Shop at Walmart--your money or your life--or both
Just got back from a very brief tour of YouTube--like no more than 5 minutes before I came across this tidbit concerning the nation's leading source of crime. Now some might think is would be about crack houses, meth labs, opioid smuggling. Nah! The best brand is still American.
In the olden days, or so it was said, the highwaymen (robbers) would approach the victim with an offer most did not refuse: "Your money or your life". Unless you were suicidal, usually you surrendered your money. Now the highway persons (to be politically correct and thus gender-free) got an even better deal. Shop at Walmart--risk your life and your money. The Young Turks (TYT) have a very interesting segment on another way Walmart soaks the Public. We all know about how most Walmart employees have to receive food stamps and/or work multiple jobs and/or get the lowest quality medical care because of their "employment" (read wage slavery) at the largest retailer in the world.
Now, we see that many police departments practically have a commuter van hauling criminals away from Walmart stores they terrorize. This places considerable strain on the force and thus the community--hence another indirect subsidy to the Walton "too much is never enough" family (kinda like a mafia family except this one is legal).
Bloomberg also has an interesting article with added details about this corporate subsidy.
You want to save money? Shop at Walmart. But are we, the taxpayers, really saving money or just shifting the measly pennies we save on this not-made-in-America low quality crap for sale at Walmart into higher tax bills for the added community costs of policing, judicial proceedings, and incarceration.
I have a simple proposal. Every time police are called to a Walmart store because of that store's inadequate facility safety precautions, then that store should be charged (assessed, made to pay, cough up) the expenses incurred by the community plus a hefty premium to penalize Walmart's systemic--i.e., nationwide--lack of safety precautions. The only thing Walmart understands is a reduction of their bottom-line profits.
It is high time we become greeters at the local Walmart Store: "Welcome to Walmart, where you put your life at risk. Have a good day".
Comments
We've got
Walmart, Kmart, Meijer's, Sams Club.
Jackson Michigan. Prison town.
Come on up or down to visit us.
We need your money.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Also Kroger, So-Lo and another grocery across from the
East Michigan Ave. Meijer's (used to be another So-Lo), along with most of the rest of the big box stores (e.g., Sears). The other thing the town has is a huge drug dealer problem. Hi, neighbor! = )
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Saving money may or may not happen at Wal-Mart.
Most of their products are second rate and have a greatly reduced lifetime than similar products at other stores usually for just a little more (or if on sale, equivalent). Even some of the food they sale is of lower quality. I do my best to avoid shopping there, but with an extremely limited budget, there are still a few things I buy there. Mostly, I shop at our local Meijer's.
The Progressive Independent Party is planning some actions to hit corporations like Wal-Mart in the pocket which is the only way to get the attention of the corporate masters.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Reduced quality...
This is absolutely true. I have a BIL that used to work for a major fertilizer company. He said they would change their formula for Wal Mart in order to meet their cost demands. They would add more filler and less active fertilizer. If you wanted the good stuff, go to an Ace hardware store. This happens writ large. Wal Mart demands absolute bottom line cost from its suppliers. They have no choice but to change their formula to meet with that demand.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Big Box Building supply stores do the same.
Manufacturers/ suppliers change the basic product to meet the budgetary constraints. The Guys at the local lumber yard, who I've known for 25 years, share stories from distributors of products like Schlage door hardware, Delta Faucets, Kohler, plumbing valve producers, electrical supplies, etc., sell two levels of goods...one for the Big Box stores, and another for the lumber yards, plumbing and electrical supply houses.
Go to an electrical supply house, and buy several basic duplex outlets, single, and double pole switches, electrical receptacle boxes, etc.. Then go to a big box store and buy the similar device. Same with sink/toilet, tub fixtures. You will see the difference, and/ or you will find a completely different engineering relative to connections, ease of connections, plastic vs, brass, quietness and ease of operation, thickness and brittleness of plastics....and on, and on. Then try to get service or repair done on a major ticket item....hah!! Good luck...if you can even run down anyone other than a cashier.
