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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (5079)	11/8/2005 11:23:11 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541370

I don't like Walmart itself. I don't like the way they treat their employees, I don't like the way they crush their suppliers, and I don't like the politics/culture of the store. Most large stores crush mom and pop stores- and you have to make an effort to shop in small stores if you want to keep them (and I do make that effort.) I find Walmart unacceptable for reasons beyond its size. Other people may simply be using it as a metaphor, I don't know (although I know our neighbors feel the same way, they certainly don't see it as a metaphor either).

To: Ilaine who wrote (5079)	11/8/2005 11:54:29 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 541370

I keep thinking people are talking about Walmart as a socioeconomic phenomenon, maybe even as a metaphor, rather than an actual store. I think most people who talk about Walmart these days are. It's a proxy for the whole globalization thing and/or the union thing and/or the mom and pop thing. Which is entirely separate from the theme of your post about discount prices. The discount store phenomenon has been around since I was a kid. I think the "nobody pays retail" meme has settled in pretty securely and discount stores have done all the damage they're going to do. From the metaphor perspective, it's just a question of where one gets one's bargains. People who would not be caught dead in Walmart will go to Costco. And everyone shops for bargains on the internet. My post was from an entirely different perspective. They simply don't put big box stores in my neighborhood. There's not enough land. There are three Home Depots, actually, on my turf but they're only there in one case because Hechinger's left, that's the one you had in mind, and in two cases because large ratty shopping areas were completely redone. There's another perspective I hold that's a bit different. I can't buy things in the large quantities that these stores assume. One person in an apartment can only manage so much toilet paper at a time. And a regular size bottle of household detergent lasts me for years so it hardly matters if I pay a little more for it in the Safeway. Now that I've mitigated my cultural illiteracy by experiencing Walmart I have no itch to go back. How often do you buy a microwave oven, after all. They don't really have anything I want and the environment is depressing. That's a simple commercial decision. The Walmart phenomenon has lots of threads running through it. P.S. I recently bought a new dishwasher for three hundred bucks at Best Buy, of all places. I continue to have sticker shock not from high prices but from low prices. I'm sure my old dishwasher cost more than than. Everyone seems to have low prices these days so it doesn't seem to matter as much that one get the very best deal.

To: Ilaine who wrote (5079)	11/8/2005 10:32:29 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 541370

I keep thinking people are talking about Walmart as a socioeconomic phenomenon, maybe even as a metaphor, rather than an actual store. It is, because even if you shop Target or some other store, it has to become more like Walmart all the time or it too will be run out of business. It is a social phenomenon becuause it causes all the little businesses to disappear and all the bigger ones to immitate, and that changes they way people interact during shopping, a major social engagement. The best common brand of stripper is made by Savogran, a big company, but Home Depot stopped carrying Savogran, This is what I tried to explain in an earlier missive. The stores can no longer afford to have several suppliers, they can only afford to have the cheaper supplier. It's not only Walmart that acts this way, but all those who will be run out of business if they act any other way too. TP