ-K8mg# *

*It's not a pasquinade, it's a celebration.

[Rod_Cloutier]

This is a better one- with a cool country song too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VkV4pz1osY