Bams

Agreed. I do not shop at Walmart either. I would also agree that buying American is neither a liberal of conservative idea. It's just the smart thing to do. the more money you keep in the country the better the economy will do. the only ones benefiting by our corporations acting with such disregard for the rest of us is the corporations and their overpaid fat cat elitists.

Fmeh

I grew up in an area that was just getting out of the farming mindset. Lots of very opinionated conservative neighbors around.

Bams:Buying American itself isn't a liberal or conservative idea, but the conservatives, CURRENTLY, are the ones who are AGAINST doing anything about outsourcing, with "free market values" being chanted over and over again and a cherry on top.

There have been some conservatives out there who have actually had the audacity to say that job outsourcing is GOOD for America, as if losing jobs is a good thing. It's just such a radical departure of what conservatives were saying in the 80's.

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Victoria Kemsley

But Walmart had/has a rather ingenuis plan, and has been quite successful at it. They moved into all the small/medium sized towns, under priced and consequently drove the existing stores out of buisness, then raised prices back up when thier was no competition.

So you have a situation like I am in for many items, patronize Walmart or jump in the car and drive for an hour.


The old business district here in town has a couple specialty stores, but by and large is a ghost town.

Richie Waves

Good for them = good for America... they are useless parasites.

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Victoria Kemsley

Ohh, and by the way

I remember in the 80's/early 90's, Walmart's whole speil was "we only sell amercian made goods"

WTF happened to that?

Bams

No argument there they have effectively screwed over most of the smaller/medium sized towns by driving their local stores out of business. Gone are the days of the local hardware chain and even the local grocery stores in some instances where they are 'lucky' enough to have a super Walmart.

While this may be true once they had you locked into doing it there way they could then do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted and we're all stuck with it. That's how corporations work, they befriend you by presenting you with all of the 'good' they can do and then once they have usurped all of the control from the consumer they turn around and give you the old with a little bit of thrown in hoping we will all ourselves into oblivion and no longer care. Did I mention how much I love the smilies here? dancing pickle! WOOT

Beebo Brink

I don't think loathing Walmart is a liberal/conservative issue either, which is why I'm so puzzled that other people in my part of the country appear to have made that association.

Inevitably, for those people who don't look completely blank at such a notion as not shopping at Walmart, the snide comments have come from conservatives. Maybe they just assume if I'm against Walmart it MUST be a liberal agenda type thing because I'm considered to be a radical liberal in this area.

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Sooz Pascale

I was going to post on this subject but Jen, Beebo and Dnate pretty well summed up what I had to say.

Sooz

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Bard Jameson

Just for perspective..what we call capitalism today was called mercantilism in previous centuries. And that principle has always been about finidng raw materials markets and labor markets that are cheap, then reselling the manufactured goods in a relatively rich buying market for a sizable markup.

so, when the "conservatives" were touting "Buy American", there was still a relatively cheap American materials and labor market to be exploited. When that changed, they moved to where the cheaper materials and labor markets were to be found - off shore.

Its actually quite consistent...it just takes a longer time frame of reference to see the consistency.

Just my L$0.02

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prinţesă nină

they already have.
40-50hrs/wk, one maybe two weeks holiday, no superannuation, etc.

Fmeh

And that concept has permeated in just about every aspect of business as well. Nothing is marketed to be better for us anymore, the people who do surveys at the malls--they're not testing as much whether people actually like a product as it is testing how people react to the way the product is advertised.

Even cereal box tops--they're designed to rip easily so you'll want to buy more soon. Isles at stores are not laid out in a way that is good for the consumer, it's PURELY laid out for impulse buying. Traffic lights in shopping districts in big cities COST so much because they aren't actually there to make traffic flow smoother, they're there to make people have to stop or slow down in areas that could make them want to park and shop, and it costs a lot of money for the hardware and software capable of handling that kind of task.

