In The News Today...

Quote: AZDuffman

Quote: Evenbob

I LOVE Walmart and have
a thread by that title on WoV. I shop there
almost exclusively. Quality and low prices
will get me every time.

I wouldn't say I love it, but for sure it has its purpose. I do laugh at the SJW types who act like they are the first retailer with low wages or high turnover. Their attention to detail at keeping costs low is amazing, to the SJW types there is something wrong there as well.

Hard not to see this as an ad hominem personal insult, given the exchanges you and I have had just above. I'm not an SJW, a snowflake, or even a leftie, and I get tired of your labels claiming I am. There's plenty to discuss just among the issues and news.

There IS something wrong with low prices, when those prices come at the cost of millions of good US jobs, which is Walmart’s main source of profits - driving domestic goods manufacturers and independent supply chains and retailers out of business.

Clothes have gotten incredibly cheap, for example. Yay. Try finding cotton milled, refined, and manufactured cloth products native to US now. You won't. They've all been thrown out of work by overseas cloth and clothing manufacturing. Skilled good paying trade jobs all gone. Walmart undercut them, put them out of business, not to mention the retailers in competition with them to sell the clothes. Replaced some of those jobs with minimum-wage service jobs selling imported stuff we used to make. Those people can't afford to shop anywhere except Walmart any more. Very cannibalistic.

Quote:

President Trump caused a stir with his announcement that the United States had delivered F-52 fighter jets to Norway.

Was it a secret advanced jet capable of beating its Russian counterparts? A ruse to fool intelligence analysts?

Neither, it turns out. The “F-52” is a fictional jet only available to fly if you’re a gamer at the controls of “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.”

Trump lauded the sale of the fictional planes alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at the White House on Wednesday, remarking on the very real and growing defense relationship with America’s Northern Europe ally.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-lauded-delivery-of-f-52s-to-norway-the-planes-only-exist-in-call-of-duty/ar-AAuyLN5?li=AA4Zpp&ocid=spartanntp&ffid=gz

Quote: beachbumbabs

Quote: AZDuffman

Quote: Evenbob

I LOVE Walmart and have
a thread by that title on WoV. I shop there
almost exclusively. Quality and low prices
will get me every time.

I wouldn't say I love it, but for sure it has its purpose. I do laugh at the SJW types who act like they are the first retailer with low wages or high turnover. Their attention to detail at keeping costs low is amazing, to the SJW types there is something wrong there as well.

There IS something wrong with low prices, when those prices come at the cost of millions of good US jobs, which is Walmart’s main source of profits - driving domestic goods manufacturers and independent supply chains and retailers out of business.

Clothes have gotten incredibly cheap, for example. Yay. Try finding cotton milled, refined, and manufactured cloth products native to US now. You won't. They've all been thrown out of work by overseas cloth and clothing manufacturing. Skilled good paying trade jobs all gone. Walmart undercut them, put them out of business, not to mention the retailers in competition with them to sell the clothes. Replaced some of those jobs with minimum-wage service jobs selling imported stuff we used to make. Those people can't afford to shop anywhere except Walmart any more. Very cannibalistic.

I have said this several times BBB but the consumer voted for Walmart and it's practices when they shopped there and made it the number 1 retailer. It is not up to the government to stop them. The consumers can stop Walmart any time they want by not shopping there. They have peaked now anyway and Amazon is now the way of future. The consumer always gets what they want, the power of their wallet insures that.

The well paid union worker decided to shop at Walmart not believing he was putting his job at risk. The consumer education teachers have brainwashed a couple of generations now to always buy the cheapest and never let the big bad companies ever make a dollar. All of us unfortunately bare the brunt of it.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Clothes have gotten incredibly cheap, for example. Yay. Try finding cotton milled, refined, and manufactured cloth products native to US now. You won't. They've all been thrown out of work by overseas cloth and clothing manufacturing. Skilled good paying trade jobs all gone. Walmart undercut them, put them out of business, not to mention the retailers in competition with them to sell the clothes. Replaced some of those jobs with minimum-wage service jobs selling imported stuff we used to make. Those people can't afford to shop anywhere except Walmart any more. Very cannibalistic.

