Globalization gets blamed for economic woes in Midwest USA

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it might be nice to have the option of going to a cramped dim ma and pa shop and pay twice as much rather than have to drive 25 miles down the road to walmart.

Then test your theory by opening one between the two Wal-Marts, and see which one consumers vote for. Chances are, your shop will pay its employees minimum wage, part-time with no benefits. At Wal-Mart, they would have options for health insurance, discounts at the store, and full-time pay above minimum wage.

I believe that globalization has played a part in America's manufacturing decline. But thought the main cause on why there are fewer manufacturing jobs to be new technology. Liked this article from Professor Walter Russell Mead about jobs of the past, and ideas about future work.

"Beyond The Big City Blues"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... ity-blues/

excerpt:

I think manufacturing is largely a lost cause, but there's still plenty of work for unskilled laborers, if we can finally agree to start paying for needed infrastructure repairs, maintenance, and improvement.

About Walmart and the big box stores, cheaper crap doesn't necessarily lead to savings for consumers. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into Target for just one thing and have come out with a cart full of stuff. The way we rationalize spending is really quite amazing. Now, I've become a much more disciplined and savvy shopper over the years, but I don't think I'm representative of the typical shopper. I've learned that I'm much better off going to a small shop and paying maybe a 5 or 10% for one thing because I come out with just the one thing. I suspect that if an average shopper swore off big box stores for a year, they would realize significant savings and roomier closets. It's unbelievable the amount of unnecessary crap be buy just because it's cheap.

Are you blaming the vendor for your lack of control?

ruveyn

Not at all. My point is that most people are operating under the false assumption that shopping at a store with the lowest prices always lead to savings. I believe that most consumers actually spend more at these big box stores than they would have if they had gone to smaller shops where there's less of a chance of impulse purchases.

These marketing techniques are well established. It's all about getting them in the door and keeping them in the store as long as possible. The longer shoppers stay, the more they buy. It's similar to grocery stores and casinos. The layout is carefully planned out.

No blame here. These stores are well within their right. I'm just pointing out that the argument that these low prices are advantageous to consumers is not necessarily true. We consumed much less as a society before Walmart, and that was probably a good thing.

Okay, you're just plain wrong about Italian farmers...

Hannibal and his 17 year reign of terror in the Italian countryside displaced Italian farmers. The farmers fled to the cities and the Patricians bought up all their land for a song (in violation of traditions that limited land ownership of the Patricians).

Then, they combined all those small grain farms into huge, slave worked estates that produced olive oil and wine. Greed and slave labor put Italian farmers out of business...

Importing cheap wheat from Egypt to feed the new urban mobs was a small enough price to pay to maintain order, power and profits... As a matter off fact, "the corn dole" was useful enough that Roman factions used to kill each other for the RIGHT to feed the mob. Ever hear of the Gracchi brothers? Optimates? Populares?

Those who fed the mob (with cheap grain) wielded substantial political power. Private doles allowed various Senators/Patricians (rich from their slave worked estates) to have their own private, urban client armies.

When the Gracchi brothers tried to reform the dole system by making it official, and state run, to break the undue influence of the Patricians (think corporations) and institute land reform by breaking up illegal, Patrician owned estates, and reestablish small Italian farms (think middle class), they were killed for their trouble.

There are certainly useful lessons to draw from Roman history, but you have not learned them.

In the last days of the Republic a few, like the Gracchi, saw the threat of the growing Roman Plutocracy and tried to counter it by rebuilding the middle class. They failed and a generation later the world had its first Fascist Dictatorship under Julius Caesar.

You may be right about the additional details, but in either case coercion ended the small Roman farms.

A farm isn't the same sort of animal today, but there is something of a parallel, in that small farms have disappeared in the U.S. and been replaced with giant corporate farms that are subsidized, i.e. fascist. The U.S. gives cheap grain to its own mobs, which is why almost everything in the grocery store is made of corn, even your soda. It also put the Mexican farmers out of business.

Meanwhile, and somewhat off-topic, grains aren't even good for you. They are basically grasses, and humans didn't eat them in nature, before civilizations were built.

The same thing happens to me at Goodwill sometimes.

Also, Marshall's.

But, I only go a few times per year.

I will give you some free advice --- Let the Buyer Beware.

ruveyn

Ignoring the fact that they don't. Look, I'm not saying that consumers aren't ultimately responsible fir their own behavior, because of course they are. What I'm saying is that "Save Money, Live Better" is bullsh*t. Since the big box stores have taken over, people are spending more and living worse. The proof is in their profits.

I can't dispute that a lot of people are living worse and spending more. But correlation isn't causality...are they really spending more on items that you buy at Walmart? No...in fact, Walmart's lower prices have made many items more accessible to the poor.

Let's look at the price of some things in 1988, when the first Superstore opened, versus what they cost now:

PC: A Tandy computer cost $1400 (or $2454 adjusted for inflation) Now you can get a PC, with flatscreen monitor, for less than $1000

Laptop: $4000, or $7000 adjusted for inflation. Walmart now has sales around the holidays for $500-$600

Hard Drive: $5000, almost $9000 adjusted for inflation for a 150MB hard drive. Now, you can get a 1 TB hard drive for less than 400 bucks.

Printers: $1000 in 1988 for a color printer. Now less than $100.

Modem: $700 adjusted for inflation, now a modem or router is less than $100 at Walmart.

Cellphone: $4300 adjusted for inflation. Now less than $100 for a Tracfone and minutes at Walmart.

Big-screen TV: $5258 adjusted for inflation, now around $2000 or less at Walmart.
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Those are just consumer electronics, all of which I couldn't afford at pre-Walmart prices, but they are all luxuries. Walmart has also made basic food and clothing more accessible to the poor. When I was a struggling vegetarian college student, Walmart (then Wal-Mart) was the only place that I could buy food, actually.

Simple solution: don't buy at the Big Box. Order on line. Or carefully find the vendor and the merchandise that fills your need.

ruveyb

Last edited by ruveyn on 17 Oct 2011, 1:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Technology becoming cheaper with time is a pattern that was established long before Walmart. It also applies to products not sold by Walmart. A modern example would be solar panels. An historical example would be the automobile. Just check out an old Sears catalog. They've been around long enough to note the changes. And you can get the same cheap clothes there too. Their groceries are no bargain either. They have a few draw items, but cartload to cartload, I've always fared better elsewhere.

Also, the profit margin on those products isn't very high. The cheap TV is the draw - the equivalent to a free drink at a casino. The hope is that the shopper then picks up the stand, the cables, the Blu-Ray player, and few movies. Notice, electronics are usually in the back of the store. If Walmart's lucky, maybe you'll pick up a bag of chips and some soda while you're there. And maybe you're running low on laundry detergent and socks. As you're walking through, you notice the endcap with Snuggies on sale and think, "I've got to have one. They're so cheap."

It's been noted that there's a clear correlation between neighborhoods with a Walmart and an increase in poverty. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... DBB.d01t01

No, it's not proof of causation, and there are certainly other factors at play here, but Walmart and the big box stores have had a negative net effect on the middle and lower classes.

First of all, that study makes recommendations about whether public subsidies should be given to Walmart...something that I do not advocate. In fact, one of the worst things that Walmart did in recent years was call for an increase in the minimum wage...since they already pay nearly twice the minimum wage, the effect was to use government action to force Walmart's competitors out of business...grocery stores, K-Mart, etc.

As for the increase in poverty, in those same neighborhoods it is probably true that at the same time in history as the increase in Wal-Mart stores, there has also been an increase in:

-The amount of french fries sold
-The minimum wage
-The amount of crack cocaine (and later meth) sold
-The amount of foreclosures and evictions
-Rap music vs. Rock music
-High-fructose corn syrup consumption

All of those correlate with poverty, yet none have a direct relationship to Walmart, and not all of them have a direct relationship even to poverty itself.

Wal-Mart began in the southern U.S., traditionally one of the poorest areas of the country...and that was the key to its success, because it offers previously unaffordable things at lower prices. Yes, people have bought luxuries that they didn't need there, but in most cases Wal-Mart didn't give them the credit cards that they bought them with. Neither did Wal-Mart tell everyone to buy a huge house that they couldn't afford, pass laws to price themselves out of a job, eat every meal in restaurants, drive hummers, or do drugs. So I'm a bit confused about why Wal-Mart is singled out in some of these campaigns.

Personally, I live about 45 minutes away from a Walmart, in what is statistically the poorest county in my Walmart-less region. I go there about once a month, with a list...and behold! No personal debt.

And I do not doubt you find the items you need at a price you are willing to pay. What more can you ask of a store?

ruveyn