CD's cost much less to make than vinyl records or audiocasettes, and they pretty much always have, but they continued to charge double the price, and now a typical price for a CD that isn't on clearance or something is $20, and the artists don't make jack shit from it, it VIRTUALLY all goes to the record companies--the artists MIGHT see 5 cents from it. They've had many points that they could have lowered the price before the internet piracy came into place.

But here's a sad fact though--Grey Poupon was originally released as a budget mustard with a typical cheap mustard kind of container. It didn't sell at all. Then they made the container look nice and tripled the price, started the "pardon me" ads and it took off better than just about any product that year. The reason I mentioned this is the fact that there still remains a lot of people out there who think that because you spend more on something means it's going to be higher quality, or that if you spend $400 on a short skirt and the money mainly goes to the person who made it, it somehow makes you more conscientious about slave labor in China, even though it simply means you paid for a price-gouged skirt and someone is happy that you gave them so much money. I also said it to show that we can be tricked easily into a lot of things by the way something is marketed.

When I still believed that businesses were really interested in our well being and what is important to us, I used to do those surveys at malls, I used to do the phone surveys, at one point I even worked as a survey intake person at one of those places at malls, and now I avoid them completely because I know it has nothing to do with what benefits the consumer. I'm rambling and have been for the past two paragraphs.... Okay, tell me to shut up now.

Bams

I couldn't have said it better myself Fmeh. I try to do my small part in dealing with corporate greed. For example I don't purchase mainstream media. I don't buy CDs or DVDs, I shop online for music, I support artists who use the internet as a way to get their music out. I rent movies when I have to see them or wait for stuff to hit HBO. I stopped going to movie theaters years ago because it's just not worth the money.
It's probably not hurting their bottom line any but it gives me a little but of pride knowing I didn't HAVE to go out and buy that new CD or DVD or Xbox, whatever it is just because someone told me.

Think of all the good you could do with the money spent on marketing and lobbying for that matter if it was channeled into something more productive.

How true this is. What a good point Prin makes. In a standard corporate enrivonment, the top 10% of the company staff gets 90% of the consideration, which is pretty fg rich when you consider that without all of us 'little' people down here busting it out all the time, no one would have gas in their cars or cheeseburgers at the drive through.

The funny thing is that even though we all seem to know what's going on, we just don't care. We adopt the attitude that we can't affect change and so instead we continue to feed our money into the corporate media engine which even goes so far as to tell us who are heros and stars are anymore. With all the idol this and you can dance that, there is no end to the amount of money they are making with this garbage we are inundated with (I'm way off topic here aren't I? )

I totally had a brain blip and forgot what in the hell i was typing. Maybe I'll remember later. haha

Edav Nomad

I believe here is the very short answer to that question:

Sam Walton died and his kids took over.

One thing some stores where I live did to stay in business when Wal-Mart came to town was to carry the things Wal-Mart didn't carry and yes there are some things they don't carry.

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Beebo Brink

I shop locally first, regardless of price, and only if I can't find an item do I then try a franchise store.

Yes, it costs me more right upfront. But buying from Walmart has incredible hidden costs if local businesses go bankrupt. Every locally-owned busines that goes under removes money from the local economy, which erodes services and destabilizes neighborhoods.

You're going to pay one way or another -- so the question is who you want to get the most benefit from your wallet.

Surreal

I confess... although I still tend to shop my ethics, sometimes I just want to say "fuck it." I look around me at our society, listen to people and their attitudes, and think "screw this... I'm going to do what's best for ME - fuck all of you."

And isn't that the problem? Between the people who don't think at all and are led around by advertising, and the folks who are already greedy bastards, and the folks like me who are tired and disillusioned... is there anything left to save?

Beau Perkins

Theres towns in the mid-west that have nothing anymore thanks to Walmart.

Walmart came in and put all the little locally own shops out of business. Then, the location is not the greatest so Walmart simply closes down.

It is left a ghost town there.

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