Walmart, the worst corporation in America

[madokie]

It's Time to Do Something When a Corporation Like WalMart Won't Pay a Living Wage: Or Else We All Pay
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace
AlterNet / By Thom Hartmann

August 11, 2013 |

Last week, thousands of fast food workers from across the country walked off their jobs to demand a living wage of $15 an hour. Ever since, the Republican talking point machine has been running on all cylinders.

According to pundits on the right, giving fast food workers or any other workers, for that matter, a $7 or $8 bump to their hourly wages would cut so much into the bottom lines of “job-creators” that business owners would have to either pass the cost of a living-wage onto consumers or simply stop hiring new workers altogether.

But lost among all the noise on the right is one very, very important point: getting tax preferences and limitations on liability to do business in the United States is a privilege, not a right. It’s a privilege that we as a society offer to budding entrepreneurs and big business alike in exchange for goods, services, and jobs.

Look at it this way: when someone opens up a business, they’re entitled to all sorts of special tax breaks that most people can’t get. They can write off fancy meals; they can write off nights stayed at five-star hotels; they can write off airfare to anywhere in the world they do business, or even might do business; and they can even write off any legal expenses they incur when they get busted for breaking the law. Drug dealers who push pot can’t write off their lawyer’s fees, but drug dealers at Big Pharma, even when they lie and break the law in ways that kill people, can - all because they’re incorporated.

The rest: http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/its-time-do-something-when-corporation-walmart-wont-pay

[muntrv]

1. Hopefully, wally world will have more competitors like WinCo.

Fri Aug 09, 2013 at 04:08 AM PDT.

Walmart's 'Worst Nightmare' Competition Has Cashiers And Produce Clerks With $1 Million Pensions

byjames321Follow .

WinCo -- a low-cost grocery store chain from Idaho -- is being described as Walmart's 'worst nightmare' in a recent Time Article

Retail analysts say that the world’s biggest retailer has reason to fear a small grocery chain that’s based in Idaho and boasts a business model that allows it to undercut Walmart on prices.
So about that eye-catching Walmart quote. Those are the words of Burt Flickinger III, a widely respected supermarket retailing industry expert who works for the Strategic Resource Group. Flickinger was quoted in a recent Idaho Statesman story about WinCo, a chain of roughly 100 supermarkets in the western U.S., based in Boise.

“WinCo arguably may be the best retailer in the Western U.S.,” Flickinger says while touring a WinCo store. “WinCo is really unstoppable at this point,” he goes on. “They’re Walmart’s worst nightmare.”

Flickinger isn’t the only industry insider discussing WinCo and Walmart in the same breath. “While many supermarkets strive to keep within a few percentage points of Walmart Stores’ prices, WinCo Foods often undersells the massive discount chain,” the industry publication Supermarket News explained last spring.
This is a privately-held retailer (i.e. it does not answer to Wall Street shareholders) that is beating -- sometimes, crushing -- Walmart on prices. Remember, folks, Walmart stores are, generally speaking, dirty, understocked, understaffed and unpleasant places in which to shop -- Walmart only survives because it creates a perception among consumers that it has the lowest prices. WinCo, however, beats Walmart on price. That's part one of the nightmare.

SEE MORE AT LINK BELOW

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/09/1229983/-Walmart-s-Worst-Nightmare-Competition-Has-Cashiers-And-Produce-Clerks-With-1-Million-Pensions

[GP6971]

2. By far the worst

To my great satisfaction, I drive by my local Walmart every day and I've noticed the number of cars in the lot getting fewer and fewer.

[madokie]

4. Exactly the same thing I notice

When Walmart first came to this area pretty much everything they sold had a made in America tag on it. I used to have a picture of their first sign out front and on that sign it alluded to that fact. Today very little is made in America.
When they first came here they undercut all the local stores to the point that they all pretty much had to close down. Now since they're the big dog in town their prices shows that. Walmart is not good for our country. imo

[jmowreader]

3. There is SO much competition for that vaunted title...

but if I was forced, at gunpoint, to make a list of the ten worst corporations in America Walmart would either be somewhere around nine or ten, or it wouldn't be on the list at all.

You cannot tell me that Corrections Corporation of America, Monsanto, ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, the Carlyle Group, DynCorp, Halliburton, KBR, Koch Industries, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric are better than Walmart.

Walmart IS evil, but they are not as evil as they could be.

[Art_from_Ark]

6. And then there's XE

and BP, not to mention Massey Energy...

And what about all those banks that have kicked people out of their homes for no justifiable reason?

[olddots]

5. when they shot the Wal=mart movie they had enough material for 10 documentaries .

[reformist2]

7. Of course they'd have to raise prices. This is not a bad thing.

What the economists so weirdly ignore is that Wal-Mart's clientele could easily pay the slightly higher prices with their substantially higher incomes. Anyone who's truly middle class or higher will probably not even notice the price increase.