What do you think about Wal-Mart?

[yesthattom]

A friend of mine would like to know your opinions about Wal-Mart. Please post your thoughts and opinions as a comment to this message.

She writes: I am doing a research paper on Wal-Mart and I was wondering what you opinion is, and your readers opinions, just in general. I'm not asking any specific questions, but knowing you and your readers, I think leaving it open ended like this is exactly what I am looking for.

If you don't have an opinion about Wal-Mart, read about How their business practices hurt even their suppliers or How Wal-Mart contributes to loss of jobs in the U.S.or how Wal-Mart mis-treats women.

Now to all my libertarian friends who say, "Hey, they're just doing business. If you don't like it, ignore them and it won't affect you!" I say it is affecting me. When towns around me are ruined by their business practices it increases my crime rate. However, the biggest reason libertarians should dislike Wal-Mart is that they pay people so little that their employee manual encourages people to apply for public assistance programs like food-stamps and welfare. Their employee manual encourages you to get help from your manager if you can't understand the forms. So let me ask you this, "Should a business be able to profit by encouraging its employees to be on Welfare?" Libertarians hate government subsidie: has Wal-Mart found a loophole that is libertarian friendly?

But the real story is about the pickle.

Comments

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

My first impression about Wal-Mart is always self-centered, which is: it's a crappy place to shop, and nothing I can find there is worth the annoyance of the experience. The store is too busy, too crowded, the things in the store are all in disarray, chances are the one item you came looking for is not there, the free-roaming employees (if any) are not friendly or helpful. When it comes time to check out, the lines are too long, the aisles are messy, every single customer except me apparently brought a screeching toddler, and the cashiers are not friendly or helpful. As much as I'm embarassed about being a complete elitist, I end up leaving thinking "I make too much money to subject myself to that experience."

Beyond that, politically I'm definitely at odds with their business practices. I am especially disgusted about the news about WalMart encouraging employees to apply for public assistance (which I first heard elsewhere) -- especially when I think about WalMarts in depressed areas, like my home county, where the county services are struggling to stay afloat.

Incidentally, there is not a WalMart in my hometown -- TR is just too small to be of interest to them. There is a WalMart on the far side of Manitowoc, where there've been a long-standing ShopKo, K-Mart, etc. TR's downtown businesses continue to do about as well as you might expect from a small depressed midwestern town with a manufacturing economic base, or perhaps a bit better. It seems like the stores people needed to drive a ways to get to and were proto-big-boxes themselves anyway -- PrangeWay, ShopKo, KMart -- have suffered the most at WalMart's hands.