Take a hike you leftwing liberal lunatic!!!
John / Billybob
In NW Ark, Sam Walton was the one who broke the economic stranglehold the CHICKEN MAN had in this area.
Back then you worked for the CHICKED MAN or his CHICKEN CATCHER at what ever they wanted to pay you which was not very much.
Thank's Sam!
The CHICKEN MAN now imports labor from guess where! se ablay espanyol?
LOL. Loved this line.
A couple of notes from a marketing class I took eons ago:
If a store doesn't have something you're looking for, you're about 10% less likely to go there again.
If a customer goes to a store and it's closed, they're about 30% less likely to ever go back.
Walmart has captured two important tendencies to get people in the Walmart habit. First, they've got it. Second, they're open. Low prices is certainly part of the Walmart strategy, but they're not always the cheapest. They are always open and they've probably got what you need.
I enjoyed shopping at Wally World and other Jumbo-sized stores over Christmas vaca at my folks.
Going to one of those superstores always feels a bit like the scene in Moscow on the Hudson where the Russian defector (played by Robin Williams of all people) goes to an American supermarket for the first time, sees a WHOLE AISLE of coffee, and faints in amazement, mumbling "coffee, coffee, coffee" and fumbling with the cans.
My GF at the time didn't believe things in the Socialist Worker's Paradise of Russia were that bad, or that people actually waited in multi-block lines for toilet paper, as accurately depicted in the movie. I'd been to Berlin before the wall came down and knew better. She didn't get to enjoy my company for long after that (a darn shame, the whoopee was great).
Unfortunately, the sad truth is that most Americans have no concept of the bounty we enjoy in this country, and like the previously mentioned GF, mindlessly drink whatever flavor-du-jour apocalyptic koolaid the liberals are serving up, then vote Democrat.
If they haven't already, I'm afraid the NEA is winning the mind control war. Unless the Republicans get some iron in their backs, fight fire with fire, and slap a turbo on the Truth Propaganda Machine, they'll continue to win (don't EVEN get me started on the NEA GF I once had).
If I was in a suburban environment, I'd shop at Walmart more often, but I live in the inner city and it's just not worth the time and effort of trying to find another street parking space, LOL.
It's a little more expensive, but walking to the neighborhood Mom & Pop store located on every other block makes more sense, and you actually get to talk to real people, not worker bee drones. That reminds me, I need to find out how to say bodega in Italian...
Another grist for the WalMart mill--Clemson, South Carolina, not too far from you in NC. The local businessmen kept WalMart out of Clemson, made a big political stink about it. So the store got built in the next town, Central. All that lovely tax money that Clemson doesn't get...
I'm always surprised at what I can find that isn't made in China...heavy duty plastic hangers, underwear, my face wash, nail polish, cutting boards, you get the idea.
I had to make a special trip to Target to get a good brownie pan, though, and guess where it was made?
China! I think most of the folks here equating WW with chinese goods aren't even reading the labels to make sure, because I do
and I usually guess wrong.
Guess what else- my FIL bought a big Dodge PU a couple of years ago, and was mortified to read the label (too late), that it was made in Mexico.
I'll wait here while everybody goes outside to check. :<)
Well written, John. Lucky me: I have three Super Wal-Marts and a Super Sams, all within twenty miles!
A Subway moved into one of them a couple of months ago which is pretty handy.
If I have my aunt with me and she gets tired, I can sit her in there with a cup of coffee and a sandwich and finish my shopping:-)
We live way up in Ashe County,NC next to Virginia and Tennessee....I don't mind the 15 minute drive to WalMart...I find the things I need at great prices....our county is rural and we have no Best Buy or Circuit City; so we got our new flat screen HD television at WM...heck, we even got our pet house cat there....somebody had dumped her in the parking lot...when I was working it was nothing but Brooks Brothers for me....now that I'm retired it's camo and jeans from Wallyworld.
I do have a question for those on FR. Here in southern Indiana WalMart is closing out their fabric and sewing department. Is that happening any other areas?
2 cart raid, slacker. You have nto rally hit one until you needed a trailer on your suv. Been there done that.
