New ANTI-Wal-Mart TV Commercial

I saw it also, it is sponsered by a retail workers union
Here is a link to their site:
http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/

BTW, I am not endorsing these guys just passing along information.

 

The sad fact is that 70% of any goods you buy (with the exception of foodstuff, i would expect) are going to be produced elsewhere - China, Japan, India, etc. And for the most part, those countries don't have policies that live up to our standards. That is for the pretty simple reason that labor is cheaper over there. By moving production overseas, companies can cut labor down to pennies instead of our minimum wage - it's nearly impossible to compete with that using local labor here.

Even that nice shiny Dell computer sitting next to you was, for the most part, made overseas, even though Dell is an American company.

All of that said, I certainly don't endorse wall-mart, and in fact i haven't even been in one since freshman year of college.

 

I've been in Wal-Mart once in my life, and a Sam's club once. I do not like the race to the bottom policies and don't shop there.

That being said, as an EDI consultant, they DRIVE our business. In their quest for cost shaving, they have forced EDI upgrades down the throats of thousands of companies (our customers). Extensive EDI investment on their part as well as the reluctant vendors, saves countless hours of data entry for everyone involved and eliminates the old fashioned paper flurry back and forth.

In sum: Wal-Mart is good for our company and for pushing vendors to get more efficient. You can complain about them selling so much Chinese crap. However, ALL big retailors sell Chinese crap, so it's hard to fault them exclusiviely on that point. The most legitimate criticism is their treatment of employees. Compared to say Target, they pay less, offer less benefits, and are generally just less fair to them.

The blame for the "chinese crap" phenomenon is squarely on ALL of our shoulders (the consumers) for buying the stuff just to save a dollar here, a quarter there...

 

Actually, that makes a pretty good point, Darwood - I wonder what % of jobs have been "lost" due to outsourcing to places like China, and what % have been lost due to technological improvements.

Your EDI system eliminates jobs by reducing the amount of work that has to be done... in a similar manor, improvements in equipment allow farms to operate with a handful of people doing the same jobs that used to take hundreds. We can see these types of efficiency gains in just about every market we look into...

 

The buyer always sets the rules.
Wal-Mart as the buyer gets to push around it's thousands of vendors to save money. Unfortunatley, some companies respond by shipping the production part of their business overseas.

If WE the buyer start to only buy American products, we will dictate to Wal-Mart which products to stock. Wal-Mart has no conscience, sympathy, morality. They are a giant unemotional system. The consumers support the whole system and the system will adapt to the consumers, not vice versa.

 

i know this is unpopular, but i dont bash walmart in any way. they are good for the country in so many ways that we simply do not realize.

why is Toyota and the Prius good for the US? because it drives competition, thats why. if the Prius had never come around, how many hybrids would we have seen today??

that answer is obvious, just one.... the insight...it would have languished with its few thousand (that was in its GOOD year!!) sold each year and would never have started anything.

walmart is the biggest for a reason and a good one. they do it better and more efficiently than anyone else. if they didnt, they would be right with all the other local retail outlets peppered across the country. the american consumer made walmart what it is, walmart simply gave us what WE wanted. not so much cheaper but simply faster.

there was a profile done on walmart on one of the cable news channels that illustrated the many things walmart does that puts them a cut above the competition.

an example given was during the 2004 hurricane season in florida, walmart in anticipation of the storm, immediately redirected storm supplies like bottled water, ice, propane, plywood, generators, etc to the stores in that area and did it within 24 hours so the supplies were already there BEFORE THE STORMS HIT. so as soon as the winds died done, people could go there, get what they needed to survive several days without power, etc.

every other store in town that did not have a computerized database delivery system updated hourly for every store in country and was unable to completely change their store allocations within minutes were open but had nothing to sell or sold out within hours...

its companies like walmart that raise the bar and forces others to comply and whether you shop at walmart or not, you still benefit from what they do.

 

Excellent Analogy there Dave! Youve left little to be said...

