The economic base of this country is so screwed up, and it's corrupting the world

[thewayne]

"These bins are for Wal-Mart employees to donate [food] to other employees. And where can Wal-Mart's low-wage workers find cheap food to donate? Wal-Mart. Anyone can afford food there... except people who work at Wal-Mart."
—Stephen Colbert

Thank you, Sam Walton and heirs. We're so very happy: found out that an Albertson's is breaking ground in January, much better than breaking wind. So some time next year we'll be able to say adios to Walmart! There's a LOT of people looking forward to it, it'll be nice to have another good butcher in town to get custom cuts of meat.

There's an old saying: make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. People took this 'lowest prices' and just didn't know where to stop, destroying a lot of small businesses. I guess part of it is economic evolution: big-box bookstores killed most mom & pop bookstores, now the internet has claimed CompUSA and Circuit City, Amazon has claimed Borders and Barnes & Noble is shaky and who knows how long Best Buy will last after they killed most of the small audiophile shops. Sears/Kmart is shaky because the CIIC (Chief Idiot In Charge) decided that departments had to compete with each other for bonuses in a weird form of economic Darwinism, meanwhile the stores fall to shit and they're talking about turning their unused mall space in to data centers. Apparently one Mother's Day advert featured expensive kids electric cars on the cover.

Amazon is actually a pretty big threat to Walmart if they choose to be, and they're talking about hiring the US Post Office for Sunday deliveries in some areas, that's going to be interesting to see how it works out.

Comments

[vaudy.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Walmart's newest advertising, about all the job opportunities they provide for veterans? Yes, what a great opportunity, to work for peanuts in retail hell. I work for one of Walmart's competitor's here in the Midwest (with a similar superstore format), and after three years, I make a whopping $11 an hour. Even if I were full-time, I couldn't support myself on that.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how little money people have to work for. I heard a recent study that something on the order of over 40% of people making minimum wage are over 40 years old. It's not entry-level like when I was in high school (I did 3 Christmases in retail hell), it's now a last hope.

And Sam Walton's heirs control more wealth than the bottom 40% of the country.

I was shocked to see that Walmart no longer has greeters or the people who give you a shopping cart. I asked a cashier about that, and she says that they were offered positions within the store, but most of those people were not fit to do anything more physically demanding.

[silveradept]

Congratulations on getting competition. I think some of that push for big box stores comes from...someone's dream of a homogeneous culture, where we all eat at McDonalds, shop at Walmart, and read the same books and watch the same television. Possibly so they can make us all buy the same cheap crap.