We just saw the Wal-Mart documentary

[EstimatedProphet]

Amazing. If you haven't seen it, it is an eye-opener, even if you do have a good grip on what is going on. For example:
Each of the Walmart major owners (widow and 4 children) make in the neighborhood of $25 BILLION, have a government tax cut in the neighborhood of $91,000 PER HOUR - yet they pay wages so low that many employees have to get welfare assistance. Add to this the fact that in many communities, they open a new store by talking to the city council and insisting that the store building costs are subsidized by the city, or else they will build right outside the city limits, therefore cutting out any possible tax revenue for the city and effectively forcing their hand.
The corporate greed is insane. It might as well be torching the entire country, because by the time they are done, the economy will be solely owned by Walmart.

[Deja Q]

1. But it's a great business model that must be held in high regard!

How come so many fuckin' MORONS blindly believe the lunacy that walmart is good for anyone?

Prices on most products are only a couple pennies lower.

The real low-cost stuff is so cheap and flimsy, it's not worth my goddamn tax dollars being subsidized to them. I'd rather go to target and get decent stuff instead.

[EstimatedProphet]

2. No kidding

Their furniture is really flimsy, for example.

[rainy]

3. Someone I know actually said: Who else is going to hire all

THOSE people? I was shocked.

[EstimatedProphet]

4. THOSE people? You mean Americans?

What an idiot.

[sandnsea]

8. Target is no better

They sell the same cheap-ass foreign made crap that Walmart sells. The only thing Target has going for them is that they're union. That's worth an awful lot and certainly worth choosing Target over Walmart, I do for that reason. But crap is crap and it's the same crap that they're all selling from the same slave labor factories. So once again the question becomes, if price is all about the cost of employees and benefits, why do Target and Walmart sell their products for pretty much the same price. I think the answer lies in that $91,000 an hour tax cut for the billion dollar trust fund babies.

[tuvor]

5. In my town, in exchange for cutting down trees to build the store...

...they paid for a new downtown library. Have they ever done that sort of thing in the states?

(Just wondering if regional differences play a part in how they do business.)

[EstimatedProphet]

10. What they seem to do here, mostly...

is threaten to build outside the city limits so that tax revenues will be drained out of the city, unless the city will subsidize their new store.

[Whoa_Nelly]

6. New Super W-M going in here

Small, rural CA town. City council fought it ...some...major part of the deal was that the current W-M building had to have a new tenant...no empty building left behind. So, Lowe's is going in. The new Super W-M has already broken ground.

[Habibi]

7. Well, that's something

isn't it unusual to get them to agree to let the building go?

[EstimatedProphet]

9. That was another point they brought up

In a lot of towns, Walmart has a habit of building a store in town, then when the competetion is destroyed, they move out of town leaving an empty building and and empty downtown area, and no one paying tax revenues to the city.