OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America!

From the Wall Steet Journal...

Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

The campaign against the company is about union politics.

Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
campaign that the question above is even being asked.

By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.

Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
the sales.

The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
of these allegations are more myth than reality.


But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.

So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
company's front lines.

The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.





But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
they may be right.

But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
contributions).

Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
that have come its way.





The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
be addressed to the wrong audience.
Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
the company what it is.
--

Scott in Florida

On 4 Dec 2005 05:09:04 -0800, "Learning Richard"
<learningrichard@gmail.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>
>Scott in Florida wrote:[color=green]
>> From the Wall Steet Journal...
>>
>> Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
>>
>> The campaign against the company is about union politics.[/color]
>
>Still pro Corporation, anti-worker, scott?? Get a job at Wal-Mart,
>from what you say its paradise.[/color]

Corporations are NOT anti-worker.

gawd you lefties are so far out to lunch you must be starving!

One of my best friend's wives works for Wally World and loves it.
Their health care options are excellent.

If you detest wally world so much...why don't you start a corporation
to compete with them...

ROFL..
--

Scott in Florida

You must not be American if you support a company like this.

You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.
Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.

These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that the
taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
profits.

Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
else".

The Duke



"Scott in Florida" <JustAsk@Florida.com> wrote in message
news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng@4ax.com...[color=blue]
> From the Wall Steet Journal...
>
> Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
>
> The campaign against the company is about union politics.
>
> Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
>
> It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
> campaign that the question above is even being asked.
>
> By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
> noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
> quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
> evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.
>
> Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
> work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
> 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
> profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
> are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
> 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
> the sales.
>
> The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
> or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
> small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
> your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
> tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
> believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
> elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
> Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
> wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
> Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
> of these allegations are more myth than reality.
>
>
> But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
> that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
> dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
> it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
> it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
> hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
> lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
> pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
> through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
> billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
> What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
> its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
> the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
> the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
> the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.
>
> So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
> to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
> way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
> quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
> fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
> bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
> Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
> company's front lines.
>
> The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
> employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
> January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
> account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
> young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
> some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
> one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
> opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.
>
>
>
>
>
> But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
> would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
> correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
> attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
> would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
> thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
> tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
> expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
> their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
> As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
> vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
> decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
> the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
> organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
> as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
> they may be right.
>
> But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
> simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
> And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
> supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
> far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
> contributions).
>
> Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
> such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
> on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
> the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
> the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
> the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
> to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
> 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
> that have come its way.
>
>
>
>
>
> The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
> of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
> minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
> be addressed to the wrong audience.
> Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
> the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
> those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
> has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
> the company what it is.
> --
>
> Scott in Florida[/color]

> If you detest wally world so much...why don't you start a corporation to compete with them...

I'd rather see Richard pushing carts around the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Those yellow vests are so fashionable!

Good article Scott, the mission of the Leftist Leeches is to tear down
whoever they see as having deep pockets so they can fill their own
pockets with easy money and dole out a pittance to the unwashed masses
to buy votes.

> You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.

There are plenty of good-paying jobs in this country if the failed
Liberal US education system could just turn out people who could
compete. It's true that if you are a mindless, unmotivated and "I've
got to have mine now" member of the labor force, then you are going to
be replaced either by a machine or by an industrious person in this
country or another. Prime example... member of an American automotive
labor union.

On Sun, 4 Dec 2005 13:26:02 -0500, "The Duke" <yours@dot.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>You must not be American if you support a company like this.
>
>You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.
>Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.
>
>These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that the
>taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
>profits.
>
>Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
>else".
>
>The Duke[/color]

ROFL....

Tell me what the unemployment rate is now?

Tell me about those 'great' manufacturing jobs we lost to China.

Would 'you' like to sit on an assembly line and make stuff?

Oh the horrible corporations. Providing great jobs, health care and
the ability to move up into management.

Show me the unemployed and I'll show you a bum.

Hell there are so many jobs out there...

You lefties are full of it!

