tomsjeep wrote:
what's wrong with WalMart?
I believe they are the #1 offender to our economy personally. Lower prices at any cost is the problem. Countless small (and large!) business were singlehandedly destroyed by walmart. They sell everything and have a buying power that nobody can compete with. They are almost like a retail monopoly. They force suppliers to give it to them cheap or don't sell it. They buy tons of Chinese foreign goods, putting our people out of work and then tout that they bring our communities jobs. Joy, just what we wanted, to lose our business and then get an $8/hr job at walmart.
Its basically a vicious cylce. Les jobs means less money for consumers, have to go somewhere cheap to shop, walmart gets more money and power, other businesses get hurt as they spread / increase offerings. Now there are even less jobs, people have less money, have to shop somewhere cheap...etc etc.
Now it is true that I shop there on a regular basis, and probably spend more $ there than anywhere else. But it makes me sick. I'm not exactly rolling in cash and you have to do what you have to do to get by. And walmart has crushed the grocery stores in my area. Even the biggest and best chain has sold out and become more convenience store-like with higher prices, fewer offerings.
I'm not looking forward to the retail landscape in this country in 20-30 years. It's going to be a desolate place. Maybe if it wasn't them it would be someone else. Either way I cringe when I see new walmarts going up. Almost as much as I do when I see one move across the highway from its old location, leaving a monstrous building that will likely never be filled efficiently, as well as a many acre parking lot wreaking havoc on the watershed / drainage in the area.
Think about this, would you rather start one of these businesses next to a walmart or 100 miles away: Grocery store, Music store, electronics store, hardware store, home store, pharmacy, pet shop, furniture store, photo developer, deli, etc etc etc....
Sorry for the long post. I don't blame people for shopping there. But I can't believe how many people don't realize what it's doing to this country. Bottom line: if you can afford to, shop somewhere else. Maybe you'll still have a choice where you would like to shop in 20 years. Some larger cities probably don't see the problem, but in a town like mine, of 60-70 thousand people where industry is drying up, they are killing off the rest. And this is the second town I've lived in where this was a problem.
Edit: To me along with much of what happens on wall street & foreign cars, walmart is one of the ugliest parts of capitolism. I'm not saying capitolism itself is bad. I love that you can work hard, learn, and take risks and improve your situation in this country. But just like with people insisting on buying toyota and honda, shopping at walmart is a failure of capitolism in that to better your situation (cheaper cd's, "longer lasting cars") you have to destroy your neighbor, and now he doesn't have money to buy your goods, so you do worse. Though it may take years to come full circle, it has to eventually, no way around it.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The "I'll do what's best for me and screw the rest of you" mentality eventually will come back around and screw me. Shopping at walmart or buying a toyota is definitely not what's good for the gander...
Ok I'm done with my rant, sorry for going off topic and going all over the place with this...
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2011 Ford F-150 XLT 4X4
etc. Plus when the shop saw the Walmart tire, and knew that I had priced the Duratracs on different web sites they beat the price of Walmart/ Tire Rack even.