As you mentioned above, IIRC I read 85% of WM employees were receiving government assistance, so WM employees are subsidized by the taxpayers.

WM has killed off all the old box stores that paid living wages for generations. That is not what capitalism is supposed to be like. This is what fascism is. The government picking winners, and being in bed with them, at the public's expense.

WM worldwide, has union representation in several countries. I was surprised when unionized WM workers flew to Calif. to help protest for representation. But they [WM] are protected here, from organized labor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wal-mart-works-with-unions-abroad-but-not-at-home/2011/06/07/AG0nOPLH_story.html?utm_term=.f9f854e19de5

Quote: kenarman

It is not up to the government to stop them.

Lots of rightwingers think it's okay to use government to stop things they don't approve of. Or else they'd legalize prostitution, drugs, and stop trying to screw with the right to an abortion. Add in the social conservatives, and you have even more things to the list.

Is that F52 thing real? Has a "green box" media outlet reported it?

Quote: beachbumbabs

There IS something wrong with low prices, when those prices come at the cost of millions of good US jobs, which is Walmart’s main source of profits - driving domestic goods manufacturers and independent supply chains and retailers out of business.

Wow, I think that is crazy. It is called a free market economy. If our citizens can't be competitive we need to train them in something else.

Economists Credit Trump as Tailwind for U.S. Growth, Hiring and Stocks

"Forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal give administration’s first year generally positive marks"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/economists-credit-trump-as-tailwind-for-u-s-growth-hiring-and-stocks-1515682893

Quote: DRich

Wow, I think that is crazy. It is called a free market economy. If our citizens can't be competitive we need to train them in something else.

What's crazy about it? Workers with skilled jobs make better wages. They can afford to pay more for goods made from their good-wage labor. The economy continues, but at a better quality of life for the laborer.

Instead, manufacturing sectors have been gutted. Companies can pay 3rd world laborers $1 a DAY to do things they used to pay Americans $8 an HOUR (talking early 90's and before, when we still made things here, and $8 was an ok wage, not great). So, even with shipping cost to bring it back here, they still save scads of money per piece. But that same employee had more discretionary dollars to spend than the min wage employee making $5.50 doing unskilled work. So the products would sell.

It took forever, and still hasn't sunk in for many, that it's a production circle of life. Why is the US so deeply in debt to China? Because of exactly this; they own us due to the trade deficit created by us no longer making the stuff we make in and buy from China.

Walmart famously led the way in doing this, breaking domestic companies, once Sam died. And he's been spinning in his grave for 2 decades. His whole thing was selling American products. Try finding ANYTHING actually made in America to buy from Walmart.

Even if you find a tee shirt that says "made in America", it won't be wholly true. The cotton will have been grown elsewhere, and/or the cloth milled and dyed elsewhere, and/or the shirt sewn elsewhere, but the picture silk-screened on the front have been applied here.

Why, as a country, are we broke? Because we make nothing. We export raw materials, then buy them back expensively as finished products, where much of the expense is because the money to buy them back exited our domestic economy. It needed to be paid to OUR workers and OUR local companies every step of the way so it cycled through OUR consumer economy.

Why do 47% of Americans pay no income tax (as of famous 2012 stat, anyway)? Because they have NO. FRIGGIN. INCOME. Crap unskilled jobs or service industry jobs at or below minimum wage. So, gee, the Treasury is empty, and Congress has stolen the SS payments from workers and employers and claimed it's broke . Can that really be a surprise?

Quote: beachbumbabs

What's crazy about it? Workers with skilled jobs make better wages. They can afford to pay more for goods made from their good-wage labor. The economy continues, but at a better quality of life for the laborer.

As far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to vote for polices that let people make as much as they want, I'm not doing it without taking care of people making minimum wages as well.

It's all or nothing. And it's probably immoral to do otherwise.