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i guess this is why wal mart employees are suing wal mart?????
Remember way back when…. Wal-Mart had the theme of American Made. Now Wal-Mart is the poster child for imported crap. Sam Walton is a traitor to this country, not a business man to be respected. His stores have created a race to the bottom, they have not improved American retail, nor have they improved American/ global workers conditions, what they have done is weakened America.
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Yeah–you know that Waltons…that’s why you’re sitting there posting on IJ…puh-leeeze!!!
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Your comments show a serious need to grow up. Who’s the idiot, now?
Producer 1, if you want goods manufactured in your country you will need to make them yourself or move to China. That being said, Wal-Mart is not the only guilty party here.
Very interesting correlation. Whether you like or dislike Sam, he was an innovator and there are many basic business principle that can be learned.
I may be wrong on the dates, but when Sam Walton was alive the Walmart was about American made. The change to selling both American and foreign occured after his death or at least after his predecessors took over. If you do not like Walmart don’t shop there. Like it or not we are part of a world economy where everyone needs to rely on each other.
I wonder if it was also Sam Walton’s vision to have every, single item in his stores be manufactured in China?
Walmart today is NOT what Sam Walton created. He started out something a bit different. It was not his intent to become what it is today, but his intent wasnt TOO FAR OFF. He wanted to provide affordability, because he believed there were some other things a parent could spend their money on if only he could provide basic necessities cheaper. Because of his original idea, parents can save $150 or more by shopping at WalMart, and then be able to afford to send a child to camp, or pay for a football uniform, or something else that improves the quality of life that would have a lasting effect.
It wasnt necessarily his intent to bankrupt anybody, to supply garbage, to have his stores filled with littering mongrels that destroy everything they pass by. He’d be working to fix that image Walmart has today and defending his vision to begin with. He imagined HELPING families, local families, afford some things they could not otherwise afford due to overpricing in the name of turning over a good stock return.
Wal Mart wins three ways. A) Buy from foreign sources that pay their workers pennies. B) Pay low wages, offer bare bones benefits, ruthlessly and immediately crush any attempt by employees to negotiate better employment terms, and keep long term liabilities from employees as close to zero as possible. C) Negotiate sweetheart deals with local and state governments to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
I would love to see a national study done about empty Wal Marts. How much public money went into each store– direct contributions of tax dollars, reductions in property/sales taxes, and public improvements? And what was the ultimate benefit in income, sales & property taxes?
Many of these empty Wal Marts are snatched up for almost nothing along with additional tax dollars thrown in to entice someone to redevelop or remodel the site.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/07/how_america_can_lead_the_global_economy This is pretty insightful stuff, but probably not in the way Mr. Conrad intended. I think it really shows the arrogance of these private equity “masters of the universe”. Their elite ideas are worth millions, people that actually make stuff are only worth $8/day, they should pay no taxes as ‘job creators’, and everyone else should work in the service industry in great jobs such as being a waitress. It also arrogantly assumes that only Americans can export ideas. With the rate our kids are falling behind as compared to their educational peers in the rest of the world it is impossible to read Mr. Conrad’s piece and view it as anything other than a recipe for failure.
WalMart is ruining America, giving people falsly low prices, a handful of bad jobs, and working class dependent on social services. We should be pointing out how to be LESS like WalMart, buy local and support mom and pop shops, farmers markets, local artists.. our communities are more important than greedy bloodsuckers that run these big-box stores to sell us things we DONT NEED. Plastics that are full of BPAs, food that is genetically modified. Low wages, High explotation of global outsourcing while holding industries hostage. Bad Bad and WOrSE. but even when communities stand up and say NO, walmart just pays of city councilmen, or whomever has the power and they get in where they want. Corruption, Greed, AND Human Explotation, who could ask for more out of a global corporation?
Walmart changed for the negative when Sam Walton passed away. His children took over and sad to say it is quite evident that they do not have the same value nor ethics Sam Walton had.