Because Mom and Pop rely on local distributors, who help defray the cost of the gas increases over a dozen hops.  WalMart owns all the hops in the chain, and are having to pay the increases at every level.

When gas is cheap, fleet consolidation makes sense, but when it's not companies that rely on their own fleets take it in the pants if they can't afford to pass the costs on to consumers.  Because the only paradigm under which Wal-Mart makes sense is selling cheap, it can't afford to pass the prices onto its consumers.  Otherwise it becomes just another Target, Costco, etc.  Wal-Mart's practices only work when it has the power to shove everyone around, and that requires massive market share in the cheap consumables market.

Yes, but Wal-Mart has to be much cheaper than mom and pop, because everyone hates them.  A little cheaper isn't going to do it.  Their prices slip, and suddenly they can't bully their suppliers anymore, and then their prices slip again, ad they start having to close stores, and the municipalities that cut them sweetheart deals start reneging, and their prices slip some more.  Wal-Mart is like a shark.  It can't stop moving.  All those people Wal-Mart screws, they're waiting for it to slip, and they'll fall on it with long knives because there's so much to loot.

Remember when Sears was the end-all, be-all of retail?  When they strode the world like a Colussus?  Neither does anyone else.

I love pickles.

Wal-Mart is the largest single purchaser of organic cotton, but I still don't think it's a monopsony buyer of organic cotton, and given the market for non-organic cotton organic cotton is a poor example of a monopsony category to begin with.

While they're certainly not a monosopy nationally, they are the only purchasers for quite a few types of products, in quite a few areas throughout the country.  They're also the only retailers of quite a few products in quite a few places.

For example, there are places in the midwest where a non-Walmart purveyor of music on compact disks is more than 200 miles away.

Thalia

"they are the only purchasers for quite a few types of products"

Which ones?

"there are places in the midwest where a non-Walmart purveyor of music on compact disks is more than 200 miles away"

I doubt it, but even so I'm told people in the Midwest know how to buy CD's online. They do it at night after milking the pigs.

So, you couldn't care less what Wal-Mart does to their employees.  Why would that be exactly?  But, you deplore the company's policy of repackaging your favorite games/movies/magazines leaving you no choice as to what to purchase.  Why is this the worse depredation Wal-Mart (or any employer) could practice?

Hi Mayor,
[This response also directed towards Ms. Sue]

I believe in at-will employment. Moreover I have a keen appreciation for what makes a sucky job..usually it involves risk of severe injury/death (coal miner) and not being forced to work extra hours without compensation. At WalMart workers don't have to pee in their pants, worry about inhaling asbestos, or (mostly) losing any digits.

My perspsective is that the line (non-management) people who work at WalMart either made a hash of their lives by dropping out of school, or are trapped in a poverty cycle (single mom/drugs/lack of ambition and imagination) with no upward mobility. Illegal immigrants do better with less than melanin deficient WalMart workers.

I believe that WalMart workers in aggregate are stupid. (Then again I believe people in aggregate are stupid..perhaps the WalMart people are those who drag the high achievers down). Look at this story as a sample example -- allegedly up to 100k WalMart employees are being 'tricked/forced' into working unpaid hours..in America.

I mean really...how dumb do you have to be to work for free? Every single detrimental claim against WalMart makes WalMart look smart/devious and WalMart employees dumb/stupid. I just can't make myself sympathize with people whose basic defense is "I'm too stupid to know my own rights".

Read the so called "WalMart issues" that people are concerned about and tell me that it doesn't come off as WalMart keeps tricking people and thats how they are successful. Frankly I've seen worst indictments of the business practices at Electronic Arts.

Come back to me when Upton Sinclair comes back from the dead and reprises "The Jungle" until then, complaints against WalMart get filed in the /dev/null/liberal_whining folder.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

High school drop outs?  All the Wal-Mart employees I know have at least a couple of years of college under their belts.

Do you even know any Wal-Mart employees?

Making Chutney: Two parts facial hair. One part moxy.

I mean really...how dumb do you have to be to work for free?...I just can't make myself sympathize with people whose basic defense is "I'm too stupid to know my own rights".

No doubt, eh?  Not only that, but how stupid is it for people to stay in a low prospects town where all of their friends and family have been living for generations and where all of the mill/factory jobs have gone overseas? (ironically, to make the very same things these walking dead stupid heads are now selling).  I mean, c'mon...didn't these idiots see the coming opportunity boom of the 90s and train up to be sysadmins or IT managers? Even the lowest flea brained drone could see that the mill jobs were leaving and the time was ripe to get in on the ground floor of real-estate finance,  venture start-ups, and property flipping.  And you're complaining about them not knowing their rights?  Laugh!  How could they when they can't even predict simple economic signs?

