Is Walmart Evil?

I wasn’t being serious regarding the work for them but poorly answer. I don’t view WMT as being any more evil than other stores, and they have saved me a ton of money. Lots of good considerations mentioned in the thread.

Not necessarily. The townsfolk pay higher prices at the small community store so have less disposable income. The local store owner gets rich on the inflated prices and takes foreign vacations. I don’t see how that is a better local outcome than a local Walmart.

1 Like

plz see post 2 before yours

another counterpoint is that there are more owners who take vacations. Can the waltons take enough vacations to counter this? maybe

the proof is in the pudding again. If walmart raises the standard of living in the communities each store resides, i say it’s good

Touche’

I kind of feel like this at this point. I don’t think Wal.Mart did anything that wasn’t going to happen anyway. They were just the one that did it. Just like Amazon. Someone was going to harness the internet to sell stuff to everyone. They were just the ones that did it. Does anyone honestly think if there was no Wal Mart we would be in a land of mom and pop stores?

1 Like

japan is a land of mom and pops. Why is that?

I would not work for a cigarette, booze, or gambling company. Would work for marijuana and do work for health insurance :wink:

walmart sells cigarettes and booze. Are they any better than the company that manufactures them?

Do you have a source that says Japan has a more thriving mom and pop scene than the US and that large retailers like Wal Mart have not thrived there? I found a 1992 article that could have been written in small town America at that time. Also I believe there was a whole episode of Cobra Kai where Daniel went back to Okinawa and instead of Mr. Miyagi’s family fish camp there is an outdoor mall with a Gap, Red Lobster, etc. You know all the retail giants.

Actually, WalMart is reducing locations that sell cigarettes.

Do you have any source for this? I want to say there was a Freakonomics podcast or chapter all about how in Japan they have all these Mom and Pop shops because they “adopt” their chosen successor (buyer), in very Roman fashion

Whenever people complain about insurance prices I say “it’s the bloody actuaries!”… I bet I could really get people riled up if I was a health actuary…

1 Like

I’m not positive of the logic of trickle-down economics but “the poor need to prostitute themselves more!!” seems like a weak argument for Walmart being evil.

Yeah, agree with this. No idea.

The standard of living in the US has increased every year since Wal Mart existed. So there you go.

I think people have also forgotten that Walmart thrives on third-world sweatshops. Walmart was the #1 exporter of US jobs to children working in torturous conditions around the world.

I have mixed feelings about that too though (sweat-shops are good things, when they don’t catch on fire) and of course it’s hardly unique to Walmart. They just did it first and best and most.

Does that include 12 of the last 21 years where inflation adjusted median income declined?

How I describe my job, as a Health actuary- “you know how everyone complains about how expensive health insurance is and how insurance companies are making a killing? My job is to make sure it stays that way.”

2 Likes

I have an in-law who rose up through Wal-Mart. Started in loss prevention at a local store, ended up getting to regional executive. The stress of that last spot - he was moved 3 times in 11 months - caused him to beg out and he eventually went to setting up and testing loss prevention in a region around his home. Made great money as an exec, though - he and my sister are set for life, unless they spend like $250K a year.

I think like any company, there’s good and bad. The question is whether the bad outweighs the good, and how good/bad people above you are. I know people who hated their job at Wal-Mart but got left alone to do it, so they were OK. I also know people who loved working for Wal-Mart, but had a Karen who nitpicked the shit out of their job and eventually they said fuck this, I’m out.

But I’m sure everyone here can say similar things about some place they worked at in the past.