 

I disagree Dave. There are a great many things that Wal*Mart does that that are considered very brown. The cities that so heaviliy subsidize their introduction to that city. They are lavished with subsidies that the smaller mom and pop shops do not get.

Some propaganda but a lot of it is definately true.

The High Cost of Low Price

Have you seen the studies that detail how far a dollar spent at one of these big box stores goes in the community vs a dollar spent at a local retail outlet?

 

No comparison. The Prius is good for America because American cars are crap. We buy them because they are better quality, not because they are cheaper.

Walmart is bad for America because it buys crap from workers making pennies a day. And we are now being bit on the nice person because of this short-sighted, greedy policy (actually, we were as soon as the first pink slips for blue-collar workers came flooding in).

 

"Have you seen the studies that detail how far a dollar spent at one of these big box stores goes in the community vs a dollar spent at a local retail outlet?"

Consumers don't care about this. All they care is that they spent 10 bucks instead of the 20 they would have spent at the "mom and pop" store. Consumers drive the industry. American consumers pushed the big three automakers into making beheamoths, they pushed retailors to provide low-low- prices (and hence crappy Chinese products).

It's hard to blame them for the way they are. Though blame can be applied for lack of foresight and poor treatment of workers.

As you can see, I'm not really for or against Wal-Mart in general. I don't shop there, but I don't fault them for responding to the short sighted demands of consumers. If those consumer demands change, they will too.
That's where the problem is...the religion of consumerism. People camping out at stores to get sdomething first, fighting over Tickle me Elmos, driving farther to save a dollar (and ignoring the cost of the extra drive and time), and buying cheap Chinese crap at half the cost (and half the durability, twice the environmental harm in overseas production, half the sale staying in the US), etc. etc.

 

You know I don't disagree with you here Darwood. I nearly always blame the consumer first yet the billions spent on marketing have their effect and drive the consumers to do things they might not normally do if not for this brain tricking business.

 

But that's what Marketing DOES.
All large corporations have marketing depts. And all marketing is an effort to sway consumers to buy things they don't need (otherwise, there is no need for marketing). Again, not a Wal-Mart specific sin. I really doubt their marketing expenses are that out of line with other large corporations. It's only one body part of the huge 500 lb. gorilla, known as Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart's marketing dept. is probably the people who decided to push their new "green" image too. Since PR was the one marketing area they were falling behind with. They have picked up their PR spending and reduced their usual ad spending specifically to address the widespread criticism they have been getting. Outside pressure is starting to have an effect and will continue too. Unfortunately, it does NOT change the demand for the low-low prices on Chinese crap. That's coming too, though. A few more recalls, and kids toys that turn into drugs, and the US consumers MIGHT get the picture.

 

we can all justifiably give the Corporate Bully pitch about walmart and be dead on but i can say that about nearly ANYONE and lets be honest here, companies that arent big in their respective fields want to be and still structure their actions around obtaining a microsoft or walmart stranglehold on market sector.

just because walmart abuses employees and local businesses on a large scale makes them worse than someone who does it on a small local scale??

sorry, dont see that at all. sure size has some pull, but capitalism is what rules here... period...

preach loyalty, green, local, whatever, its still all capitalism... and there is NO COMPANY THAT CAN SURVIVE IN A GLASS HOUSE...

walmart is not like microsoft, they started in one of the most crowded and competitive businesses there is on this planet and DOMINATED and they did it because they gave us what we wanted.

having worked for many many small local companies (i worked for a temp agency doing computer network installs and startups, had real intimate knowledge of many small companies) i can tell you, walmart is not much worse if at all than a huge majority of the companies currently running today.

the days of guaranteed job security and livable wages are long gone. companies can not afford to do that anymore. if you are not contributing, they can not afford to keep you and that is the biggest ill american industry faces today. they made promises years ago that they cannot possibly afford to keep. so should we fault walmart because they were smart enough to realize that years ago and other companies like gm were not?

i think gm hurts us waaay worse that walmart does... paying employees benefits you can not afford to a pay hurts EVERYONE. it forces them to increase the cost of their product which allows others in the domestic market to do the same, then foreign competition comes in and is able to undercut them without so much as ducking their heads...

