Originally Posted by rs_al

But why do I care? Instead of having a lot of small shops with high prices, there's one big shop with lower prices. I know they have the goods, I know they can be trusted, I know they have the best price around.

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

BTW, I worked at a WalMart for a while. It was a good minimum wage job. No benefits or overtime, but that's not how WalMart got where they are...

I also shop frequently at WalMart. For many things, you just can't beat their prices.

Originally Posted by El_Gringo_Grande

Actually, for many things you can beat their prices. Not by much but if you look hard the prices wal-mart offers are not all that great. A few things,yes, no competition. Most things, average. My wife pointed this out to me. Leave it to a woman to gather the best of things.

(I seem to argue with you allot Cingular. I believe that is a good thing.)

Originally Posted by Joplin Globe

Published May 28, 2006 12:00 am - JANE, Mo. - Call it Area 71. Behind a fence topped with razor wire just off U.S. Highway 71 is a bunker of a building that Wal-Mart considers so secret that it won't even let the county assessor inside without a nondisclosure agreement.
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"We were contacted about two years ago by somebody who runs a security company that had been asked in a request for proposals for ways they could link video footage with customers paying for their purchases," Albrecht said. "Wal-Mart would actually be able to view photos and video of customers paying, say, for a pack of gum. At the time, it struck me as unbelievably outlandish because of the amount of data storage required."

Originally Posted by AMosely

Your tax dollars are subsidizing part of those low, low prices.

Originally Posted by Kerostasis

Care to back up that assertion?

Or is this part of that silly "the state has to pay for health care for all those poor, poor minimum wage workers" argument? The state shouldn't be offering everyone free health care anyway. And anyone that considers a part time job at Wal-mart to be their career needs therapy more than he needs free health care.

Originally Posted by AMosely

Your tax dollars are subsidizing part of those low, low prices.

I'm not sure if this has come up in here before, but I really don't like Wal-Mart. Their economic practices are not sustainable, and they are overtly and systematically unfair to every party involved in their business - the governments, the taxpayers, the customers, the employees, the communities that surround their stores, the producers and of course the actual factory workers. The corporate model has changed from what once was an honest American business (that initially focused on the sale of American goods) to an abominable corporate behemoth that is structured around two goals - low prices and high profits (using the rationale that increasing profits will help drive prices down).

I finally got around to watching "Wal Mart: The High Cost of Low Price." It actually was a bad documentary, I thought. The hour-long Frontline entitled "Is Wal Mart Good For America." (link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../walmart/view/) was far better in terms of asking intelligent questions, and you can watch it for free online. "High Cost" played out as sone sob story after another, and felt like an activist film - biased. One only needs to see the facts to get the picture.

Wal-Mart's corporate strategy is not sustainable at any level, and is poisoning the economy by privately controlled external forces on the American retail market. Their principles of holding workers to low wages, no overtime, systemic anti-union measures and insistence that their workers are better off relying on state and federal assistance for health care and even food stamps does nothing to better lives of the people they claim to care about the most.

I urge people to take a look at this situation, judge for themselves, and make their concerns known to their federal and state politicians. Run a google news search on Wal Mart and read the headlines it turns up. One story after another of record profits intermixed with court cases and studies on the employers impact on federal and state health care systems.

** disclaimer - I realize that Wal Mart is not the only big-box game in town, but they are by far the largest, richest and most powerful of all. They are #1. This is why I'm picking on them. Leaders should set an example instead of constantly lowering the bar, doing whatever they can to stay on top.

Originally Posted by AMosely

Their economic practices are not sustainable, and they are overtly and systematically unfair to every party involved in their business - the governments, the taxpayers, the customers, the employees, the communities that surround their stores, the producers and of course the actual factory workers.

Originally Posted by El_Gringo_Grande

Part time work is kinda funny. You can work 60 hours a week and still be part time.

And what is wrong with working at wal-mart as a carreer? And are you saying those that work there are mentally ill? Should we all be so lucky as to choose what work is available.

The fact is somebody pays for the healthcare. Many states have laws that dictate hospitals have to at least stabalize a person. This stabalizing is very expensive. Who do you think pays for that? If there is no insurance and the individual can't or won't pay (or dies) who pays?

And theses crazy dead beats working part time careers that have children. Who pays for those kids healthcare? Damn sure not the state by God, or is it? hmmmm....

Originally Posted by Kerostasis

Does anyone else find it ironic that when Wal-Mart pays part time American workers minimum wage, its a state-subsidized drain on the economy, but when companies pay less than minimum wage under the table, tax free, to illegal immigrants, they are "the backbone of the economy", and everything they do is beneficial? Because illegal immigrants obviously don't take advantage of health care systems--why, if they did, emergency rooms would probably be shutting down under the load.