If you want to know Walmart’s real purpose in having Walmart stores and Sam’s Club stores, below I quote what I found at their site “Walmart Realty.” People in a number of communities have been upset because Walmart moved in and undersold local business until they went out of business. So below, if you paraphrase what they say it could read: We don’t care if our stores and clubs fail because our goal is to buy up the neighborhood and make big bucks with real estate development and the help of the local officials we have paid off/contributed to for help in achieving our aim.
“Welcome to Walmart Realty
Walmart Realty, a division of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is a real estate company that offers many development opportunities nationwide. Walmart Realty concentrates on commercial real estate located in or around our current and former locations. Walmart Realty’s mission is to find businesses to open in our former stores and clubs and to locate in available property around our stores. At Walmart Realty, we believe we have a responsibility to work with communities to find a use that generates economic growth and opportunity. We work at the local level with local brokers, economic development officials and elected leaders to find partners that best suits the needs of each local community.”
So if you find that Costco is giving better service it may be because they want to succeed, pay their top executives less and their worker bees more. Walmart’s typical pay of $9 an hour is hardly motivating. I think that Walmart’s CEO was paid $20 million last year. If the first model is socialism and the second is capitalism, then maybe we could use more socialism???
I never fused both motivations that way before. Unfortunately, it makes a lot of sense, fiscally speaking, so long as one doesn’t give a flip about the rising unemployment and zeitgeist of hopelessness.