I can't belive that people buy some of that garbage! Some of my tools that were givin to me by my grandfather are 30-40 years old and still work just fine. I bought a screwdriver set at walmart, and now half of a square head screwdriver is sitting in the bottom of an AC unit.

 

was that a stanley (also made in china)

 

I'm glad you got a chuckle-sometimes in these discussions we get too serious. Your example, however, means little when scope is considered. U.S. companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue are engaged in 147 lawsuits simultaneously, some won, some lost (according to the survey of in-house corporate counsel commissioned by law firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP.). That is business in the USA.
I did not intend to be a champion for Wal-mart, I just took exception to some statements and characterizations I think are in error (my opinion).
Dono

 

I don't much care for that statement.

There are a lot of disabled servicemen and women on Government assistance because of circumstances beyond their control.

Not everyone that is on assistance is lazy.

 

i wish wal mart would carry auto parts. most of the parts dealers where i live in canada are small business. i spend all day on the phone, 80% don't have it and the ones that do quote me crazy prices. NAPA sucks too. even though they have like 20 stores here, most of the time they don't have it and then it's still 2x the price. i drive to new york and go to autozone or advance. number one they always have it. and number two if i buy a part at autozone i don't have to worry that i'm paying 3x as much as at advance. that's what wal mart does for people. they don't charge huge markups. you're not going to buy something at wal mart and see it somewhere else for half what you paid. my dad used to do the same for shoes. before wal mart came to canada you had to go to a shoe store in some mall for shoes and they'd charge you 100-200 bucks for a pair of shoes. sears was no better. where else were you gonna go. this was in the 80's before free trade. dad would take us camping in the states just to go to the dexter shoe outlet and he'd get himself a few pairs of shoes at 30$/pair. when wal mart came people had to clean up their act. zellers used to have crap laying all over the place. now they have a nice store. sears and canadian tire send me flyers every week with something nice at 50% off. this is the golden age.

my problem with wal mart is they break the law. one of the stores here in canada started a union. instead of dealing wtih them in good faith like our law requires, wal mart packed up and closed the store. me i wouldn't mind paying a FEW bucks more if i knew it was going into the pockets of the people that work there. just don't charge me 3x the price because the owner's been there for 30 years and feels entitled to a 300% mark up. but life doesn't work that way. wal mart can't afford a union because then k mart or whoever would get an edge on them.

that's what got them into trouble here. quebec's the most unionized province in north america and wal mart got bit in jonquiere. they open up a store in a big city like montreal it's OK. they hire a lot of students, part timers, retirees. not a bunch of people that going to get it together and form a union. but open a store out in the woods somewhere there's not a lot of jobs. everyone wants a permanent job with walmart, they all know each other, start having meetings. walmart closed the store instead of negotiating with them and i think that sucks.

really sad part is there's regions here that don't have good shopping that would love a walmart so they can get deals on clothes and shoes adn appliances and all that crap you never seem to have enough of when you have a kid. but its easy to see why wal mart doesn't go there. these are mill towns, fishing communities, or the guys go to the city to work construction. all of it's union.

but its a two way street like that. if we let ourselves get nostalgic everytime somebody comes up with a better way of doing things we'd still be living in the medeival age. but we lose a lot of the security we had going to work for these huge corporations that can just make or break an entire community in their bottom line. personally i think instead of people saying they don't want wal mart in their town maybe they should put their energy into some kind of national strategy to give working people some job security. wal mart, oil companies, banks are all making money hand over fist and when they screw up the government just tosses them a couple of billion dollars. i wish i had that kind of security for when i screw up.

 

I see all of this and one word comes to mind.. China-Mart.

 

True, with rising healthcare cost, it puts a crimp in everyone's budget.
Healthcare is so exspenive now, lots of bussiness are feeling the pinch in a big way.
My wife worked at Walmart before our daughter was born & she got treated pretty good [ full time employee ]
Most of the Wal-marts that I have visited here in the Texas area are clean for the most part.
I imagine it is hard to keep a large store really clean with so much traffic.
If a kid stops & takes a leak on the floor, the parents have done a poor job raising their child.
At various stores, I have seen grown up people look a item, not want it & just drop it on the floor, that sucks !

 

You have to wear wadding boots in our walmart!My good friend Shawn is the toy department manager out on state rd.220 and it is nice and clean we ride out there once and while.He takes his job serious and keeps the cleanest toy section you will ever see.I used to make fun of him (joking)until I went out there Its strange to see someone take pride in a job for not so good pay.But Shawn is a stickler!Got to love him for that.appreciate ya!

 

Dono,

you're saying that each co. Doing more than 1B a year has 147 lawsuits going on at any given time?

 

hey bro, i shop at walmart but only car stuff.....brand spkrs and cd players, kits etc nothing else...everything else suckz but hey they're car accessories n stuff is pretty nice...here in miami....cheap too!

 

That is what I'm saying. I have no way of knowing, but I'd guess with it's volumn and customer count Wal-Mart has more. If you add in smaller businesses, the count drops to 37. Our capacity to produce goods has deminished, but we are still producing and employing lawyers at a record pace. Before I retired, I had never worked for a company that had not been sued. I could find the link if you are interested.

I can understand your frustration regarding quality versis price. I spent my last 16 working years in sales.
Dono

 

http://www.nfsi.org/walmart/Lawsuits...20Wal-Mart.htm

 

This whole thing goes beyond Walmart really, into the effect of increased trade deficits with foreign countries. (with the caveat of the way Walmart treats the employees)

In the last 10 years, where I live, I have watched the closing of 2 Kaiser aluminum plants, the closing of a magnesium mine, the closing of countless lumber mills. All because we can buy it cheaper from a foreign country than to make it here. That foreign country may or may not have the same labor and environmental laws that we require. If we keep sending all our money across the pond, at what point will their standard of living increase, while our dwindles. Will we someday become a 3rd world country?

Here is a lengthy, but interesting article on the trade deficit with China.
http://www.epinet.org/workingpapers/epi_wp270.pdf
a snippet: "The labor content of U.S. trade is shown in the bottom half of Table 1. Between 1989 and 2003, the
growth in U.S. exports to China created demand that supported 199,000 additional U.S. jobs. In the same
period, the growth of imports displaced production that could have supported an additional 1,659,000 jobs
(note that the growth of imports displaces domestic jobs, so the labor content of import growth is reported
as a negative number in Table 1 and throughout this paper). As a result, growth in the U.S. trade with
China eliminated a net 1,460,000 domestic job opportunities in this period."

 

china's wealth will increase. america's will decline until they balance out somewhere and multinationals find some other miserable 3rd world county to exploit. but to add a billion people onto american level of development with a car in every garage is just a pipe dream. we're inevitably going to confront a shortage of resources like oil which is exactly what we're seeing now in places like the middle east, ukraine, venezuela

globalization really means developing countries compete in the US market to acquire dollars they need to buy oil. the IMF and OPEC price debt and oil in dollars. if you need oil or credit you have to acquire dollars and the best way for many is sell their labour or resources to the United States. other countries will always undercut US producers because they have to. the system is set up that way. the only thing that will change is a major upset in who controls the oil business forcing everyone to do business with some other superpower or directly with the producers.

 

damn bro...it looks like walmart shoppers are taking advantage of the suing situation.......they're stupid it seems like they cant tell or what????? nice article beeboy! thanks