Walmart not Coming to Washington DC

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tim722

tim722

The Fly
Joined
Dec 8, 2006
Messages
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Goddamn liberals and their goddamn meddling in the god ordained free market... tell you what, I promise to use the phrase 'tax eaters' in this thread if someone gets me drunk.
 
tim722 said:
Wal-Mart Threatens to Pull Out of Washington, D.C. - US News and World Report

Typical liberal lawmakers passes law that Walmart must pay their employees a minimum wage of $12.50 an hr. All other companies pay $8.25 an hr.

Chicago tried the same thing until Walmart opened stores one block outside Chicago in the suburbs. Now those suburbs are enjoying tax revenue and Chicago is begging to open stores in Chicago. Wow were they wrong.
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When the CEO is raking in a cool 20 Million a year - I think it's hard to sympathize with Walmart management. The GOP championing discrepancies like this is one of the main reasons I left the party. Am I really expected to believe that this CEO (and almost every other one) is so talented, so smart, so unique that he earned and deserved 20 million a year?

And why in the world have conservative, middle-class Americans allowed themselves to be the mouthpiece and voting block for this New Aristocracy?
 
Plus Wal-Mart is a crap store. I have no noble, altruistic reasons for not shopping there. I just don't enjoy the Wal-Mart shopping experience .
 
i think Wal-Mart makes sense in rural communities, it doesn't make sense in urban communities where it's likely to have a devastating effect on the small businesses that create great urban spaces. corporatism is not capitalism.

there's a lot of discussion on this here in DC, i will say that. and one of the things a "living wage" does is actually decrease dependence on state/local services because people don't need them if they are making a living wage. employing a bunch of people at a cheap rate where they will still need public assistance to get by is a drain on local economies. WalMart makes their profits through their employees by expecting the state and federal government to pay for food stamps and medicaid. and 20 hours a week at $8.25 isn't enough to get by in most coastal cities, let alone DC. why should i as a taxpayer subsidize a business that's going to make money off of keeping people in near poverty and living off the dole?

all that said ... i have to think that some job is better than no job, and where this was scheduled to open is near a very rough housing project. they are also in "food deserts" so, despite their crappy produce, at least it's some produce, and people won't have to spend their days on the bus trying to get groceries.

but it's hard to feel any sort of sorrow for WalMart. they leave local businesses in ruins. the long term devastation seems unable to justify any short term employment benefit.
 
maycocksean said:
Plus Wal-Mart is a crap store. I have no noble, altruistic reasons for not shopping there. I just don't enjoy the Wal-Mart shopping experience .
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This is it exactly.

It isn't as if there aren't other stores where you could also shop cheaply and which offer a comparably better experience - Costco, Target, etc.
 
I've never understood why people say Target is cheap. They're no where near the prices Wal-Mart offers.
 
bono_212 said:
I've never understood why people say Target is cheap. They're no where near the prices Wal-Mart offers.
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From where I'm standing, Target only arrived in Canada this past summer. So my prior experiences with it were all in the US, whereas we have Walmarts all over the place.

Target in the US extraordinarily cheap for Canadians. Our retail prices are much higher than yours in every respect.

I don't personally like to shop at a Walmart because I find it gross.
 
anitram said:
From where I'm standing, Target only arrived in Canada this past summer. So my prior experiences with it were all in the US, whereas we have Walmarts all over the place.

Target in the US extraordinarily cheap for Canadians. Our retail prices are much higher than yours in every respect.

I don't personally like to shop at a Walmart because I find it gross.
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I just remember being told most of my life that Target was like this better, but equally cheap Wal-Mart. Then I finally moved somewhere that had one, and I was super disappointed to find that that was hardly true at all. I'm not sure what makes them so much more acceptable to everyone else, besides having better clothing options.

But I can understand where you're coming from on that one :)

I do personally shop at Wal-mart because...I don't have a ton of other options, really. I mix it up, usually, between a few places for groceries, but for everything else? Basically stick to Wal-mart.
 
AEON said:
Am I really expected to believe that this CEO (and almost every other one) is so talented, so smart, so unique that he earned and deserved 20 million a year?[/I][/B]?
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This may be a good topic for a separate thread.

I think it is easy to characterize income discrepancy between CEOs and front line employees as inherently wrong, but people generally don't understand what a CEO needs to do to earn that money, and more importantly, what it takes to increase the revenue of the business to simply cover costs. Take a one-year Cost of Living raise - spread that out over a large entity and you need a large chunk of revenue. You can't simply make that revenue by raising prices - that may hurt sales. You need a broad-based strategy to achieve this one, simple goal.