--

Scott in Florida

snip
[color=blue]
> You lefties are full of it![/color]

You folks "south-awe-da-bordah" write funny stuff sometimes.
The right wings extremists and the leftists always make sure to disagree
with one another and are quick to accuse the other of all the evils of the
world.
I find this entertaining.
At least, in Canada, we have more than 2 parties, whether it's good or bad.
We have our own rightists, our own leftists and, somewhere in the middle,
the New Democratic Party and the independentist party Bloc Québécois.
People within each party also have something to say against Wal-Mart but
they don't accuse the other parties of being responsible.

"The Duke" <yours@dot.com> wrote in message
news:ZwGkf.140$PX2.23049@news20.bellglobal.com...[color=blue]
> You must not be American if you support a company like this.
>
> You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.
> Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.
>
> These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that the
> taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
> profits.
>
> Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
> else".
>
> The Duke[/color]

Off your meds, eh?
[color=blue]
>
>
>
> "Scott in Florida" <JustAsk@Florida.com> wrote in message
> news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng@4ax.com...[color=green]
>> From the Wall Steet Journal...
>>
>> Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
>>
>> The campaign against the company is about union politics.
>>
>> Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
>>
>> It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
>> campaign that the question above is even being asked.
>>
>> By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
>> noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
>> quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
>> evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.
>>
>> Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
>> work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
>> 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
>> profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
>> are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
>> 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
>> the sales.
>>
>> The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
>> or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
>> small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
>> your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
>> tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
>> believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
>> elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
>> Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
>> wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
>> Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
>> of these allegations are more myth than reality.
>>
>>
>> But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
>> that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
>> dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
>> it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
>> it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
>> hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
>> lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
>> pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
>> through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
>> billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
>> What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
>> its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
>> the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
>> the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
>> the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.
>>
>> So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
>> to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
>> way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
>> quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
>> fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
>> bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
>> Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
>> company's front lines.
>>
>> The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
>> employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
>> January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
>> account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
>> young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
>> some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
>> one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
>> opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
>> would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
>> correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
>> attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
>> would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
>> thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
>> tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
>> expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
>> their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
>> As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
>> vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
>> decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
>> the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
>> organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
>> as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
>> they may be right.
>>
>> But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
>> simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
>> And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
>> supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
>> far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
>> contributions).
>>
>> Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
>> such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
>> on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
>> the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
>> the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
>> the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
>> to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
>> 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
>> that have come its way.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
>> of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
>> minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
>> be addressed to the wrong audience.
>> Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
>> the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
>> those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
>> has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
>> the company what it is.
>> --
>>
>> Scott in Florida[/color]
>
>[/color]

"Bassplayer12" <perettij@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote in message
news:ayIkf.134147$Ph4.4101644@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...[color=blue]
> snip
>[color=green]
>> You lefties are full of it![/color]
>
> You folks "south-awe-da-bordah" write funny stuff sometimes.
> The right wings extremists and the leftists always make sure to disagree
> with one another and are quick to accuse the other of all the evils of the
> world.
> I find this entertaining.
> At least, in Canada, we have more than 2 parties, whether it's good or
> bad. We have our own rightists, our own leftists and, somewhere in the
> middle, the New Democratic Party and the independentist party Bloc
> Québécois.
> People within each party also have something to say against Wal-Mart but
> they don't accuse the other parties of being responsible.[/color]

As a Canadian, let me assure everyone that the NDP and the BQ are NOT
somewhere in the middle..they are FAR to the LEFT. The most centrist party
is the Conservative Party of Canada.


[color=blue]
>
>[/color]

>> snip
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> You lefties are full of it![/color][/color][/color]
[color=blue][color=green]
>> You folks "south-awe-da-bordah" write funny stuff sometimes.
>> The right wings extremists and the leftists always make sure to disagree
>> with one another and are quick to accuse the other of all the evils of
>> the world.
>> I find this entertaining.
>> At least, in Canada, we have more than 2 parties, whether it's good or
>> bad. We have our own rightists, our own leftists and, somewhere in the
>> middle, the New Democratic Party and the independentist party Bloc
>> Québécois.
>> People within each party also have something to say against Wal-Mart but
>> they don't accuse the other parties of being responsible.[/color]
>
> As a Canadian, let me assure everyone that the NDP and the BQ are NOT
> somewhere in the middle..they are FAR to the LEFT. The most centrist
> party is the Conservative Party of Canada.[/color]

I admit the word "middle" wasn't the right choice. But that's beside the
point I was making.

