Originally Posted by
deburn
I would like to highlight a couple of things about Walmart that invariably gets lost in the media frenzy: they have played a key role in drastically improving the quality of life for Americans who need it the most, those with low incomes, as well as a large chunk of others who are not "poor" but like to stretch their dollar as much as they can.
I suppose that all depends on how you define "quality of life". It's a term that seems to get redefined periodically, much as "unemployment" gets redefined to mean (variously) people without jobs, people who are looking for jobs, people who are looking for jobs but haven't been looking more than a few months, etc. I think it's very hard to make the argument that the cheap retail economy of which Wal-Mart is the prime exemplar, really represents an improvement in "quality of life", unless you define a high-quality life as one with easy and cheap access to non-essentials, and increasingly higher costs for essential goods and services. You can go into Wal-Mart and buy a DVD player for under $30; when you consider that DVD players didn't even exist 20 years ago, that's really an amazing thing. But is it a good thing? Does it really add to your "quality of life"? Sure, it's nice to watch movies on DVD, but when the cheap retail economy that made that $30 DVD player possible is also undermining your wages, is it a good thing? When the price of things that you really need, like health care and heating oil and education and (increasingly) food, goes higher, where's your "quality of life" then?
Originally Posted by
deburn
btw this is the way a market economy (as ours is) works: if you can get away with charging a high price, you do. If you choose to attract business by charging low prices, that's your choice as a business owner - but no business can force consumers to buy from them. Consumers buy because they see value, perceived or not.
That's not entirely true; I suggest you google the term "company store" to learn a little history. When Big Box Mart comes to town and squeezes out all the independent competition, consumers
are forced to buy from them. When people suddenly don't have anywhere else to work but Big Box Mart, and are now making Big Box Mart minimum wage, they can't afford to shop anywhere else anyway.
Originally Posted by
deburn
Yes low prices are small consolation to those that lose their jobs because of outsourcing, but it is incorrect and unfair to blame Walmart solely or largely for this. We have been outsourcing for much longer than Walmart has been in existence. And manufacturing has been in a steady decline for a very long time as well, again much before Walmart came into the picture. In the past you could earn a very comfortable living with little education or skills - that's quickly disappearing and again that's across the board, not just at Walmart and it's certainly not a new or recent phenomenon
I agree that Walmart doesn't own the problem; they're certainly among the most rapacious of its profiteers, though. The reason that Walmart comes up in these discussions is that a)they're blatant, and b)they're visible, and c)they touch the consumer directly. I can't make the decisions about how GizmoManufacturerX chooses vendors; I can make a direct consumer choice to shop at my LBS rather than give Walmart a dime of my business. I can also, by the way, make the decision to do without that $30 DVD player, or any DVD player -- to not purchase things that I really don't need.
Originally Posted by
deburn
Again that's small consolation for those who've lost their jobs it's what keeps us strong and competitive as a nation.
So, in what ways exactly are we "strong" and "competitive"?