How do you feel about Wal-Mart?
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| Wed, 11-26-2008 - 6:23pm |
I read this op/ed (it's tied in with the automotive industry issues) http://www.indystar.com/article/20081119/OPINION12/811190304/1301/ARCHIVE the other day and it got me thinking. I've always heard about the lousy way they treat their employees but...it's their prices that keep me going back. Since I've moved to the South it's been even worse. They have Super Wal-Marts here where there is a grocery store in the Wal-Mart.
Now, there was an article the other day in my local newspaper with the mayor asking people to do their Christmas shopping downtown and buy local to support our mom & pop stores. Now, I'd love to do that but I have three kids and you know where I'm going.
Part of me really doesn't like what Wal-Mart stands for but the other part of me feels like "why should I pay more when I know I can get it cheaper there?"
Any thoughts?

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>>> Wal-mart also doesn't pay local tax either.
How is Wal-Mart so blessed?
>>> Target in my area starts you at 8.00 an hour.
Sounds like a decent start for unskilled labor.
"When, and in what way, has a Wal-Mart been "devastating" to a community? Specifically please."
Huh? They run local stores out of business by undercutting them through underpaid labor and outsourced jobs to China. Say goodbye to decent, decent paying locally owned service stores and manufacturers. We don't make bikes, TVs, toasters, clothes and everything else we used to make in America and Wal-Mart is a good reason why. Their whole operation is geared towards squeezing factories and their exploited labor in China.
I love how they make a big deal out of selling American flags and parading around like the Fox Republicans like they are some kind of patriots as they run Americans out of decent paying jobs. Basically, it's been black is white and up is down for the past 8 years. The Bushie Fox Republican politicians were happy to go right along with the free and unfair trade with China.
Because of Wal-Mart alone, we have so many empty shipping containers we don't know what to do with them. Soon we'll be using them for houses and stores like they do in third world countries in Africa.
But hey everyone, keep on shopping there. See if things change.
"LOL! The WORL-DA will be HEE-YULL'D by the POW-WUR of the Obamessiah."
Keep it up. In the meantime, we'll keep on talking about real facts and real problems in the real world.
Someone probably posted this already. But sadly a Wal-Mart worker was killed due to inadequate crowd control.
"Critics of Wal-Mart said the retailer had been negligent about security.
"They have problems with crowds every year, and inevitability, people get hurt," said David Nassar of Wal-Mart Watch, a union-financed group. "They should expect to plan properly for this kind of a problem and have adequate security in place, and they don't.""
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008448574_shop290.html
More:
"California Attorney General would like to kindly remind you to check your receipt
Wal-Mart was fined $1.4 million Monday and ordered to implement a “get it free” program for California consumers after an investigation found that the store overcharged for numerous items at checkout.
Makin’ news: Wal-Mart’s second FMLA lawsuit in a month
A Wal-Mart employee in Oregon has accused Wal-Mart of demoting her because she took time off during the Christmas shopping season to undergo an emergency hysterectomy.
Wal-Mart’s Brazilian Boom
Wal-Mart revealed in mid-August that it will invest between $900 million and $1 billion dollars into expanding in Brazil in 2009. This will be the largest investment made thus far by the company in Brazil, sufficient to open between 80 and 90 stores. For this year, Wal-Mart’s growth plan foresees $650 million and the opening of 36 locations (in the last four years, the company has invested $1.6 billion)."
http://walmartwatch.com/
They are already using them for houses right here in America and in Canada! They don't look very third world - pretty upscale in fact - but they are here. Especially in California I think. Here is one site but there are many. I don't know how to attach pictures but some of the houses look really cool!
http://weburbanist.com/2008/05/26/cargo-container-homes-and-offices/
Guest author Andrew Boyd is an expert on travel hacks
With the green theme growing in popularity across every stretch of the world, more and more people are looking for green alternatives for office, and even new home, construction. There are countless numbers of empty, unused shipping containers around the world just sitting on the shipping docks and taking up space. The reason for this is that it’s too expensive for a country to ship empty containers back to the their origin – in most cases, it’s just cheaper to buy new containers from Asia. The result is an extremely high surplus of empty shipping containers that are just waiting to become someone’s home or office.
There are plenty of benefits of to the so-called shipping container architecture model. A few of these advantages include: they are plentiful, they are easily transported, they’re stackable, relatively inexpensive (as little as $900 for a used container), they can be prefabricated, and they’re extremely durable. Residential applications are also becoming a popular topic of conversation among green supporters. The first official 2-story shipping container home in the US was designed by Southern California architect Peter DeMaria in 2006. The only big obstacle that he encountered during construction of his shipping container pad was making sure that the house passed all of the strict guidelines of the Uniform Building Code (UBC).
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