Now, take that basic goal and plan a strategy that continues that growth over decades. I think it is safe to say that not one of us could accomplish this task.
 
nbcrusader said:
This may be a good topic for a separate thread.

I think it is easy to characterize income discrepancy between CEOs and front line employees as inherently wrong, but people generally don't understand what a CEO needs to do to earn that money, and more importantly, what it takes to increase the revenue of the business to simply cover costs.
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Would be an excellent topic.

We could consider the historical averages of the ratio of CEO to employee pay and also ratios across western democracies. Let's not forget that the extreme ratio in the US today is a very recent phenomenon and that CEOs of the past apparently managed to lead successful companies on a more equitable basis.
 
anitram said:
Would be an excellent topic.

We could consider the historical averages of the ratio of CEO to employee pay and also ratios across western democracies. Let's not forget that the extreme ratio in the US today is a very recent phenomenon and that CEOs of the past apparently managed to lead successful companies on a more equitable basis.
Click to expand...

The result of the discouraging trend to consider short term profits over the long term success of the company, Because of their mobility, the CEO's are less tied to the companies and the boards appear terrified of letting this perhaps charismatic, but long-term-less-than -successful CEO go. I've never understood the golden parachute where the company says, "We have to give the CEO a cushion to fail miserably or he will go somewhere else.":hmm: The sad result of paying mediocrity well.
 
maycocksean said:
I've seen those before and they are funny. For me, it's the staff and the service. Long lines, shelves a mess and poorly stocked, staff unhelpful and unknowledgable.
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The Walmarts around here tend to be clean and well organized.

I was always amused by K-Mart. A brand new store would look like it was trashed for 30 years.
 
The ones I've been to around here don't appeal to me because:
- they are always crowded with huge lines, no matter what time of day you show up
- the people who work there appear to hate their jobs and lives
- people don't supervise their children AT ALL so they run around screaming
- the produce is really unfortunate (I don't mind so much buying things like toilet paper or canned goods but my God the fruit and veg, just no - I go to the farmer's market for that)
- the parking lot is a disaster, always busy, littered with abandoned carts, etc.

I did shop there pretty often when I was a poor student, though.
 
deep said:
I don't shop there, sometimes I wait in the car when my driver wants to pick up low cost prescriptions.
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Only an uninformed chump would pay for brand name medication that is literally the exact same molecule as the generic equivalent.

That said, I don't step foot on Walmart because it's gross
 
I somehow doubt Chicago is begging for WalMarts. I have legitimate reasons for despising WalMart(not that any of the above aren't legitimate), I've worked with WalMart in the past and they basically know they are an evil necessity for certain vendors, so they will screw you as much as they legally can. The small firm I used to work for did work with them for years, they would delay payments (sometimes over a year) so they could keep collecting interest. They would deny reimbursements all the time for the most asinine reasons, i.e. if you were traveling out of town and you bought groceries and the receipt had a bottle of beer on it, even if you didn't put the beer on the expense report they would deny it. If you rented a car and car rental place gave you an upgrade for the price of the economy car they would deny it. Once again so they can gain the interest. This is how they can sell things sometimes below costs in order to drive out competition.

Also here where I live they pulled some loophole maneuver so that they could build on a city park regardless of the board's votes.

They know they're too big for small vendors to take legal action against so they screw them as much as they can. They're a disgustingly horrible devoid of ethics company.
 
Walmart Wins Again As Washington D.C. Mayor Vetoes $12.50 Minimum Wage - Forbes

Sept 12th

Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray today vetoed a bill that would require the largest retailers in the city to pay a $12.50 per hour minimum wage, saying it was a “job-killer” that would affect not only Walmart (its target) but also Home Depot HD -1.92%, Target TGT -1.28%, Wegman’s, Loew’s, Harris HRS +0.29% Teeter, AutoZone AZO -0.66% and Macy’s. Those retailers, he said in his veto letter, “either will not come or will not expand in the district” and will instead open stores just outside the district in Maryland, depriving low-income DC neighborhoods of both amenities and retail jobs.
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A whiff of sanity from an unlikely source.

PS, why do people start threads and then abandon them once they leave the homepage of wherever they get their news?
 
Looking forward to some more INDY/JT discussions that range numerous pages.
 
I am still bewildered by the average Right Winger's love of Big Business/Pseudo Capitalism. How the 1 percent got average struggling Americans to fight to keep them rich is nothing short of astonishing. I am so conservative in my thoughts and actions - but I can't imagine how fighting to keep other people rich (or - making them even richer) is a "conservative" cause.
 
The real question in this world is; are you a pre- or post- 1789 conservative. Cause the latter might as well be the evil twin of liberalism and socialism. All got skin in the same game.
 
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