 

I for one hate Wal-Mart. When they move into an area, that particular area goes to crap. All the good stores around it are shut down. Traffic goes nuts. The nearby streets are flooded with the fat, trashy, poor people that shop there. It's ugly. Their products are total crap. Liter everywhere from all the nasty people that shop their regularly. They put them up all over town. We have like 20 wal-marts in our city. What the hell is that? They've driven out businesses left and right. In a small town, that has a nice city square or a main street... when a wal-mart moves into that small town, kiss those mom and pop stores goodbye. They simply cannot compete with the heavy handed tactics wal-mart uses. I don't see how it is good for competition, because no one can beat their prices. It is impossible for a mom and pop, or even just a small retail store, to compete. It just wipes them out. How does that drive competition? Shut everyone out... turn the towns businessmen into poor, unemployed people that need to collect welfare just to survive. I really hate Wal-Mart.

People that say Wal-Mart is good for business are probably the same people that say how outsourcing is good for the American consumer. Total nonsense.

If it were up to Wal-mart, we'd all be working for wal-mart at their pitiful wages just so we can afford to buy their pitiful products.

... now I don't want to offend anyone if they shop at Wal-mart. I know not EVERYONE that shops at wal-mart is a fat, disgusting piece of trash... but it just sickens me to go into that store. Any of them. Knowing that by me shopping there, I am supporting child slave labor, communists, and the exploitation of poor 3rd world countries... just... sick... I try my damndest to not buy Chinese crap. If I have a choice, I'll buy American. I hate it that my Nike's are made in China or Taiwan or whatever. I hate it that Dell has Mexico, India, and China manufacturing and supporting their computers. I hate it how Ford claims to be all American when their crap products are made in Mexico.

sorry for the rant.

I really hate wal-mart.

 

heck with walmart, lets buy american!!


now the only thing i need is a definition of "buying american"

and how to go about doing that.

any takers on that?


well imho, buying american would have left us in the dark ages. it would have lowered my quality of life, etc... to be honest with ya, i dont know if its because i wasnt born here, (have lived here all but 10 months of my life) I feel patriotic, i screamed, danced and kissed all the girls when the USA hockey team beat russia in 1980...

i have been to a few other countries that i thought was very cool, but still think this is the best place in the world to live.

i still get a chill or thrill... i dont really know what it is... when the Star Spangled Banner plays before a sporting event.


but i dont buy american, or japanese or anything else for that matter. i buy what best fits my needs, my opportunities, and my ideology.

even when i supposedly buy american, am i really?? take a good long hard look at who owns what and how things are made... the more i look the less sure i am of the answer to the question i pose....


*edit*

in case u are wondering, i do shop at walmart occasionally but my primary store is costco simply because of where i live. there are 6 stores within 30 miles of me, including two within 6 miles of me... advantages of living within 60 miles of their corporate headquarters i guess.

 

I know you're smarter than that. You know exactly what it means to by American. You buy products that were designed, manufactured, or created, in AMERICA.

Hell, for example... If a product was designed in Japan, but built in America - you're still buying American. Buying cheap crap made in Communist China is NOT buying American. If you buy a Toyota that was designed and tested in Japan, but the vehicle is MADE by Americans, you're buying a product that was made in America. Not only are you supporting American jobs, you're always supporting a healthy global market.

When a bunch of cheap crap is made in China by little 12 year old girls, and then shipped to Wal-Marts throughout the United States... you're buying Communist Chinese crap.

 

that would work if not for the fact that years, foreign investment into american companies ran into the billions...

would getting a loan from citibank be considered buying american even after they were bailed out by the middle east?

we have been in a global economy for a long time now and its time to make purchasing decisions based on ones immediate need over some sort of "concept" that its better to buy from an ineffective, poorly run, overpriced american company.

making financially sound decisions on purchases, gives me more money to put into things that do make america great...education, recreation and relaxation...