Walmart Blows

Yes you are. But it has far more to do with your lack of knowledge and your extremely poor attempt at sarcasm.

The best thing about walmart is the freaks who shop there:

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com

you do realize that walmart started as a mom and pop store, right?

Excessive Greed wrote:

Yes you are. But it has far more to do with your lack of knowledge and your extremely poor attempt at sarcasm.

Hahaha! Your grandpa's generation was the best!

I also hate vaccines and long for the days where polio was a real threat.

This isn't sarcasm: people who think it's better to pay more for the same item are f'ing morons.

I know for a fact that you and I measure success differently. You are certainly entitled to your way of thinking.

I would rather eat from a dumpster than save a buck by shopping at Walmart. My neighborhood deserves better. Very thankful to our local politicians for not allowing Walmart in our city.

free will wrote:

Alum of Harvard wrote:

This isn't sarcasm: people who think it's better to pay more for the same item are f'ing morons.

I wouldn't pay more for the same items. Rather, I prefer to go someplace that offers higher quality products so that I can pay more for better items.

At the same time, though, it's really none of my damn business where other people shop. I prefer to buy groceries at Wegman's. Others prefer to buy groceries at Wal-Mart. I'm just happy to live in a place where we can all make our own choices regarding such things.

So if a TV costs $50 less at WalMart than at some other store I should by it from the other store because why? That mom and pop store has to compete. There seems to be a lot of competition from Target and other places. Many mom and pop stores will fail regardless of WalMart's presence; many will fail when another small shop doing the same business opens nearby and offers better customer service.

Now if I need some serious help with something WalMart is not the place I will go since I rarely have found a person who knows about the products.

Glad to live in a place where a guy like Sam Walton can open a 5 and dime and turn it into an international power.

Alum of Harvard wrote:

I agree. I enjoy paying more money for the same products from mom and pop shops, and making multiple trips to purchase them.

That way I'm worse off, but they are better off even though they provided me the same benefit at a much higher cost!

Similarly, instead of having my paycheck direct deposited into some large, faceless bank for free, I go down to the locally owned check cashing store and pay $40 to cash my check, then I just throw money out the window as I drive away.

I do these things because I am a very stupid person who does not understand that all businesses have the same goal, only some do it better than others, and those ones should be punished by me at my own expense. Again, I am VERY STUPID and have NO critical thinking skills at all.

This made me LOL like a school girl.

alert('pop')

[quote]luv2run wrote:

So if a TV costs $50 less at WalMart than at some other store I should by it from the other store because why? quote]

You clearly didn't read my post before responding to it. My entire point was that I don't care where you decide to buy your TV.

Wal Mart: a progressive success story. A good read.

Isn't it awkward and ugly to reveal yourself as a jingoistic and uneducated on a public forum?

Walmart prices are often the lowest, and it seems to me like it is pretty rare for the quality of other store's products to justify their gargantuan markups. I don't care more for the employees at "Mom and Pop stores" than I do about some guy working in China... except the goal of the guy in China (put food on the table for his family) aligns with my interest as a consumer (get the best value for my money).

I won't be held hostage by the owners of "Mom and Pops", who attempt to overwhelm people with propaganda to finance their personal extravagances. If they want to stay in business, they can figure out a way to be competitive, or they can become a charity for their employees, which is what it sounds like they are trying to do in all the ads they run, and the posts that they make on public message boards.

i love walmart sept the big ass cracks

NoFatty wrote:

which is what it sounds like they are trying to do in all the ads they run, and the posts that they make on public message boards.

What ads are you referring to?

What Alum of Cornell also fails to mention is that many of those "poor" mom & pop stores are selling the same crap made in China as WalMart... and they STILL charge 15-40% more.

If & when enough consumers demand products made in the USA, I have no doubt that WalMart will be able to utilize their logistics and supply chain expertise to provide those products at a much better value than most mom & pops.

Some examples are papers that are written like this one (http://be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/sobel/WalMart/Walmart.pdf), and ad campaigns like this (http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/31/us-walmart-opposition-ads-idUSN3121707220070531), but really, anytime a new Walmart is about to open up, the region will see a huge surge in local advertising (financed by "Mom and Pop" stores) that attempts to claim that Walmart will have a negatively effect the "community". Most of those advertisements will try to make specious claims like the ones seen on this thread. The similarities are striking enough to make me suspicious.

Being a person who has worked in Wal-Mart in the past, it has yet to reach its full potential. If they really wanted to, they could expand and take over a few markets that they dabble in.

Everyone needs to start embracing evolution. Only the strong survive. Some of you pussies have yet to learn this.

Alum of Cornell wrote:

mellorunner wrote:

Some of us lack the wealth to be picky about every little thing.

It is not picky. It is economics. Let me explain this to you in simple terms. It is better to pay your husband/wife $50 to mow your lawn than it is to pay a corporate lawn care company $25 dollars for the same job. IT KEEPS THE MONEY IN THE FAMILY. Most people understand that but have a tough time carrying that same logic from YOUR FAMILY TO your local businesses.

I'm guessing you're an enlightened, east coast social liberal of the Kennedy ilk. Am I right?

Walmart has jumped the shark in the US. They have had same store sales declines for eight consecutive quarters, all at a time when people are bargain shopping due to the crappy economy. Without their success in expanding overseas, Walmart would be in a death spiral of falling sales and crashing stock price.

Walmart has lost popularity in the US because they are so hell bent on extracting profits from US consumers that they slashed their selection of groceries and consumer goods in order to only stock what gives them the best margins.

Walmart doesn't have the lowest prices. A lot of Walmart's products are specially made or packaged for Walmart. Brand name consumer goods are often crappier versions of what are sold in other stores. And when you take out the loss leaders, Walmart's prices are usually the same or a little higher than their competition.

Walmart kills off local competition (hardly mom and pop operations, more like small regional chains with 50-100 stores) for one reason only--to not have any competition. After they run the competition out of town, they raise prices. And they do all of this with a lot of taxpayer assistance in the form of tax abatements and public assistance and medicaid for underpaid employees. By contrast, Costco entry level employees make double what Walmart employees get and have health insurance.

So, when you save a few cents on hot pockets and soda at Walmart, you are actually losing money through all of Walmart's cost externalities which affect you directly through higher taxes to cover the tax abatements, etc Walmart needs.