I shop WalMart all the time and don't see any of that going on.
I'm sure I've been there hundreds if not thousands of times and I've seen a police car once, and the white officer talked politely with the black man parked in the fire lane. I waited and watched and recorded them on my cellphone until the man moved his car and the cop left (I'm not a trusting person on that score any more).
I have talked with the employees off the clock - some of them are my neighbors - and they like it there. It may be the only WalMart in existence with decent management, but they are actually pretty happy. So I will probably continue to shop there for the convenience no matter how much money I have, unless and until some other store starts carrying made in America products. Because I have tried even pricey stores like Macy's. Everything is still made in freaking China, they just put a big price on it because they think they can. Like Trump's clothing line. "Imported," it used to say online. Made in China is what it was. Macy's dumped Trump last year, but I'm sure they have many other "fine" made in China brands. I did buy clothing there in my misspent youth. It wore out way faster than the cheap stuff. Planned obsolescence?
So where can I go to get staples made in America? Actually the vast majority of what I buy at WalMart is made in America. You just have to look closely at the labels. The USA stuff isn't more pricey than the Chinese junk either. If another department store starts offering made in USA goods consistently, I'll go there when/if I have money. But this characterization of WM as "the" place that sells goods not made in America is just not true, it's not singular to WM. They all do it.
Check near your bar codes. Except socks, for some reason it's on the front of the package, top right. Dr. Scholl's, Band-Aid, Martha Stewart, Levi's, Mattel toys, most plastic containers, pet beds, pet toys, all not made in America. You can search online for American made pet products, I do that.
Here's an interesting find, high-end brands made in China include Prada, http://fashion.allwomenstalk.com/high-end-brands-that-are-made-in-china/
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Gee...
It has been a pleasant summer in Colorado. So I guess I don't need to worry about global warming. My local Chick-Fil-A is owned by a decent enough guy who treats his employees well and contributes to the community. So I guess I don't have to worry about corporate profits going to anti-gay causes. Thanks for relief!
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
How would global warming be any better without WalMart?
I don't go to Chik-Fil-A. To each their own.
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A lot of slaves
were probably pretty happy too. Doesn't make the situation they were in right for them to be in.1
The way walmart destroy's
many towns and cities by causing most of the local business's to close because they cant compete with there low cost junk is sickening. I wonder how many ex business owners and there workers that used to make a good living now work for Walmart earning min. wage or there about. Doesn't sound like a bargain to me.
Yes, but the damage is already done. I'm saying I want to buy
American and I can't afford to spend all my time tracking down staples made in America online. Maybe if I went to Amazon, but they treat their employees even worse. So where's the department store other than WalMart selling American goods? I'm not seeing it.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
There aren't any.
One of the talking points against Trump is that he has his goods made overseas. Well, 97% of clothes now sold in the US are made overseas. I lay that at WJC's feet. Thanks to his trade policies those jobs are gone and will not be coming back. My guess is that the 3% of clothes still being made in the US is for the elite.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Socks! No Nonsense socks are still made here.
Also a few T shirts.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
My next purchase at a Wal Mart will be my first.
Screw the greedhead Walton family, the whole lot of them. They can swim in their avarice for all I care.
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Boycott Walmart
I never shopped at Walmart all that much to begin with and for the last 4-5 years I've boycotted them altogether. I encourage everyone else here to to the same.
I woke up this morning determined to drink less, eat right, and exercise.
But that was four hours ago when I was younger and full of hope.
They may have lead
the parade, but nearly every Fortune 500 company was happy to follow behind them, do what they do. And... were it not for shoppers eating up those $39 microwaves (made in China) Wally World would have been toes up decades ago. Always Low Prices - Always! is what brings them back for more - even if those low prices depend on fewer security people, fewer stockers and fewer cashiers, keeping those Low Price shoppers in longer and longer lines. "Boss, what can we do to reduce those long lines?" "Fuckum, let them wait, they're here to save money not zip thru lines."
