The Anti-Walmart War
I don't think most reasonable people will argue that the Walmart of today is certainly not the Walmart Sam Walton started so many years ago. By all accounts, he was a devout Christian who believed in American values, hard work and the American Dream. He wanted to start a business for the typical American who had lack of choices and prices which were too high for them to afford the basics and created a superstore with so many choices and very low prices all made in America.
At least, that was how it started. At some point it changed drastically. Whenever you let the power of the stockholders press your core business model and shred it for pure profit generation, you lose the soul of your business. It happened with Walmart.
Have you seen it yet? If not, I would highly recommend the movie, Walmart - The High Cost Of Low Price by Robert Greenwald. When you do see it, take it with a grain of salt.
Yes, he does bring up very valid points on how Walmart has literally brought small communities to its knees by making it impossible for family run stores to compete and drowning out almost all its competition so the only jobs available are menial jobs paying low wages at the town's Walmart.
Allegations include Walmart's insurance and benefit package - employers tell the employees to sign up for welfare benefits and show them how to do it. Walmart, a company that takes government welfare in order to make a profit and gets tax breaks puts far less into the system and does not pay their employees a decent living wage expecting the taxpayers to cover them as well as Walmart's welfare.
To bring you low prices so they can still make a profit, Walmart uses cheap labour in impoverished countries under poor working conditions with fear motivation to make them pump out more products.
Walmart is very anti-union in the US and if you even think about starting a union in a store, you will have a private investigator follow you around and spy on your activites at work and even on your time off will follow and intimidate you until they find grounds to fire you or force you out.
Yes, these are horrible things and Walmart has done them. However, be really honest, how many large corporate owned retail stores are any different than Walmart? To villianize one very successful giant is shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the big retail corporations are guilty of the very same things.
If you want to get really honest about where your outrage should be directed, where do you shop? Do you feel you MUST have a lot of product as cheap as you can get it just because it can be had? If so, you are part of the problem. This consumerism has spiralled out of control. The need to get more and more things of lower quality just for the sake of having things is obscene and contributes to the growth of stores like Walmart.
And I don't believe the small town stores could ever compete with the giants because they had a limited shelf space and could only carry what their customers were likely to buy, even if the prices were a bit higher. They took the time to know their customers and if a customer wanted something special, most store owners would see what they could do to supply it. That level of service rarely exists. It is completely non-existent in big corporate owned retail stores.
The Walmart monster did not create itself. We created it.
Callen Damornen's World
At least, that was how it started. At some point it changed drastically. Whenever you let the power of the stockholders press your core business model and shred it for pure profit generation, you lose the soul of your business. It happened with Walmart.
Have you seen it yet? If not, I would highly recommend the movie, Walmart - The High Cost Of Low Price by Robert Greenwald. When you do see it, take it with a grain of salt.
Yes, he does bring up very valid points on how Walmart has literally brought small communities to its knees by making it impossible for family run stores to compete and drowning out almost all its competition so the only jobs available are menial jobs paying low wages at the town's Walmart.
Allegations include Walmart's insurance and benefit package - employers tell the employees to sign up for welfare benefits and show them how to do it. Walmart, a company that takes government welfare in order to make a profit and gets tax breaks puts far less into the system and does not pay their employees a decent living wage expecting the taxpayers to cover them as well as Walmart's welfare.
To bring you low prices so they can still make a profit, Walmart uses cheap labour in impoverished countries under poor working conditions with fear motivation to make them pump out more products.
Walmart is very anti-union in the US and if you even think about starting a union in a store, you will have a private investigator follow you around and spy on your activites at work and even on your time off will follow and intimidate you until they find grounds to fire you or force you out.
Yes, these are horrible things and Walmart has done them. However, be really honest, how many large corporate owned retail stores are any different than Walmart? To villianize one very successful giant is shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the big retail corporations are guilty of the very same things.
If you want to get really honest about where your outrage should be directed, where do you shop? Do you feel you MUST have a lot of product as cheap as you can get it just because it can be had? If so, you are part of the problem. This consumerism has spiralled out of control. The need to get more and more things of lower quality just for the sake of having things is obscene and contributes to the growth of stores like Walmart.
And I don't believe the small town stores could ever compete with the giants because they had a limited shelf space and could only carry what their customers were likely to buy, even if the prices were a bit higher. They took the time to know their customers and if a customer wanted something special, most store owners would see what they could do to supply it. That level of service rarely exists. It is completely non-existent in big corporate owned retail stores.
The Walmart monster did not create itself. We created it.
Callen Damornen's World
posted by Callen Damornen at 11:40:00 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home