Walmart War.

[Technosoul]

This week the city of L.A. California is debating if they should pass laws that would prevent Walmart from opening superstores in this major city.

The problem is they are non-union and pay their workers very low wages, you start off part time as 7.50 bucks an hour, and if you are male you can look ahead to promotions as much as twelve thousand a year. They provide their employees no medical coverage or other standard perks.

The problem is the employees then must apply for food stamps and must make use of governmentally funded medical services. And that impacts all tax payers who end up footing the bill for the "working poor" people. Plus, the superstores can sell products much cheaper then other food and retial outlets and people will go there to save money, that in turn causes all the union stores to close up shop and many good paying jobs are lost - causing a ghost town effect through out the area.

The Walmart Superstores impact the whole economy because the only result is for all other stores to get rid of unions and pay low wages, in order to compete. However one would assume that over time only cheap costing products would sell which would bring down the cost of living, and even presciption drugs would need to sell cheaper or else a medical socialistic program would be needed to fill the gap for the uninsured workers.

In case you do not know a gaint superstore is one that covers a large area and sells everything that you might find in a lot of different little stores. One company selling everything cheaper instead of many different companies selling speicalized products at current rates.

I do not know what Walmart is saying to counter-act those claims.

What is your opinion about the Walmart war and their objective to dominate the total free market as the one and only store.

Technosoul.

[Comrade]

I believe that the Zionist Walmart Corporation, a secret subsection of Halliburton, is profiting from the war in Iraq and must be banned from our soils!

Anyways,
Capitalism bad! Statism good!

(the message is: Walmart is successful because it is better than the competition, and government intervention is NOT the answer. The Visible Hand is a Bad thing.)

[Technosoul]

Where did you get your stat -isms (little play on words, cute eh?)

You might be correct however I am not sure what the long term effects would be if Walmart can dictate the economy. If we as Americans agreed to working at lower and lower wages then someday we could compete with 3rd world countires and get all our jobs back because we would be poor folks and some other nations would become the wealthy consumers of our products.

Capitolism is great if one is following the right dream and is spearheading his own company or providing a self-employed service. And as you pointed out greed is important as the only human trate that can motivate most people to get a hair cut and a real job. Without hope of getting enough money to fullfill our dreams we would get depressed and sit around drinking Vodca like they did in the old USSR. Waiting for our next food ration from the government only to find out nothing much is being stocked at the government store. We do not need that, for sure.

But the transformation from middle class working wages down to the lower income brackets for people who are employed by such a company has it "birthing pains". For while this is going on the medical industry still wants to serve only those how have decent medical coverage which stores like Walmart do not provide the workers, and which the workers cannot obtain on thier own because such insurences are not within the budgets of that lower wage income. So how will you deal with that problem? Knowing that the tax payer end up with the bill, which makes it a issue of concern to the government and their budgeting problems.

Your turn.
Technosoul.

[gr8fuldaniel]

In California, apartment rent for a one bedroom averages out to appx. 850.oo per month. How does a single income couple (or individual) afford that if major corporations get away with paying $7.50 per hour. Minimum wage should reflect cost of living relative to location. The management, meanwhile, rakes in 100 times that. There oughtta be a law. This is not the spirit of Enterprise, rather, it is legalized slavery.IMHO.

Edit to add: $850.oo gets you a low end dump.

[Suburbanite]

Just to make things clear, there are already Walmarts in Los Angeles.

[harumscarum]

If citizens didnt want it they would vote to keep it away or not shop there. Clerks and such do not deserve such high salaries (f* the Unions). If they do not like what they are getting paid then get some education and leave. I dislike Wal Mart more then the next guy but I also know people who have started out as grunts there and worked their way up in the company to be very successful.

Most of the rhetoric I hear is the "Evil Corp" and "all your citizens are belong to us". I am sure they have some bad apples but that does not make up the entire tree.

[Technosoul]

Those point are correct, we have the freedom to pick any dictator we want to work for. However employee rights is not the topic I put forth relative to the debates now taking place. The topic is how would such a store impact the economic standards and economic environment of the community at large, will it cost taxpayers more money, will it drive away all the other stores and cause a ghost town effect? Is too much monopoly distructive to the real values of capitolism?

Remember what happen to the Dinosaurs - they got so big they ate all the trees in the topical rainforest which then caused climate changes and that resulted in death to the Dinosaur population - killed off by their own over-consumption. A superstore is much like the Dinosaur in my anology.

Again, this is not about workers but about the impact that all those low wage earners will have on the mainsteam community because they do not have medical coverage and do not earn enough to add much to the upgrading of the local economy.

Whatcha think?
Technosoul.