For all you Walmart haters out there...

Check it out.  Their lower prices help poor and middle class urban types like me afford healthy food.  People like me who lived in an urban area that had nothing but Whole Foods, posh personal shopping services, fancy caterers and 7-11s understood this, but now there is a published study on it.

See for yourself. 

Original Post by alibsam:

Exactly, Jewels.

And Wal-Mart's produce is disgusting...

 Some is, some isn't. Just like every other place I can buy produce.

But that cheap healthy food still arrives at the store because of atrocious human right's violations, unethical business practices, the environmental toll, and many other un-healthy reasons.

Every single time I hear someone say something about Wal-Mart being cheap, I am filled with boiling hot ire. The dollar amount that you pay is incredibly cheap, true, but the price that other people along the production chain have paid for your cheap piece of **** is staggeringly high, and cannot go unmentioned.

1. i'd like to know who funded that study;

2. jewels and ali are right: doesn't change the reasons for the walmart-hate; and,

3. it doesn't explain why 90% of the people shopping at my walmart are obese.  and have bad taste.

Original Post by jewelsmcblah:

Yeah.  But that's doesn't address why people actually hate Wal-Mart, does it?

I hate Walmart because they take everything that is special or unique about a community and truck it out to the desert where they shoot it and leave it in a shallow grave.

They also cost the communities they invade jobs. 

haha

flame away

you all had your minds made up before you even read the post

just sayin'

and make it impossible for small, locally-owned businesses to thrive or even survive.

betty, i looked at your link.  it was just an abstract, so, no it didn't change my mind; it didn't provide any information.  find me the full study and i might reconsider.

hang on

let me dig it up...

Let's not forget that Wal-Mart dictates to its suppliers how they want things packaged and what flavors they want to stock. This reduces the choice we have in things across the board.

Original Post by bettypage4:

haha

flame away

you all had your minds made up before you even read the post

just sayin'

Yes - with very good reason.  We used to have smaller stores that offered good prices, great service, and paid their employees a living wage.  Now they have all been driven out of business.  The sales people who used to work on salary plus commission are now reduced to part time, minimum wage with no benefits at the giant stores like Walmart.  The variety of merchandise is gone and the character of neighborhoods is ruined, all in the name of low prices.  We all pay for those low prices, one way or another.

My all time favorite story is the Wal-Mart Sandal Scandal

Original Post by pgeorgian:

and make it impossible for small, locally-owned businesses to thrive or even survive.

I just LOVE it when Walmart comes into a small community, drives the local businesses in to bankruptcy, and then CLOSES 6 months later because the store isn't generating enough volume.  Then, consumers are forcied to drive 50 miles to the next nearest store since all the old stores are now out of business.

Yeah, that's the awesome.  Sure saves money, and who needs jobs anyway, right?

don't forget the small farmers, food producers, and manufacturers that used to be able to sell to local retailers, but have lost their markets because they can't meet the demands of the huge box stores.  so instead of produce being shipped a few miles and sold fresh in neighbourhood stores, it's shipped to warehouses where it sits waiting to be loaded in trucks to be shipped again, only to arrived damaged and of lesser quality on the delightful shelves of walmart, at a lower cost, yes, because those small farmers, producers, and manufacturers have sold out to allow massive mechanized farms which employ fewer people.

I work for a drink company.  Walmart is the company that we hate dealing with the most.  If you are a smaller company and you are not able to distribute nationwide, they won't take your product in ANY of their stores.  Not even local ones.  How's that for another way that they screw over the little guy trying to compete?

EDIT:  Just saw that PG made the same point above me.

OH MAN, that sandal story is horrible!  I can't imagine how painful that must be.

Luckily, Walmarts are banned in the county I live in.

Here you go.  Go here.

Scroll to the bottom.

Look for "download" to the right by the title.

Click on "download."  You can read the full text pdf that way. 

My rebuttals:

#2, I shop at every type of cheap store, including markets and ethnic establishments which smell and looks far worse than a Walmart.  The produce is not always fresh at those ethnic establishments, but hey it's cheap and I need to eat. Walmart is not bad.  Yes, it is not the aesthetic experience that gets sold to you by Whole Foods, but it is clean and doesn't smell like rotten food.

#4, Do you really think that everything you buy is created by companies that care about their employees?  Do you buy anything that is manufactured outside the USA?  Ok, then.  So don't rag on Walmart unless you are going to apply the same standard to EVERYONE.

#5, I'm not sure.  Excellent question, though.  Let me find out.  But I think it's incredibly offensive and patronizing that you say that 90% of those shoppers have bad taste.  I do not like Nascar but people have the right to wear what they want within the scope of the law when they are on their own time and not at work.

#6, Do you really think that non-friends and non-relatives of those local shop owners got jobs at those mom and pop places?  Yes, it is through big businesses that nobodies like me stood a chance to at least get a start in the world.  I don't have to do that job now, but that job gave me a deep gratitude for people who do those customer oriented jobs.

#7, Below the poverty line?  Oh please.  They paid more than each of the two jobs I had working through college. 

There is this romance with "local business" but you know what?  Local business owners that were savvy turned into caterers and high end businesses.  Guess what?  I couldn't afford those stores before Walmart and if Walmart never comes, how are you going to afford healthy food?  No car, little money, the local person has their kid or cousin or neighbor's kid or the cop's kid working there.  If you are nobody, you might as well stand in line at the church or get another job, because that "local business" probably won't help you.   

the only reason they can afford to make everything so cheap is because they underpay and overwork their employees.