Something needs to cahange. My husband makes "enough" that we can't get goverment aide but we don't make enough to buy food or gas every week. The scary thing is that besides our car and house we have no dedt. And we only live with the basic things we need (except for DSL, we need a little fun in our life.)So,I love Wal-mart, without it or something similar we would be hungry and stinky.

I'm a single parent who is not on aid of any kind and I work full time, and often an additional part time job to get through holidays. Thank God for Walmart. It's gotten me through Christmases, birthdays and school clothes shopping without killing me. I am part of the working poor. I make a good living in the eyesof the government, but in reality, I have less money after paying rent, utilities and daycare then people I know who are on assistance. It's my biggest gripe. Why not give ME a break on daycare or housing. Hell, while they are at it, pay for me to go back to school so I can get a better paying job. My "friend" has never been able to hold a job for longer then a year and has been back to school so many times she should have a masters degree, all paid for by the state.
So long live Walmart I say, it's keeping me out of everyone elses pocketbook.

I am deeply conflicted by my relationship with Wal-Mart. I hate the way they treat their employees, the people that manufacture their goods, and what they stand for. I hate their union-busting and the fact that they have employees that *still* require public assistance. (I'm a firm believer that employed people should make enough where they don't need supplemental government income. Needing it doesn't reflect anything about workers. It reflect solely on our system and employers. Good wages and access to health care should be had no matter what the job is.)

At the same time, My wife and I do buy things at Wal-Mart. Why? They're cheap and we're poor. Their food is cheaper than the options in the area. We can't afford to shop for most goods at stores with a social conscience, because those stores are too damn bourgie.

Personally, I think Wal-Mart can fix the things that make their business reprehensible without being a low-cost option for those of us with less. There is on impetus for that, though. Because the bottom-line is all that matters. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised in Wal-Mart started paying their employees in scrip if they could get away with it.

What bugs me the most about some people's anti-Wal-Mart positions is the underlying elitism to it. I can't count how many people I know that have unashamedly stated that they don't shop at Wal-Mart (or similar stores) because of the clientele. And these are supposed to be liberals! Of course, it is the snobby rich fucks that help keep socially responsible shopping on the upper end of the cost spectrum.

Nice post, Utopia.

By the way, I happen to like cheap ramen. A lot.

Walmart is pure evil. And if it weren't for walmart, it's true, I wouldn't have much. I make next to nothing and have no health insurance, so this is where I have to shop. I can't stand it either for the most part.

10 years ago I was making 30,000 a year, now I'm making less than 20,000. Something's terribly wrong with this picture. And I have a BS in Business. Fat load of good it's done me over the years.

My husband is anti-Walmart because he used to work there. I buy clothes from K-mart, which is more or less the same thing. Its like Wal-mart's broke little brother or something.

Much of the household cleaners we buy, as well as deoderants, shampoos, toothpaste and the like we buy from the Dollar Tree (Where everything is $1. Gotta love it.)

In my small hometown, Walmart is all we had.

What I dont like about them, at least around here, is that they keep leaving buildings empty to build NEW stores in the same city.

The most recently super walmart built here was built right in the middle of a neighborhood, under the protest of everyone who lived there. Soon a Sams Club is moving in right next door to the wal-mart.

I feel sorry for the people that live there.

Not to mention that that park across the street, with the lake and the ducks, isn't nearly as much of a nice peaceful place to go as it once was.

Oh, and I like cheap ramen alot too. But I woudlnt' want to eat it and nothing but it. -shudder-

I remember a time when I lived off of bread and eggs (because bread was a buck a loaf and we raised chickens.)

I disagree... go read my blog for my response.

One thing you have to remember about Wal-Mart is that it is basically a retail store. Most retail stores treat their employees like shit. Why do we hold Walmart to a higher standard? If you want an example of another job along the same lines of Walmart, go take a look at YummY's blog and read about her trials and tribulations at Michael's.

Ask people at Costco or Sam's club (though Sam's Club is owned by the same group as Walmart so that would be a little silly), how they like their job and how they're treated at work. I think people hold Walmart to a higher standard because they're bigger and more in the public eye.

But, once again, it all boils down to one thing, Walmart is cheap. People shop there because it is cheap. For some things I can understand comlpetely. Why pay $20 for a movie at Sun Coast when you can buy the exact same movie at Walmart for $7.50? There is a reason Walmart is the number one seller in the country of movies, deodorant, bicycles and toys.

Another reason why Walmart is so cheap is because most stores are within 48 hours of a warehouse. This makes it hceaper for them to get goods from one place to another.

A while back, Walmart's catch phrase was "Buy America". But in a 1993 management stated the "program demonstrates a long-standing Wal-Mart commitment to our customers that we will buy American-made products whenever we can if those products deliver the same quality and affordability as their foreign-made counterparts". This right here is capitalism in action. Most companies buy from foriegn counterparts because it is cheaper and they can pass that onto their costumers. But, that is how capitalism works.

This is an interesting article:
http://www.onlineessays.com/essays/business/bus009.php

By the way a-[e], I agree that employees should be paid enough to live on and provided with health care no matter where they work. I don't care if they're a burger flipper at Wendy's or a stockboy at the local Kroger. But, that concept is delving dangerously close to socialism or even (GASP!) communism.

Stockboys get paid ALOT. A friend of my husbands just got a stock job at a local grocery store and he gets paied $9 an hour! To me that sounds like heaven!

Stockboy jobs at Walmart in New Mexico and Arizona get paid $10-15 an hour. Similar position at other places paid minimum wage. I suppose it is all in where the Walmart is. You have to understand $9 an hour is about $18600 a year before taxes if you work full time. That is incredibly difficult to live on.

9 bucks an hour is incredibly difficult to live on. I should know. That's what I make :(

Another reason why Wal-Mart is cheap is because they bully their suppliers. They bully their suppliers into being able to purchase cases of items at super low costs.

It's a no-win situation for the suppliers. They would generally NOT like to be bullied, and would generally NOT like to be supplying to Wal-Mart at all, but they have to do business with Wal-Mart strictly due to the numbers. People shop at Wal-Mart. It's a reality. Suppliers know they will go down if they aren't part of the competition. Wal-Mart is a bully.

In Europe, there is no such thing as Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Target. Suppliers there compete to make the best things, products with the best quality, etc. In complete contrast, North America is about making crappy products for the lowest possible prices. We make a lot of garbage, and our governments support this. It's terrible that people are forced to shop there.

I live in Canada, but I'm American by birth. I am single and have a child. I'm an assistant manager at a clothing store, and though I don't make much, I don't shop at Wal-Mart, nor do I need to. No one I know NEEDS to shop at Wal-Mart. Most of my friends, if they do shop there, shop there for the amount of merchandise under one roof. It's easy to find everything you need in one shopping trip. It's a very bad thing that in America, so many Americans shop at Wal-Mart and places like it out of sheer necessity. That's bad, bad news.