On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 13:26:02 -0500, The Duke wrote:
[color=blue]
> You must not be American if you support a company like this.
>
> You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.
> Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.[/color]

K-Mart

Target

Sears

Home Depot

Best Buy

Circuit City

*NONE* of these other retailers sell Chinese made goods?
*NONE* of them sell goods made in Third World countries?

I don't GET it? Why do people HATE Wal*Mart for doing what EVERY other
retailer is doing, only better? Please explain.

[color=blue]
>
> These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that the
> taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
> profits.
>
> Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
> else".
>
> The Duke
>
>
>
> "Scott in Florida" <JustAsk@Florida.com> wrote in message
> news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng@4ax.com...[color=green]
>> From the Wall Steet Journal...
>>
>> Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
>>
>> The campaign against the company is about union politics.
>>
>> Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
>>
>> It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
>> campaign that the question above is even being asked.
>>
>> By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
>> noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
>> quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
>> evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.
>>
>> Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
>> work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
>> 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
>> profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
>> are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
>> 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
>> the sales.
>>
>> The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
>> or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
>> small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
>> your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
>> tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
>> believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
>> elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
>> Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
>> wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
>> Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
>> of these allegations are more myth than reality.
>>
>>
>> But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
>> that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
>> dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
>> it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
>> it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
>> hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
>> lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
>> pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
>> through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
>> billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
>> What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
>> its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
>> the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
>> the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
>> the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.
>>
>> So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
>> to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
>> way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
>> quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
>> fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
>> bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
>> Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
>> company's front lines.
>>
>> The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
>> employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
>> January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
>> account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
>> young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
>> some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
>> one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
>> opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
>> would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
>> correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
>> attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
>> would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
>> thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
>> tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
>> expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
>> their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
>> As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
>> vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
>> decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
>> the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
>> organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
>> as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
>> they may be right.
>>
>> But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
>> simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
>> And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
>> supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
>> far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
>> contributions).
>>
>> Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
>> such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
>> on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
>> the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
>> the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
>> the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
>> to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
>> 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
>> that have come its way.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
>> of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
>> minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
>> be addressed to the wrong audience.
>> Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
>> the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
>> those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
>> has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
>> the company what it is.
>> --
>>
>> Scott in Florida[/color][/color]

--
Have your Virtual Pet spayed/neutered!!

Because some old Southern Boy got the best of them, I think. Plus the
Unions aren't getting their piece of the action. Well K-mart used to have
an anti-union policy, and Kroger ran their union out about 15 years ago out
of the Southern stores if memory serves.

Charles of Kankakee
Former Wal-mart employee, too.