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
This...
Should happen, but it never will. Wal Mart buys off local politicians to re-write zoning laws so that can spread their virus. If a sudden influx of crime happens, those city/county board members WILL NOT vote to fine them for the increased activity. Also, if that Wal Mart the city wanted in there so badly suddenly becomes profitable? Wal Mart leaves. In fact, Wal Mart policy will actually 'carpet bomb' an area and find out which stores are profitable and then leave the ones that are not - empty.
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Corporate Socialism vs. People's Socialism
Corporate Socialism: How Employers Skim Workers' Tax Dollars
Most people confuse what is socialism and what is corporate socialism and you can read all sorts of right-wing criticism of "socialism" where the two are confused. Corporate socialism = Corporate/State Fascism and has nothing to do with People's Socialism as practiced in mixed economies like Bolivia. In the first, the public is looted by the government for the benefit of the corporations. In the latter, public services are owned and operated for the benefit of the people.
Corporate State Fascism is the Democrat and Republican Party. Libertarians apparently believe that neither the rich nor the poor should be subsidized. I am not sure where Green stands... which is why I tend to support Socialist Alternative (they are supporting Green so I am comfortable with Green).
Corporate Socialism and Hollowing of America
From the Light House.
We were literally held hostage at a wal mart
almost 20 years ago I was in one of their shit tanks. Because after they moved in, everything else died around them and I HAD to get chain tires and I had no choice. So I reluctantly went in.
So I'm in there with my two little ones standing in line when a fist fight breaks out near the front end. It's a man and a woman - woman is holding a newborn and the man is just punching her in the face. Blood all over. Then he starts taking the CD or DVD display and starts throwing shit around. Overturning customers carts, fighting with others who he had pushed the woman into. People who tried to get to the baby were assaulted.
We all ducked and one customer grabbed my daughter and helped me with kids. The fight lasted over FIVE minutes. We know the time because the cashier kept time.
No cops were called as the woman was an employee they said and the man assaulting her, the baby and several customers who tried to stop it or protect others - well he was her boyfriend so it was "domestic". No cops were called after. I called in a complaint and the "cops" said they "don't bother with Wal Mart they handle their own security"... some such bs.
A man beating a woman with a newborn. No big deal at Wal Mart.
Fuck that place. It's a blight on humanity. I haven't stepped in to one since. I never will, rather eat a bowl of glass than buy any shit from that slave plantation.
We had one move in across the way here and it's nothing but trash. Literally. Trash flying all around from the "deal seekers and the trucks".
People have fooled themselves that Wal Mart isn't too bad, after all some people like working there and I feel sad for them. I worked with a woman who had managed at one. She was a mean bully and that's why she loved working there.
Cheap has a price.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
"Cheap is small and not too steep; but best of all cheap is
cheap"....The Kinks
I shopped at Wal Mart twice in one day: the first time and the last time.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Bullies, Security, Thrift Shops...
I went into the WalMart in the neighboring town a couple of time and security used to follow my little daughter and I everywhere. I am pretty sure it had to do with being Latino. It scared me and pissed me off.
I kind of remember that we went in WalMart just to look at stuff. We did our purchasing at the nearby Thrift Shop. In fact, we used to have great fun visiting the Thrift Shops and Garage Sales all over the region looking for nifty "stuff". Lots of good stuff around as the area was being abandoned. My favorites were theme high quality painted theme coffee cups... had cupboards full of them at $.25 a pop. My daughter liked Christmas lights to hang all around her room, costume jewelry and makeover clothes. When I finished university I sold the collection at a garage sale and made some good money. My daughter made some good money selling her junk as well. Enough for a plane ticket back to Bolivia, anyway.
From the Light House.
Walmart vs. Main Street
When I was in grad school in the "rust belt", Walmart and K-Mart built their complexes on the edge of the next town over and within a year downtown was a ghost town. All these beautiful brick buildings on Main Street, empty. And still empty decades later.
