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  #11  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-05-2005 , 03:00 PM







The Duke wrote:
Quote:
You must not be American if you support a company like this.
He's a typical stupid American.

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

Quote:
Buying mostly from China thus losing our manufacturing jobs.
And supporting awful human rights abuses.

Quote:
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.
And it is one hell of a bad investment... we pay health insurance for
Walmart. Fuck a cheap dvr from china.

Quote:
Remember the repuplican pledge. "As long as I am doing OK f--k everybody
else".
Or, "I am. You eat cake."


Quote:
The Duke



"Scott in Florida" <JustAsk (AT) Florida (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:qln5p1tf1n949id55vuidlee3krgi20nng (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...
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


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  #12  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-05-2005 , 03:06 PM







Mark wrote:
Quote:
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
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!



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  #13  
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Mark
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-05-2005 , 04:32 PM



Quote:
You know why you suck? I'm not sure either, but you definitely suck.
Well Richard, I'm sure you are quite an authority on sucking...

Yes Liberal genius, the truth hurts, better get used to it. The
Liberal welfare state and failed education system must go the way of
the dodo or many tens of millions of you will be sitting on your butts
in a few years wishing you had smartened up and learned to compete
while you still had the chance. Or worse yet, your little girl will be
working herself to death trying to support your sorry existence.



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  #14  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 09:29 AM




Mark wrote:
Quote:
You know why you suck? I'm not sure either, but you definitely suck.

Well Richard, I'm sure you are quite an authority on sucking...
And, my friend, you suck. Do us a favor and overdose on pills or shoot
yourself.



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  #15  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 09:33 AM




Mark wrote:
Quote:
You know why you suck? I'm not sure either, but you definitely suck.

Well Richard, I'm sure you are quite an authority on sucking...

Yes Liberal genius, the truth hurts, better get used to it. The
Liberal welfare state and failed education system must go the way of
the dodo or many tens of millions of you will be sitting on your butts
in a few years wishing you had smartened up and learned to compete
while you still had the chance. Or worse yet, your little girl will be
working herself to death trying to support your sorry existence.
Oh yeah, something else for you, you fucking stupid lump.

The reason that a few of the pension plans are flummoxed now is because
of your scumbag republican ancestors which promised away my money to
pay for your lazy ass grandfather's pension.



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  #16  
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ravelation
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 11:01 AM




Trueno (AT) ae86 (DOT) GTS (Hachiroku) wrote:

Quote:
HEY!!!
I WAS A UNION MEMBER FOR 10
YEARS!!!
Pssst. I'm a union member RIGHT NOW!!

Quote:
you're absolutely right, I believe...
Yes, I am. You wouldn't believe the $$ the unions spent taking down
Arnold's initiatives. The number thrown around is $10mil.



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  #17  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 11:48 AM




ravelation wrote:
Quote:
Trueno (AT) ae86 (DOT) GTS (Hachiroku) wrote:

HEY!!!
I WAS A UNION MEMBER FOR 10
YEARS!!!

Pssst. I'm a union member RIGHT NOW!!

you're absolutely right, I believe...

Yes, I am. You wouldn't believe the $$ the unions spent taking down
Arnold's initiatives. The number thrown around is $10mil.
That's what we have unions for. Sounds to me like they did a damned
good job. Now they can save GM and Delphi's asses for the workers.



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  #18  
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Mark
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 02:07 PM



Richard, your word for today is "LITHIUM"


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  #19  
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Mark
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 02:09 PM



Quote:
That's what we have unions for. Sounds to me like they did a damned
good job. Now they can save GM and Delphi's asses for the workers.

The unions are a major reason that GM and Delphi are going down the
tubes, doofus.



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  #20  
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Learning Richard
 
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Default Re: OT Wal Mart is GREAT for America! - 12-06-2005 , 02:19 PM




Mark wrote:
Quote:
That's what we have unions for. Sounds to me like they did a damned
good job. Now they can save GM and Delphi's asses for the workers.


The unions are a major reason that GM and Delphi are going down the
tubes, doofus.
No, that would be the scumbag corporate execs at the top that promised
away the future of the workers' grandchildren back in the 1950s, while
excluding those numbers from their accounting books so their greedy
asses could reap the benefits of fake profit numbers.

Get a clue moron. Most American pension plans are extremely solvent
and good investments. GM and Delphi just screwed the American workers
with their greed, and now they have smooth-brained republican cretins
like you to blame the same workers that are already headed to the local
Food Bank because instead of smartly investing their retirement money
they trusted Nixonian crooks.



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