"Hachiroku" <Trueno@ae86.GTS> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.12.05.02.05.22.358121@ae86.GTS...[color=blue]
> On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 13:26:02 -0500, The Duke wrote:
>[color=green]
>> You must not be American if you support a company like this.
>>
>> You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.
>> Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.[/color]
>
> K-Mart
>
> Target
>
> Sears
>
> Home Depot
>
> Best Buy
>
> Circuit City
>
> *NONE* of these other retailers sell Chinese made goods?
> *NONE* of them sell goods made in Third World countries?
>
> I don't GET it? Why do people HATE Wal*Mart for doing what EVERY other
> retailer is doing, only better? Please explain.
>
>[color=green]
>>
>> These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that
>> the
>> taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
>> profits.
>>
>> Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
>> else".
>>
>> The Duke
>>
>>
>>
>> "Scott in Florida" <JustAsk@Florida.com> wrote in message
>> news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng@4ax.com...[color=darkred]
>>> From the Wall Steet Journal...
>>>
>>> Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
>>>
>>> The campaign against the company is about union politics.
>>>
>>> Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
>>>
>>> It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
>>> campaign that the question above is even being asked.
>>>
>>> By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
>>> noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
>>> quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
>>> evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.
>>>
>>> Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
>>> work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
>>> 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
>>> profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
>>> are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
>>> 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
>>> the sales.
>>>
>>> The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
>>> or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
>>> small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
>>> your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
>>> tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
>>> believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
>>> elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
>>> Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
>>> wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
>>> Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
>>> of these allegations are more myth than reality.
>>>
>>>
>>> But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
>>> that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
>>> dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
>>> it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
>>> it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
>>> hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
>>> lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
>>> pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
>>> through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
>>> billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
>>> What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
>>> its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
>>> the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
>>> the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
>>> the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.
>>>
>>> So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
>>> to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
>>> way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
>>> quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
>>> fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
>>> bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
>>> Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
>>> company's front lines.
>>>
>>> The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
>>> employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
>>> January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
>>> account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
>>> young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
>>> some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
>>> one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
>>> opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
>>> would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
>>> correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
>>> attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
>>> would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
>>> thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
>>> tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
>>> expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
>>> their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
>>> As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
>>> vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
>>> decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
>>> the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
>>> organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
>>> as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
>>> they may be right.
>>>
>>> But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
>>> simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
>>> And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
>>> supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
>>> far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
>>> contributions).
>>>
>>> Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
>>> such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
>>> on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
>>> the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
>>> the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
>>> the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
>>> to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
>>> 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
>>> that have come its way.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
>>> of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
>>> minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
>>> be addressed to the wrong audience.
>>> Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
>>> the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
>>> those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
>>> has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
>>> the company what it is.
>>> --
>>>
>>> Scott in Florida[/color][/color]
>
> --
> Have your Virtual Pet spayed/neutered!!
>[/color]

[email]Trueno@ae86.GTS[/email] (Hachiroku) wrote:
[color=blue]
>I don't GET it? Why do people HATE
>Wal*Mart for doing what EVERY other
>retailer is doing, only better? Please
>explain.[/color]

Oooooh Oooooh!! <flailing hand in air>
The unions haven't been able to infiltrate Wal Mart so the negativity
you see is being fueled by their campaign against the "evil corporation"
who dared to stand up to them.

Unions have bunches of money from member dues to fight this type of
'evilness'...

The Duke wrote:[color=blue]
> You must not be American if you support a company like this.[/color]

He's a typical stupid American.
[color=blue]
>
> You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.[/color]

But if you make your money in the market who gives a damn? These old
people on this thread no doubt are benefiting from promises made by our
grandfathers that my generation has been entrusted to keep.

I say cut these old bastards off from their welfare... Scott.
[color=blue]
> Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.[/color]

And supporting awful human rights abuses.
[color=blue]
>
> These unemployed Americans then become part of the welfare system that the
> taxpayer pays for. In effect you as a taxpayer are supporting Walmart
> profits.[/color]

And it is one hell of a bad investment... we pay health insurance for
Walmart. Fuck a cheap dvr from china.
[color=blue]
>
> Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
> else".[/color]

Or, "I am. You eat cake."

