Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (39848)	10/26/2005 5:43:16 AM
From: freechina	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

It is in a heavily populated area of florida - perhaps they were getting hurricane supplies - I dont know - I have been in there before and typically there are about 8-10 people in the line around that time. I remember the people directly in front of me had a lot of ice cream and frozen goods and they just pushed thier basket out of line and walked off and the guy was saying its all melted now. He was pretty pissed. However they did use to have 2 aisles open at night - I go at night because traffic is too hectic in the day. This was a new policy started by walmart according to the check out girl - I will be going back in a day or 2 and update you - I found some more info on the walmart request - as always its to help the little guy: divisionoflabour.com October 25, 2005 Bootlegger Wal-Mart Today's WSJ reports (p.A2; sorry no link) that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott "called on Congress to consider raising the minimum wage." Why would Wal-Mart advocate a minimum wage hike? Scott claims it's time to "help working families" who are having a difficult time buying products from Wal-Mart. (Here's a previous post on the "working families" gibberish.) Scott's argument that a minimum wage hike would help Wal-Mart's sales is specious. Here's an excerpt from an NBER Working Paper's abstract: The evidence indicates that workers initially earning near the minimum wage are adversely affected by minimum wage increases, while, not surprisingly, higher-wage workers are little affected. Although wages of low-wage workers increase , their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes is a decline in earned income. For Wal-Mart's real motivation we return to Bruce Yandle's notion of bootleggers and Baptists. The WSJ reports, Though Wal-Mart pays above the current $5.15 per hour minimum wage--the average hourly wage among its 1.3 million U.S. workers is just under $10 per hour--some of its smaller competitors don't pay as much. As a result, a boost in the minimum wage could pressure the profitability of Wal-Mart competitors. UPDATE: Ulterior motives are nothing new for minimum wage supporters. From Alex Tabarrok on MR: It's no surprise that progressives at the turn of the twentieth century supported minimum wages and restrictions on working hours and conditions. Isn't this what it means to be a progressive? Indeed, but what is more surprising is why the progressives advocated these laws. A first clue is that many advocated labor legislation "for women and for women only." Progressives, including Richard Ely, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, the Webbs in England etc., were interested not in protecting women but in protecting men and the race. Their goal was to get women back into the home, where they belonged, instead of abandoning their eugenic duties and competing with men for work. Unlike today's progressives, the originals understood that minimum wages for women would put women out of work - that was the point and the more unemployment of women the better! More on walmart trying to do GOOD things for society: marginalrevolution.com Mark Cuban's War against Hollywood Tyler Cowen Why don't we have a convergence to immediately available video-on-demand? Edward Jay Epstein blames Wal-Mart: What has prevented the studios from closing the video window is simple: Wal-Mart. The company, which is the single biggest seller of DVDs, has made it clear that it does not want to compete with home delivery. Wal-Mart executives told Viacom's home entertainment division in no uncertain terms that if any studio does away with the 45-day video window for a single title, they would risk losing access to Wal-Mart's shelf space for all of its titles. Wal-Mart provided studios with more than one-third of their U.S. DVD revenue in 2004. In the face of Wal-Mart's retail power, the studios have not dared (yet) to do away with the protective video window. Read: Wal-Mart will lose this battle sooner or later. Here is the full article, which contains much more about Cuban.