Fuck 'em, I say.  If they don't like working for Walmart, I'm sure the workhouses are still in operation.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I know you're trying to be outrageously sarcastic, but considering that I know plenty of hick sysadmins who did exactly what you're talking about, it's not quite so outrageous as you appear to think.  

While you are of course, right.  I would have to guess that (at least from the people I know) that achieving such a level of employment is nearly akin to getting a big recording contract or getting picked for the NBA.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I would have to guess that (at least from the people I know) that achieving such a level of employment is nearly akin to getting a big recording contract or getting picked for the NBA.

Hi Lou,
I wasn't going to answer your original post because I thought it was funny, and I figured in my own silly way that people who were interested could find out the facts for themselves.

For you however, I'm willing to offer a helping hand. Federal retraining assistance under the TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) has a budget of over $1b per year and covers all workers whose jobs negatively are impacted by trade. i.e. Those who wanted to become sysadmins in the late 80s/90s could do so, and there are quite a few articles from that era on the 'net saying as much. Job retraining was in fact a big focus of the Clinton years as one of the "balances" for NAFTA.

Now I'm not sure how many people get picked for the NBA, but I'm willing to wager that far more people are engaged in retraining paid for by the government, than are employed as players in the NBA.

Feel free to disregard this comment if it significantly modifies your world view; I for one prefer your sarcastic wit over enlightenment.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

Aye...I remember TAA well.  During the 90s, I was an employment counselor.  I have helped a multitude get beyond their lost shoe shop or mill job and become something their parents wouldn't recognize.  No kidding...there are a bunch of CNAs (as in nursing, not network), IT folks, Class A truck drivers, computer techs, electricians, plumbers, x-ray techs, etc, around thanks to the work my agency (and by extension, me) did to navigate through TAA's sometimes byzantine rules.  I still stand by the NBA reference though cuz these were the small number of folks who could see the metaphorical volcano getting ready to blow, and made the best of a bad situation.  There were many many more who, as the lava rose around their feet said, "whua?"

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I still stand by the NBA reference though cuz these were the small number of folks who could see the metaphorical volcano getting ready to blow, and made the best of a bad situation.  There were many many more who, as the lava rose around their feet said, "whua?"

But is this surprising? It plays directly back to my point upthread that these "WalMart people"/losers will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. You more than anyone else should recognize that the government/society can only go so far before people need to try for themselves.

For every 1 person trapped in a trailer park due to bad luck and tragic family circumstance, there is at least 10 others who are there because of their own personal mistakes/fuckups. Why should you/I have sympathy for them?

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

For every 1 person trapped in a trailer park due to bad luck and tragic family circumstance, there is at least 10 others who are there because of their own personal mistakes/fuckups. Why should you/I have sympathy for them?

Careful there, friend.  Don't forget, Shadenfreud is circular.  Also, we all live somewhere on the Fuck-up Continuum.  For instance, I'm 45...no kids/family.  I'm a good teacher, but I got here via a squiggly line and the backdoor, thus I have to work twice as hard as someone coming the direct route.  For other people of my age and education, I am fairly well underpaid.  I'm a fat, quirky, neon driving teacher.  To my friends (and fortunately, I am blessed with good friends) they know all that I had to overcome just to get to here.  To someone who doesn't know me, I'm an apartment complex fuck-up: Fat, alone, and under-employed.

So yeah, despite my slagging of "palooka parents" in another thread, I do believe that everyone has the ability to attain a more satisfying life. And yes again, a big part of that depends on their own gumption and determination.  However, none of us lives in a vacuum.  Support, inspiration, guidance, and compassion all go a long way towards making gumption more efficient.  

So why should we have sympathy for them?  For starters, I don't have sympathy for them...I have empathy.  I was once there and if it wasn't for a small, yet powerful group of people having compassion, empathy, and belief for me, I would be  a fat, toothless, low prospects, easily duped Walmart drone.  Why should we have sympathy?  I'll let my old buddy, Ralph answer that:

to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  This is to have succeeded!

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Lou, all I can do technically to applaud you here is to give you a +5 brilliant. But that doesn't even come near to the value I put on your comment for its personal touch and its humanity. Seems so sad that you should even have to state what should be the obvious.

Lou, I replied upthread before I read this, so clearly I'm trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.  Let me sugest that your experience isn't as uncommon as you may believe.  There's still mobility out there, even though it's likely gotten tougher, but it takes a willingness to get your shit together at some point, no matter how painful that might be.  