Basically, because Wal-Mart won't "play ball". Some years ago, Wal-Mart approached my small town of 11,000 to put in a distribution center, roughly 600 jobs. Our town fathers said, "That's terrific. We have a terrific location for you (owned by a member of city council). Also, we're in a position to grant tax variances, but you have to assure us that you'll hire x number of women, x number of African Americans, x number of Hispanics, and then, we'll make sure you get your tax variances."
The Wal-Mart distribution center went in 20 miles up the road in another town, where THEIR city council said, "Great, what do we need to do to bring the distribution center here?"
"We live in a very small town, Highlands, North Carolina, population about 1,000. It has two and a half grocery stores, a couple gas stations, etc.. Everything for sale here has to come up an hour’s drive on winding mountain roads from any direction. Everything here costs more. "
You forgot to mention the town of Highlands exists as a mountain tourist/resort town where the population quadruples during the summer/fall season and is a place where real-estate prices have reached the level of ridiculous, beyond the means of 90% of the people in this nation.
In addition to having to suffer only two and half grocery stores there's an abundance of seasonal, gourmet restaurants, fudge shops, antiques, boutiques, art galleries, etc. which help ease the sacrifice of a spartan existence when living there during the winter months.
I am neither a union nor socialist person. I refuse to shop at Wally World because the two stores closest to me are filty. Getting in an out of the trash littered parking lot is one big traffic jam. Many of the people who shop and work there do not have command of the English language and I suspect that many of them are illegal. A significant number of the shoppers that I have observed are beyond over-weight, and can only be characterized as super-obese, yet they trudge through the isles with their fat kids in toe, wearing clothes that are three sizes too small as they munch down potato chips, Doritos, candy, and biggie sized sodas at 600 calories a pop before they have even paid for them. While Wally World may have slightly lower prices, service and a knowledgable sales staff is almost non-existant, and the trade-off for the lower prices is lower quality products. Wally World is also the world's largest company store. And my real pet peeve is that this multi-billion dollar business has a nasty habit of extorting real property tax abatements from the local community, which effectively shifts Wally World's tax burden to the rest of us in the community.
loved the bit about the coupons. LOL.
There are limits of large corporations turning oligopolies into monopolies. I do know that when I shop for raw materials at local hardware and lumber yards, I find the larger superstores have replaced smaller competitive stores. While some items might be offered at 2%-20% lower prices, many common items such as nuts and bolts run nearly 10x to 100x typical costs in small bulk.
In a particular search for an 3/16"-9/32" dia x 2" long machine thread bolt, with a stout head, the closest match I could find was in a prepackaged bag of two pieces at anywhere from $2.38 to $4.50 per pack. Teenuts could be bought at nearly $.70 - $2.10 each (.70 at Ace Hardware in qtys less than 20). In each of these projects i could use somewhere between 40-80 pieces, so I was looking for a 100 count or possibly 1000 count to keep the price down. Nowhere were these available in the SoCA are within 100 mile radius, at those quantities.
20 years ago, such a lack of basic supply would have been dismissed as absurd, but today, more and more supplies are being sold as commodoties in an off the shelf fashion, with less and less inventory kept on hand.
Interestingly, the same makes and models of bolts were available from a limited number of vendors such as Home Depot, Leows, Home Base, WalMart, etc. Nearly all were Chinese or foreign manufacture, while one can google and find plenty of stock in 100 to 1000 piece quantities from mid US locations from less than .02-.17 per piece as oppsed to .70 - 2.10 oer piece at these superstores.
This is only one example, but it becomes more obvious that many of our staples are coming from overseas industrial markets, packaging for an off-the-shelf market bearing less and less cognizance of simple fabrication/ manufacturing/ production status quo.
IMHO, the WalMart SuperStore does change local suburban economics, eliminating much competition and generating oligopolies at best, locally, and in many cases or particular products, local monopolies with costs able to escalate by one to two orders of magnitude, rather than 5-20%. For this reason, I find SuperWalmarts to, in effect, promote socialist agendas, regardless if intentional or not.
It is government intervention in the act of anti-American "Free Trade" (which in reality are one-sided) bills that have allowed Wal-Mart to prosper at the expense of the American worker. Since then Wal-Mart has succeeded in driving it's entire manufacturing base overseas.
"Buy America" indeed. There's more than one way to be a traitor.