[color=blue]
>
> The Duke
>
>
>
> "Scott in Florida" <JustAsk@Florida.com> wrote in message
> news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng@4ax.com...[color=green]
> > From the Wall Steet Journal...
> >
> > Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
> >
> > The campaign against the company is about union politics.
> >
> > Saturday, December 3, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
> >
> > It is a testament to the public-relations success of the anti-Wal-Mart
> > campaign that the question above is even being asked.
> >
> > By any normal measure, Wal-Mart's business ought to be
> > noncontroversial. It sells at low cost, albeit in mind-boggling
> > quantities, the quotidian products that huge numbers of Americans
> > evidently want to buy--from household goods to clothes to food.
> >
> > Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American
> > work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to
> > 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product. It is not, however, an especially
> > profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue,
> > are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal
> > 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of
> > the sales.
> >
> > The company's success and size, then, do not rest on monopoly profits
> > or price-gouging behavior. It simply sells things people will buy at
> > small markups and, as in the old saw, makes it up on volume. We draw
> > your attention to that total revenue number because, in a sense, it
> > tells you most of what you need to know about Wal-Mart. You may
> > believe, as do service-worker unions and a clutch of coastal
> > elites--many of whom, we'd wager, have never set foot in a
> > Wal-Mart--that Wal-Mart "exploits" workers who can't say no to low
> > wages and poor benefits. You might also accept the canard that
> > Wal-Mart drives good local businesses into the ground, although both
> > of these allegations are more myth than reality.
> >
> >
> > But even if you buy into the myths, there's no getting around the fact
> > that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of
> > dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do
> > it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart,
> > it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street
> > hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking
> > lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and
> > pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk
> > through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300
> > billion a year worth of anything without doing something right.
> > What about the workers? In response to long-running criticisms about
> > its pay and benefits, Wal-Mart's CEO, Lee Scott, recently called on
> > the government to raise the minimum wage. But as this page noted at
> > the time, Wal-Mart's average starting wage is already nearly double
> > the national minimum of $5.15 an hour.
> >
> > So raising it would have little effect on Wal-Mart, but calling for it
> > to be raised anyway must have struck someone in the company as a good
> > way to appease its political critics. (Bad call: Senator Ted Kennedy
> > quickly pocketed the concession and kept denouncing the company.) The
> > fact is that the company's starting hourly wages not only aren't as
> > bad as portrayed, but for many workers those wages are only a start.
> > Some 70% of Wal-Mart's executives have worked their way up from the
> > company's front lines.
> >
> > The company has also recently increased its health-care options for
> > employees on the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Starting in
> > January, one of those options will be a high-deductible health savings
> > account, which is a great way to insure yourself if you're relatively
> > young, relatively healthy and yet want to protect against the onset of
> > some catastrophic illness. Mr. Kennedy, who recently called Wal-Mart
> > one of the most "antiworker" companies around, has been a chief
> > opponent of these pro-worker, pro-market health insurance vehicles.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors
> > would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and
> > correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less
> > attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It
> > would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there,
> > thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution
> > tables that Wal-Mart's critics claim to be speaking for. One might
> > expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that
> > their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.
> > As our Holman W. Jenkins Jr. pointed out in a recent column, the
> > vanguard of the Wal-Mart haters is composed of unions that have for
> > decades kept retail wages and prices artificially high, especially in
> > the supermarket business. Those unions have had next to no success
> > organizing Wal-Mart employees and see Wal-Mart's push into groceries
> > as a direct threat to their market position. And on that one score,
> > they may be right.
> >
> > But seen in that light, it becomes clear that much of the criticism is
> > simply a form of special-interest lobbying in socially conscious drag.
> > And why an outside observer should favor the interests of unionized
> > supermarket employees over those of Wal-Mart shoppers and employees is
> > far from clear (unless you're a politician who gets union
> > contributions).
> >
> > Any company as successful as Wal-Mart will invariably run afoul of
> > such vested interests. It is in the nature of the rise of a new giant
> > on the scene that it disrupts established ways of doing things and in
> > the process upsets established players. So it was with Standard Oil at
> > the beginning of the 20th century, IBM in the middle and Microsoft at
> > the end of the century. Wal-Mart, perhaps because it restricted itself
> > to towns of less than 15,000 people as a matter of policy into the
> > 1990s, at first avoided and later seemed blindsided by the attacks
> > that have come its way.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The company has never been shy about defending its interests. But some
> > of its recent ripostes--such as Mr. Scott's call for hiking the
> > minimum wage or its gestures toward fighting global warming--seem to
> > be addressed to the wrong audience.
> > Its customers don't need to be told what they like about Wal-Mart. But
> > the company's management would do well to bear in mind that it is
> > those millions of shoppers, and not the elites with which the company
> > has sometimes of late been seen to be currying favor, that have made
> > the company what it is.
> > --
> >
> > Scott in Florida[/color][/color]

Mark wrote:[color=blue][color=green]
> > You are forgetting that Walmart cost Americans many good paying jobs.[/color]
>
> There are plenty of good-paying jobs in this country if the failed
> Liberal[/color]

You're a stupid jerk. You know why you suck? I'm not sure either, but
you definitely suck. You're a big pussy, you lie about your means, and
you parrot things that don't even make sense to you, much less to
anyone else.

You are a typical, textbook example of what is wrong with the USA.
You're ignorant, ethnocentric, elitist, boorish, and at the same time
you are demonstrably a complete, blithering idiot.

Congratulations!