Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win
 

Wal-Mart Warns of Democratic Win
By ANN ZIMMERMAN and KRIS MAHER
Wall Street Journal

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

Read the rest...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1217..._us_whats_news

I swear to god I'm going to burn my Sam's Club card when I get home tonight.

Just further proof that Wal-Mart blows.

If they would cease screwing their employees, they wouldn't need to fear a union, because the employees wouldn't want/need one.

I'm so sick and tired of these "the world will end if Barak Obama is elected president" hysterics.

if the world hasnt ended with war-happy Bush in office, then Obama will be ok...

This is just now coming out? I had heard about this over a month ago from a friend's dad whose works at Wal-Mart.

The article is dated August 1st, I guess people are just now getting wind of the story.

Didn't you know, that "they" say that the world will end all life as we know it... LOL ;)

Where am I going and why am I in this basket...

The world is supposed to end on 12/12/12, no matter who is in office, isn't it?

The world was supposed to end on 6/6/6. But it didn't... I guess folks missed the fact that no one will know the day or the hour...

Besides, I've been told that we are all going to Hayle... :rolleyes: I just prayed for them...

Hee Hee, but I feel fine:p

for realz!!

hee hee...we're apparently all in that basket with you!

Yeah, true - and I'm sick of all those who say the same thing about McCain.

No matter who is elected, the world isn't going to end. People on BOTH sides who say that type of stuff need to take a breather.

Yep. And hog lots are absolutely disgusting and borderline inhumane, but God forbid pork costs $10/lb, right?

Clay Aiken is gay. (I wasn't sure if you were agreeing w/ me or disagreeing so I said something random.)

I stopped going to Walmart because I thought the people there looked kind of trashy, but the article is even more of a reason why I won't shop there. I always knew something was strange about that company and those people.

ETA: I also heard that they're not very nice to their employees either.

Neither, really - the whole thing seems very American (in both a good and a bad way, honestly) to me, to the point of inevitability. Kind of like hog lots, illegal alien labor, pharmaceutical recalls, patent infringement, outsourcing, etc.

You mean trashy like judging people who work at/shop at Walmart based on their appearance?

No, I'm not judging them, it's just that I don't like being around that type of crowd. That's all.

lol

Whatever.

Oh, I completely understand. You're not judging them, you've just formed an opinion on them and are making assumptions based on that prior opinion.

That's not judging at all....

I heard that Wal Mart employees put gel in their hair and wear jorts.

Well if that's the case, then I retract my earlier statement...judge away!

At least have the courage to admit you're being judgmental when you are! I'll give my own perspective for example:

I personally don't shop at Wal-Mart, partially because I don't care for the quality and manufacturing of their products, partially because I dislike the corporate policies, and partially because I am a snob and don't like the crowd. I'm not a bargain shopper, I don't have kids, I usually dress up a bit to go to the store. I am turning my nose up at the shoppers and I know it. I am ok with that. Yes, I am definitely being judgmental about the other shoppers. It simply makes me happier to spend my money elsewhere, both because I like the stuff I get better, and because I like being in the presence my shopping peers better.

And it smells funny.

I will shop at Wal-Mart for certain things if the price point is what is most important to me. However, it usually is not and if I am going to buy something, I prefer quality/style. My background includes both Marketing Research and Retail Management, so I consider myself a "tough" customer.

I do not like shopping at Wal-Mart for most of the reasons already mentioned. While I consider myself a Republican, I think that Wal-Mart is being totally ludicrous in warning about a Democratic win. America is supposed to be based on democratic principles, and this just undermines the whole meaning of democracy. If Obama wins, then it was meant to be. :)

If more people thought, and shopped, like you and me, I don't think we'd be in the economic crisis we are. Really. Americans are obsessed with buying a lot of crap for cheap, and now - pun intended - we're paying the price for it.

The one thing I don't really understand is that Wal-Mart employees are always ridiculously rude to shoppers (or maybe it's just the ones I've been to).

I get it, the whole oppressed worker thing. I worked at Target. Granted, I was treated *a little, and I stress A LITTLE* better than people that work at Wal-Mart, but I don't understand why you would push that off on someone else and make their day worse. But maybe that's just because I'm a nice person.

I will say, however, that my new Target does not display the best customer service. In fact, for a city where people on the whole are incredibly nice, the people that work at Target are incredibly rude.

In the same sense, I don't get why customers are rude to workers, either. I'm not always a nice person - I just don't understand making a random person's day worse. I guess I just enforce targeted rudeness for myself.

KSigkid, if I don't care to be around certain people, how is that judging them? I just don't like some of the things that I've seen. Having a cashier touch my produce with black stuff underneath his fingernails is gross to me. I'm sure there are certain people that you wouldn't want to be around either.

Uhmm, I don't dress up to go to Walmart or any other grocery store, and I'm not a snob! I just don't like shopping there.

Isn't the problem really the opposite - that Americans wanted more than they could afford, and extended credit to anyone who wanted it to facilitate this?

It's a combination of both.

I agree. We really have become crappy a$$ consumers. But then again, thank goodness we've sent all our money over to China to import their cheap crap, where do you think we're going to get a good portion of these bailout loans from?

Well China has a huge national interest in keeping the dollar strong, too. Most of their reserves are in dollars, and the Yuan is pegged to the dollar as well, although that's a significant lowball on what the Yuan is actually worth.

Here's what I think is going to happen - they're going help to "bail us out" by giving us some of their reserves, then they're going to slowly but surely change their reserves into a different currency (most likely the Euro), and allow the Yuan to appreciate.

But that's all going to take at least 10 years unless they want to toss their own economy into crisis.

If we were culturally different as a county though, it wouldn't have mattered how much credit was extended. ITA with PeppyGPhiB, it's an economic theory I've long held in fact.

For example, credit companies can (and have) dangle as many money carrots in front of me as they would like, but I still don't bite. Because I am a quality over quantity type of person. I actually enjoy my small, super-low-mortgage house. I could have gotten a loan for about three times what I took, and bought a huge property, but I chose not to.

I'm not saying that I'm better than other people, just different. My conservative spending doesn't put as much cash back into the system. But the cash that it puts in is all real, not credit.

I do think it's similar to the way that culturally we want as much as we can have for as cheap as we can get it. My boss mocks me for spending a few bucks more at the local store instead of going to the bargain discount chain store. But, it makes me happier to spend a few bucks more and support a local business. For the majority of Americans it's just the opposite. That cultural push for bigger, better, cheaper drives the market - it's the demand the meets the supply. Were there no demand for all these extra cheap things that we often don't need anyway (but we want them because they are cheap and because we want in general), there would not be the supply of credit.

I truly believe that excess demand drives supply far more often than excess supply drives demand.

Yeah, I just don't see the connection at all - I think you're grasping for a literal connection, although I'll agree with a completely figurative connection if you'd rather just leave it as "people are poor consumers, and both ARMs and Wal-Mart are good examples of poor and uninformed consumer decisions" then I'll agree.

However, the psychology behind both is nebulous at best - the push for lower per-unit cost on goods really doesn't seem at all connected to a lack of understanding of proper income-based spending, the time-value of money and amortization . . . in fact, it seems "penny wise, pound foolish" which is antithetical to what you're saying.

Total trainwreck of a hijack here - my point is that I agree with the forest (so to speak) but not the trees. I see where you're going but disagree with how you're getting there. I'm not catching what you're throwing. I'm running out of hack metaphors - my bad.

However, this:

. . . is true to the point of tautology for almost any system, and actually goes against your point, in my mind.