Then, WalMart wanted a permit to build one on the edge of the University town and, after extensive protest, the city council denied the permit. Result, the University town still has a vibrant Main Street with a Farmer's Market and some street venders, and the town next door turned into a ghost town looking like a highway pit stop (McD, Exxon, Parking Lots etc. ad nauseum ). For whatever reason the other town now also attracts tornadoes and floods!!??
I would say anyone who worked on the board of Walmart is anti-small business by nature. Walmart has killed Main Street. The Clinton Plan is private/public gentrification. Destroy the place, then build it up for the benefit of the rich.
I would also say In the inner cities one PART of saving them is small local businesses and informal open air markets. Coinciding with new schools, libraries, university and tech school branches, youth centers, People's Parks, non-leaded water systems, grants for building restoration by local residents only and land reform.
From the Light House.
Your assessment is spot on
Your assessment is spot on Alex. Urban sprawl, asphalt jungles, are the abject failure in urban, city, town, and village planning.
I call that style of development 60 mph architecture. It is designed and engineered with the automobile as the central tenet/ programmatic driver. The scale, the entire psyche, is contrary to a human, pedestrian interaction with the store front, the shop keeper, vendor, etc.. It has been the demise of main streets, Central Business Districts all over the USA.
Every vibrant urban environment in this, and many other countries, has at its roots, a pedestrian infrastructure, where cars are kept in remote interaction with the core uses...kept away from overwhelming the pace, and scale of the architecture. Infrastucture, and architecture is designed for people, not machinery.
An aside....look at the epidemic of obesity in our country. I'd be interested in seeing the breakdown between cities that are dependent on Big box stores located at the perimeters, away from residential areas, those without mass transit, those where kids and families are isolated from schools, hospitals, shopping, jobs, etc.. I bet there is an obvious correlation between crime, obesity, quality of education, diet, and food diversity. Communities where there is diverse activity, and availability of services and amenities, create an atmosphere where the citizenry has to show a degree of accountability, rather than the anonyminity of urban sprawl.
Obesity, etc. and community, two pertinent observations
Obese people by and large may not necessarily eat too much but they eat the wrong things, partly due to economics and partly due to our endemic supply of fat farms called fast food "restaurants". Your point about having a variety of available foods is a good one. But those so disadvantaged in the first place, not having those food resources will need to be educated about a nutritious, healthy life-style devoid of "empty calories."
The neighboring university town is just as described with a vibrant inner city, designed for walking, not driving, having farmer's markets, and various small town type fairs, concerts, etc. Yes, larger cities have fairs and music etc but often not on the small scale. People tend to be more polite in such a pedestrian environment. Funny, isn't it, that the word "pedestrian" came to be synonymous with "cheap", "common", boring, etc. As you explain, SD, Pedestrian interaction is the most fruitful and personal. If you want to see a town, walk it.
In the USA at present, more money is spent at restaurants
than at markets. The fast food and snack food industries have not upon the formula of fat to sugar to keep customers coming back even while those customers wreck their health by opening themselves up to chronic illness.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
I simply won't shop there anymore
I went into one by my house a few weeks ago to see if they had cat food, felt a bit lazy and it was right there. Was my first time in there and what a dump. And they didn't have the cat food I wanted so I was spared giving them any profit. A couple next to me also found a gigantic spider right in the merchandise in that dump.
I worked in one for a brief period right out of the Army. Even then it seemed rather cult like, the way the employees talked about Sam Walton like he was some hero was kind of sickening. And this long before I knew just what a parasite WalMart truly is. I tell every friend I have not to shop there as we are doing nothing but subsidizing their profits by allowing them to pay their employees such shit wages. They get no more profit from me if I can at all help it.
I ended up quitting that WalMart job over the phone one day and was told "you'll never work at a WalMart again." While that upset me at the time, now I think of it as a badge of honor. And I thank my lucky stars I did get out of there, never to return.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur