The new Political/off topic sticky chat thread (Wilkes-Barre, Pittston: restaurant, prices)

[greentown]

Originally Posted by NYRangers 2008

There is no reason to bash Wal-Mart, if you don't want to shop there, just don't shop there. I agree, people just are waiting for reasons to bash them.

Exactly, we are free to shop anywhere we chose to.

[The Commish]

Originally Posted by NYRangers 2008

There is no reason to bash Wal-Mart, if you don't want to shop there, just don't shop there. I agree, people just are waiting for reasons to bash them.

Reasons to criticize Wal-Mart*

1. Economic impact on small-business owners and suppliers.
2. Employment policies (particularly in health care, women in management, an unionization)
3. Taste. I'll leave this one a bit vague so as to not hurt anyone's feelings. But people disagree here.

*Note, why is every critique that people don't like called something violent like "bashing?" It's a little bit of an overreaction.

[weluvpa]

Originally Posted by The Commish

Reasons to criticize Wal-Mart*

1. Economic impact on small-business owners and suppliers.

I'm not exactly a fan, but how is Walmart responsible for hurting the local small business's? The city or Boro, Township that Walmart opens in allows them to come there and allows them to open and allows them to hurt their local business's....

If more local governments would be proactive in protecting the small and local business in their area then maybe there wouldn't a need or demand for places like Walmart. Don't hate the player, hate the game...

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by weluvpa

I'm not exactly a fan, but how is Walmart responsible for hurting the local small business's? The city or Boro, Township that Walmart opens in allows them to come there and allows them to open and allows them to hurt their local business's....

If more local governments would be proactive in protecting the small and local business in their area then maybe there wouldn't a need or demand for places like Walmart. Don't hate the player, hate the game...

Have you spoken to most elected officials lately (Okay! So this was a bad question! LOL!)? If I tried to provide a PowerPoint presentation to Pittston Township's elected officials about microeconomics/macroeconomics, long-range land usage policies and the benefits of mixed-use development, sprawl, etc., I'd get a bunch of gaping mouths and scratched heads! I don't think ANY local elected officials have thorough backgrounds in economics or urban planning.

[greentown]

Originally Posted by The Commish

Reasons to criticize Wal-Mart*

1. Economic impact on small-business owners and suppliers.
2. Employment policies (particularly in health care, women in management, an unionization)
3. Taste. I'll leave this one a bit vague so as to not hurt anyone's feelings. But people disagree here.

*Note, why is every critique that people don't like called something violent like "bashing?" It's a little bit of an overreaction.

1. If local business didn't overprice themselves out of existence, they wouldn't have any problem. I have to drive 30 minutes to a Walmart, but you can bet that I will do it because my local "mom and pop" store is ridiculously overpriced and I am not willing to waste my hard-earned money just to put it in their pocket. If they go out of business, then so be it.

2. I've never worked at Walmart, but I know a few people who do. They don't have a problem with their working conditions, and it's not like Walmart forces people to work for them for low wages. Are you also angry at McDonald's and Burger King for paying low wages?

3. Not sure why you would consider people to have bad "taste" because they enjoy saving money. Most of us who shop at Walmart and other discount stores care more about providing a comfortable life for our families and getting the most we can for our money than we do about having designer labels and bragging about which boutique we buy things in.

[SteelCityRising]

Greentown, I'll just take issue with #1. Did you ever stop to think why prices at Wal-Mart are so much cheaper? Do you think it's just because they value their customers more whereas the local guys just want to screw their customers? That's not at all the case. I'm sure many local stores would LOVE to slash prices to give their customers a better value and to remain price-competitive, but they don't have the same sorts of "sweetheart deals" with suppliers. In MOST circumstances a supplier will put forth a price, a retailer will purchase those items for that price and then mark them up a bit for consumer resale. In the case of Wal-Mart the store is so powerful that it says "We'll only pay $____ for this many of this item" and then proceed to pit prospective suppliers against one another as they trip over each other in a reverse-bidding war to land such a huge account.

Here's an example. Let's say I am to open Paul's Power Supply store in Hamlin and start to sell, per se, Husqvarna Lawn Tractors. I could perhaps only afford to buy three models of each tractor in their line-up at one time, and I'd pay whatever price the Husqvarna supplier told me that I had to pay. For the sake of this example let's say I bought three Husqvarna tractors with 48" decks for $1,600 each. I then mark those up to $1,800 to snag a reasonable $200 profit on each tractor when I resell them to consumers at my store. Then Wal-Mart comes to Hamlin and starts selling the same tractors. Due to their bargaining power, Husqvarna sells the same model of tractor that I sell at my store to the Hamlin Wal-Mart for a bargain basement price due to their bulk ordering. Let's say that the same tractor I had to pay $1,600 for was sold to Wal-Mart for $1,400. Wal-Mart could then sell that same tractor for $1,599, under-cutting MY price. If I were to match that price, I'd be selling each tractor for $1 less than I paid for it, and we all know that businesses can't operate in the red. Eventually consumers say "Hey, Paul is screwing us over. Let's get the same tractor at Wal-Mart for $1,599 instead of $1,800!" Before long I go out of business, and Hamlin has yet another ugly abandoned building to contend with.

Do you now see that it's not a case of Wal-Mart being "good" to customers while small mom-and-pops are "bad" to customers as much as it is a sheer SUPPLIER issue?

[CHS89]

Wal Mart isn't closing the mom and pop stores. The clientele who stopped going to the mom and pop stores are closing them. We, the customer, shoulder that burden. Much more trendy and fashionable to blame the big bad corporation, though, rather than the local consumers who abandoned Mom and Pop in favor of a savings.

[Mr Yuk]

Wal-Mart was the nail in the coffin of Sugerman's...no more goin "up da Eynon" for a cuppa cahfee and a sangwich....

The least Wal-Mart could have done was start selling "mystery packages."

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by CHS89

Wal Mart isn't closing the mom and pop stores. The clientele who stopped going to the mom and pop stores are closing them. We, the customer, shoulder that burden. Much more trendy and fashionable to blame the big bad corporation, though, rather than the local consumers who abandoned Mom and Pop in favor of a savings.

What Wal-Mart does in my aforementioned example is indeed perfectly legal, and if nothing else they are just reaping the "rewards" of massive growth by enjoying this influence over their suppliers. However, I'm just tiring of people (not specifically Greentown) assuming that the local merchants are always higher because they want to screw over their consumers when that is most often not the case; they just can NOT compete with Wal-Mart on price because they don't buy the same goods Wal-Mart does for the same low price because they don't have these sweetheart supplier deals.

I did nearly all of my 2008 Christmas shopping at independent merchants (Well, I didn't realize at the time that Wild Birds Unlimited in Dallas was a chain), and it felt great to know that 100% of those dollars I put into the hands of the shopkeepers would be staying right here in NEPA. I looked at it as follows: I sell a tractor with an extended warranty working at a local power equipment dealer and earn a $20 commission. I go to Coney Island in Scranton and treat a good friend of mine to lunch with that same $20. The owner of Coney Island goes to Anthology and buys two used books with that $20. The owner of Anthology goes to see her son play Little League and then takes him to the doctor when his knee gets scraped up, spending that $20 on her co-pay. That physician then comes back to my store and puts that same $20 towards buying a bagger to give to his friend, the same person who bought that original tractor from me, as a gift. I could alternatively go to Wal-Mart, buy something for $20, and then watch that $20 go to Bentonville, AR.

[CHS89]

That's all well and good, and rather quaint actually, assuming that none of them needed gas in their cars, or groceries, or *gasp* hit Wal Mart for some Christmas shopping of their own.