We have more in common than I'd have ever guessed, what with being fat, and getting to where we got to via a squiggly line (although I'd describe mine as more sketchy).  I don't think we're that special, though, which is why I had to question your original statement.  

Maybe there's a regional difference.  I've gone through this before on the issue of lock of economic mobility.  Anecdotally, most of the sysadmins I know (and I'm a sysadmin, so I know alot), have either parents who were poor, or grandparents who were.  I kid you not when I use the word hick.  I worked for six years with a bright sysadmin whose parents lived in a trailer in the middle of nowhere Texas, and whose grandparents lived on dirt floors.

Hell, my parents wore flour sack clothing because they couldn't afford anything else, and they leaped to the middle class in a single generation (banker and nurse).

I totally accept that it's not easy, and a bunch of people get off to a harder start, but I just don't buy that people don't have a way to dig themself out of terrible poverty.  My own family, and many of those I know have living relatives who were brutally poor.  I'm not arrogant enough to think that I, my parents, most of my friends, etc. are somehow special or better than everyone else, so it must be doable.

Coming back to the regional difference, I guess it would be handy to know that I'm in the South, Texas in particular.  This country was ripped apart during the dust bowl days, so maybe the bounce back from that creates a different narrative down here.

We only need so many bankers and nurses.

Making Chutney: Two parts facial hair. One part moxy.

I believe in at-will employment. Moreover I have a keen appreciation for what makes a sucky job.

"Moreover" indicates a natural transition from one thought to another. Believing in "at-will" employment does not necessarily indicate a total lack of interest in employer abuses that may fall slightly short of disallowing bathroom privileges, getting a lungful of asbestos, or generally keeping digits intact.

I don't doubt that we've come to demonize WalMart to some degree. But when it lives up to such expectations, it should be publicized; when it breaks laws, it should be held accountable.

Your post is shockingly inhumane, as no doubt you intended it to be. But shock value aside, it is so mean-spirited as to make one almost hope that you might have to walk in the shoes of one of these people whom you so blithely dismiss.

I don't doubt that we've come to demonize WalMart to some degree. But when it lives up to such expectations, it should be publicized; when it breaks laws, it should be held accountable.

I don't object to holding companies accountable when they break the law. But there is a difference between breaking the law and oh..not providing employees with health care, or putting smaller stores out of busines, or just simply being a large retailer. [Lets set Maryland's WalMart Health Care law aside for now].

If WalMart is not paying workers for time they spent working, they should pay restitution as well as receive punitive damages. But this is not where we disagree....

My perspective is that if the workers are unwilling to stand up for themselves, then its a waste of my time to espouse/invest any solidarity with them.

Your concept of inhumanity is based on a relative valuation to a norm which would be inclusive of idiots as well as savants. When the face of humanism is represented by orgs like the Humane Society, I'll proudly wear the "inhumane" label, and whatever other personal attacks you care to toss my way.

Your vice is my virture. As to the idea of "walking in the shoes" of people I dismiss..pass. I walk in my own shoes and make my own way. Succeed/Fail I neither need nor want the sympathy of others who think its a tragedy that I can't figure out how to compete in an economic free market society.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

it is so mean-spirited as to make one almost hope that you might have to walk in the shoes of one of these people whom you so blithely dismiss.

The rightwing ethos is predicated on never thinking about how anyone else feels.

You are correct. Your statement is neither fair nor accurate.

Well at least I'm not myself with that brand impression. The LA Times this morning pretty much makes my point for me.

But hey..brand impression is a nebulous thing. Feel free to post your own impression of what the WalMart brand means to you.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

My impression of Wal-Mart, which I occasionally shop at when I need a wide array of cheap crappy stuff, is that's it's populated with people who have a need for cheap, crappy stuff sometimes.  That means a mixture of the poor (including a vast swath of Mexican immigrants, both legal and otherwise), and the middle-class in need of throwaway crap, or just convenience.

You don't always need hand-crafted, gilt-edged, German-engineered stuff.  Sometimes you just need a big plastic trashcan, a package of dominoes, three gallons of primer, and some Barney videos.

Where else are you going to buy all that crap in one place, at the same price?  And none of that stuff is particularly crappy, it's just cheap.  The primer will be Kilz, at two dollars a can cheaper than the Great Orange Beast, the dominoes will be plastic and live for years, and the trashcan will last until I move to my next house and throw it away.  The Barney videos will be, well, Barney videos.