(11-25-2024, 10:56 AM)Jag149 Wrote: (11-25-2024, 10:11 AM)TDOSS Wrote: That link is corporate-paid Walmart PR. There is another view of Walmart. It's not good. Walmart runs small business out of business. Walmart is a small-business eating monster.
If a small American manufacturer lives the American Dream and comes up with a new product idea, Walmart will try to steal it. They might initially do business with the small supplier, but that will only be to get their hands on the product and figure out how to copy it. Then the cheaper knock-off will be manufactured overseas by cheap oppressed labor. If the small business has a patent on their product, they will have to sue Walmart to get them to stop. Walmart will use high dollar lawyers to fight the small business every step of the way, hoping to bankrupt them. Every type of Trump-style legal delay will be used in order to bankrupt the small business before they can finally prevail. Trials will be stalled. Motions will be filed. Time is money. The more time that goes by, the closer the small business is to folding. This game is nothing to Walmart. They do it all the time. It is part of their business plan.
The worst thing a small business can do would be to invent a new product, manufacture it, and end up with Walmart as the sole marketer. Walmart will want exclusive marketing rights. They will pay the lowest price they can negotiate for the product, promising volume. Then, after Walmart begins to market knock-off copies they will hold the small business to the sole marketing agreement with their own lawsuit (s). The small business won't be able to sell product anywhere else, and Walmart will stop ordering from them. Their income will vanish right when they need it most to pay the lawyers to fight Walmart.
When Walmart comes to a small town, it drives local businesses out of business. Walmart will come in and sell product at a loss just to drive the local business out of business. They will steal all the customers. Then, after the local supplier is gone, and a local family is bankrupted and looses their home, Walmart raises it's prices to recoup the losses. For example, Walmart will sell hardware items for a loss to run a local hardware store out of business. Then, after there is no more locally owned hardware store, that same Walmart raises the prices on all hardware items above what it really needs, just to recoup the losses. Those prices never come back down. After the losses are recouped, the rest after that day is gravy for the super-rich owners of Walmart from then on.
Walmart fights dirty. Any time American consumers can get something at another local small business instead of Walmart, it is a good thing. When we shop at locally owned stores, the money stays in the local economy. When we shop at Walmart, or any other big box, the money gets sucked out of the local economy and goes into the pockets of the super-rich. We have just contributed to the growing wealth gap in America and done our part to kill our local town.
Have you ever done business with Walmart?
That has nothing to do with the discussion.
Personal anecdotes are useless in a discussion of such wide-ranging scope. If you're trying to make the discussion about you or me, I am not interested in that. There is no point in changing the discussion into that.
If you want to talk about Walmart, I'll gladly give my view. You seem to have a very favorable view of Walmart. I will gladly represent the unfavorable view. I have read extensively about Walmart. Walmart has not been good for America. Many American lives have been ruined by Walmart.
Walmart pays it's workers so little that many of them qualify for social assistance. Our tax dollars are being used to support Walmart workers, who are treated terribly. Thus, Walmart enjoys this indirect massive government subsidy. Couldn't operate without it. There is a high burn-out rate among Walmart workers. Walmart relies on government assistance programs to support it's workers. Walmart workers are treated horribly. They are often expected to have zero life and be on-call 24-7. When stores get more traffic, on-call workers are called in. If they refuse the call, their hours are dropped or they are fired. If store traffic drops, workers are sent home. They never know if they are going to get enough hours to pay rent or not. It's a horrible insecure way to live. If they do not accept being treated like this, Walmart will happily fire them and oppress others.
Working at Walmart is a good way to have no life, no savings, build no wealth, and be left with nothing at retirement age and forced wot work when others can enjoy retirement. Just look around at any Walmart. You'll see some very old people working there. They aren't doing that because they enjoy it. They have insufficient savings nor benefits. Walmart is happy to take advantage of their misfortune. Walmart sucks.
