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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (263200)	12/4/2005 1:29:56 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575213

No, Target can't beat them on this parameter. It is all to easy to have to get a rain check from Target, something that almost never happens at Walmart. But Target is a long term Symbol customer. It shows... To be honest, I only shop Target when I am looking for a discount store. I have never lived in a place where there are a lot of Walmarts. The only one here is in a distant suburb. And KMart stinks. As for rainchecks, I have never gotten one from Target. However, I go there only maybe 6-10 times per year.....at the most. I do know that Target has the reputation of being a well run ship. Of course, these comments [yours and mine] are mostly anecdotal. What I do know is that WMT's GM is considerably smaller than Target's as well as the industry average, but yet, their NPM is not far off from Target's and the industry average. Given those numbers, WMT's efficiency would have to be to the point of godliness, or they are skimping where others are not. Then there may be another point I thought of after I posted yesterday.......at first, the Walmart stores were mostly stand-alones in areas where construction and land costs are considerably lower than those for Target or KMart. It's likely those lower, upfront costs translated into considerably lower ongoing, fixed costs which I think would have a greater impact on margins than inventory controls. If true, that may be changing....their GM this year is up 1% over the 5 year average.....a big number considering the size of the Walmart franchise. That increase in the GM may reflect their move in recent years into more expensive building markets like CA. Having said all that, the point I was making to Harris is that he automatically assumed that if the employees were to get paid more, the price of the products must go up. It never occurred to him that the Waltons should maybe make less profit; that their billions don't have to double every five years. IMO that's partly what's wrong in this country; capitalism has become an entitlement for the rich to the point where they can make as much money as possible and the poor be damned. It has become very offensive. Parsons posted the article about the CEO of DHB recently......who had Sting or some '70s band at his daugher's lavish bas mitzvah. And of course, everyone knows about Paris. Today, in the Seattle Times, there was an article about 12 year old, rich girls getting $500 Prada purses for their b-day. This stinks........people are living in tents in MISS and LA and TX and these little girls need $500 purses??? Something is very wrong with the system IMO And if you criticize this extraordinary, capitalistic largesse you are a socialist. That's pure garbage. The irony of all ironies is that the criticisms come from people in the red states who IMO are getting screwed the worst by all the largesse. FWIW. ted