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. 

Oh, and whomever wrote that, betty, I betcha are on WM's payroll at some point down the line. 

no they're not, mspw.  they are professors and researchers and I doubt they will be Walmart consultants any time soon.  btw, just found out they are about to send this in for peer review in a scholarly journal

i wish 'em luck.  the study is a piece of crap.

edit: professors and researchers are just as subject to corruption as anyone else.  possibly moreso, because for the years they put into their education, they're paid peanuts.  and if they don't publish, they're likely to be downgraded to raisins.

I don't understand why everyone hates the fact that Chinese and other non-Americas are getting jobs, food, etc due to Walmart shoppers.  Don't those people need to eat, too?  I get that I am supposed to feel a sense of loyalty to fellow Americans.  It's just pure xenophobia and nationalism that makes people say that it's so wrong that a job goes to China or to India.  Seriously, what is so specialized about a manufacturing job?  You REALLY can't get another job doing something else?  Are you kidding me?  I have seen the laziest, most idiotic, unreliable, incompetent jerks get jobs and keep them seemingly forever.  Are you really telling me that people can't get other jobs?  Maybe they can't get a job anymore that pays them $20 per hour for just standing there and pushing a button on a box assembler or for sitting around the maintenance shop surfing the internet while waiting for the assembler to break down.  Are you seriously telling me that people don't have transferable skills?   If they don't, then it's their own fault.  Has anyone here actually worked at a manufacturing plant that served Walmart?  If so, where were your coworkers from?  Were they Americans?  Would there really be so much backlash if all the products came from Canada?  Sometimes, I just have to wonder.  Oh wait, our biggest trade partner IS CANADA! 

How many of you own a fully 100% made in the USA car? how about the couch?  How about the tv?  Hm???

Thanks, pg. You took the words right outta my mouth. 

betty, I have nothing against helping those in developing countries. Believe me, I really wish more of our country's wealth went toward helping out of truly compassionate motives.  But its not why American corps are investing there.  Their intentions are selfish. As soon as its no longer profitable they will pull-out, despite how many ppl suffer as a result. Its true that some ppl in said contries have been aided, but we have to consider the long-term consequences. 

I know I have been crazy postng this link all over the lounge, but its really one of the best things I have read in a long time.  I highly suggest checking it out. It may seem irrelavent to this discussion, but it isn't, I assure you. 

Why Do People Vote Republican?

 

 

 

 

Many manufacturing jobs are located in small rural communities.  These manufacturing jobs actually pay more than minimum wage and provide some benefits, which is more than any other job in those areas.  I don't know where you're from Betty, but have you ever seen the economical impact of a cruddy manufacturing plant shutting down in an already economically depressed area? 

It doesn't matter if the people losing their jobs have skills in other trades.  There aren't jobs!  The best job to get where I grew up was at a manufacturing plant that made car parts.  The pay and working conditions aren't that great, but it is enough to make a living on and the people get medical insurance for their families.  If that plant shuts down (which it will) the tri-county area will crumble.  Communities, such as the one I grew up in, rely on those manufacturing jobs that get shipped off to Mexico or China.

All of the people I’ve worked with in manufacturing jobs have been American.

All that, and let's not forget to mention Human Rights violations in countries like China.  If I knew the people making some little rinky-dink thing from Wal-Mart were being paid a living wage, in workable working conditions, and that they had a choice to work there or not I'd be more inclined to make more purchases of Chinese imported goods.  It's not about disliking Chinese, being Nationalistic, or anything else.

betty, you don't seem to understand why goods can be produced in china and elsewhere so cheaply.  it's because the workers in those countries have no choice but to work for one step above slave wages.  do a little research on the industrialization of china and you'll find that the farmlands that supported billions of peasants for thousands of years have been decimated to make room for industrialization.  people who used to be self-sufficient are now homeless, working for next to nothing, and have little or no access to housing or clean water (because the water sources that used to support life are now so polluted by industry they're essentially poison). 

this has also led to food shortages in china, which is now turning to south america for adequate soy and rice.  guess what the south americans are doing to cash in?  they're cutting down the rainforests in the amazon basin to make room for soy farms.  the amazon, btw, is one of the best buffers against global warming, but hundreds of acres are being slashed and burned on a daily basis.

all these things are connected, and the practices used by walmart are unsustainable on a global level.  you might want it to be all about you saving a few bucks, but it's not.

do i own anything made in asia?  sure.  but i don't own the cut-rate, bargain-basement stuff that's the primary produce of the kind of practices we're describing. 

as an example, i buy fair trade coffee.  it's grown in some of the poorest countries in the world, but the fair trade organization guarantees that the growers and workers are paid fairly for the product.  it's also organic, so it's production doesn't poison the environment.  it's not cheap, but i'd rather have a small amount of something i can feel good about (and that tastes good) than gallons of stuff that's produced at the expense of those who can least afford it.