Any Liberal Who Whines About Walmart Needs To See This Epic Twitter Truthbomb {let him have it}

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth-about-wal-mart-2012-11

With Christmas shopping, strikes, and Black Friday, there's been a new wave of anger directed at Wal-Mart.
These 17 tweets from Reason's Peter Suderman, put together by Lachlan Markay, is a great other side of the argument. The tweets may take a moment to load.



Peter Suderman drops a truth-bomb on Walmart critics

Peter Suderman@petersuderman
Really enjoyed talking Walmart and Black Friday on @upwithchris this morning. I'm going to add a few stray observations on twitter.
24 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

Peter Suderman@petersuderman
1. Walmart’s customer base is heavily concentrated in the bottom income quintile, which spends heavily on food.

24 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Peter Suderman@petersuderman
2.The bottom income quintile spends about 25 percent of income on food compared to just 3.5 percent for the top quintile.

Peter Suderman@petersuderman
3.So the benefits of Walmart’s substantially lower prices to the lowest earning cohort are huge, especially on food.

24 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Peter Suderman@petersuderman
4. Obama adviser Jason Furman has estimated the welfare boost of Walmart’s low food prices alone is about $50b a year.

[n2doc]

1. I haven't found W-mart's food prices any cheaper than the other chains

Sure, some items on heavy discount are cheaper there, but the same can be said for different items at food lion, Kroger, even Publix. In my experience, W-mart used to have cheaper prices, but after 2005-2007 they raised their average prices to match the other chains.

[eShirl]

4. Really? In my area, it's around 20% cheaper on average.

We don't have food lion, kroger or publix in this part of the country though.

[n2doc]

11. I'm in Georgia, and frankly Kroger is the cheapest, if you wait for sales

I have been routinely disappointed in Walmart's prices here. However, I mostly buy food, not other things, there so it may be that prices for paper goods, clothing, etc., are cheaper here. Just my experience.

[lame54]

20. Trader Joe's is cheaper than Kroger

[n2doc]

23. I wish we had one in Savannah n/t

[GoCubsGo]

9. Yep. Usually, if it's cheaper, it's just by a couple of pennies.

Most grocery stores double coupons, too. Walmart does not. Some of them, such as CVS, Target, Publix and Bi-Lo also have store coupons that can be used along with manufacturer coupons to make some items even cheaper.

I rarely have the need to go to Walmart. But, when I need something that I can't get elsewhere, like yarn or a crochet hook, I have to go there. When I do go there, I always comb the aisles looking for all those "extra low prices" they advertise. I rarely find them. And, the savings certainly are not worth all the hassles of the crowds, cluttered aisles, and long checkout lines.

[SheilaT]

32. WalMart sells yarn?

What kind?

I haven't been in one in a good ten years myself, since I can find yarn and crochet hooks elsewhere.

[GoCubsGo]

38. Yep.

Mostly Red Heart, but also Vanna White, Lion Brand, Bernat, Caron, and a few others. There's a bigger selection at Hobby Lobby, which is my only other nearby option. But, they are more expensive, and I don't like shopping there because they are purveyors of crap, and because of their overt religiosity. Walmart is the lesser of two evils here. If I am lucky, I can get full, unopen skeins at my local SPCA thrift store. That's were a lot of the discontinued odds and ends from these two stores wind up.

[Cirque du So-What]

12. I would take your statement a step further

by advocating for the smaller, often family-owned stores, which often run specials on meat and produce that put the big chains to shame. In my locale, Giant Eagle is the big chain, and I haven't seen a single sales flyer in more than a year that makes it worth my while to go into one of their stores.

Whether one goes to a big chain or smaller supermarket, however, the meats are always fresher than what is available at WalMart, which does not have an on-site butcher shop. WalMart's produce section also leaves a lot to be desired. I've never seen a sale on meat and seldom one on produce at WalMart, so their always-full-price offerings are definitely no bargain.

WalMart likes to tout their store-brand generic products, but the big chains and smaller stores alike usually have their own product lines. The other stores are much more likely to run sales on those products than WalMart.

As for toiletries and over-the-counter medications, these can be obtained cheaper at 'dollar' stores or pharmaceutical chains - sometimes in supermarkets.

It'll take more than a tweet to convince me that WalMart is the be-all to end-all of low prices.

[geckosfeet]

2. Agreed. However the cynical business model is infuriating.

A captive market, kept poor by walmart business practices. This is little more than servitude - the same plantation business model where farm hands were sheltered on farm property, bought food at farm stores, and lived their lives out on farm property because what they earned was not enough to allow them to survive anywhere else. In fact, the debt from what they bought at the farm stores was more than what they earned. They were perpetually in debt and had no choice but to stay and work off the debt.

Anyone who can see their way to finding virtue in this perversion is not thinking clearly. They are in denial. Or as I believe, they are cynically cruel in their world view.

[Sadiedog]

39. In other words, "I sold my soul to the company store" NT

[geckosfeet]

45. Pretty much. You either sell or you die.

[OhZone]

3. Some of the stuff is cheaper. Some is more expensive!

While a lot of stuff at Walmart is cheaper, you seriously have to watch.

Examples -

Milk
At Walmart, it's usually on the high end. About $4.50.

Shop Rite usually has one of the percentages of milk on sale around 3$

Rite Aid ALWAYS has milk about 3.50$ and 7-11 usually has it just under 4.

Greek Yogurt.
Walmart usually has one brand at 1$.
Shop Rite has their own brand at 88 cents, and it's a really really good one.

I'm sure there are many other examples.

[enlightenment]

24. I think it depends on the location.

The Walmart's in my area offer at least four brands of milk, including a 'store' brand, with about a $1 price differential between high and low-end.
They also have three or four varieties of Greek style yogurt, all name-brand, including quart-size that sells for exactly the same price - occasionally a few pennies less - than the chain grocery stores that carry the same brands.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. And I will argue this as a counter

http://www.demos.org/publication/retails-hidden-potential-how-raising-wages-would-benefit-workers-industry-and-overall-ec

[xchrom]

6. +1

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I cited in the article I wrote

But going to the source is important.

[99Forever]

8. Nice steaming pile...

... Peter laid there.

"substantially lower prices" my ass.

I stopped reading there. Does anyone really believe this bullshit?

[arely staircase]

10. shopping at wal-mart does not save money

i can find deals just as good at locally owned stores and other chains.

[Coyotl]

16. You are wrong about elsewhere

Maybe in your hood, that is true perhaps. In other places, the savings are substantial. In fact, Wal*Mart drives down other chain prices.

Nonetheless, avoid them if you can. I like WinCO, employee-owned stores. http://www.wincofoods.com/about/an-employee-owned-company/

[Moral Compass]

13. It's about the business model

These tweets completely miss the point of the "whining". People (some of them liberals) are protesting a business model that pays its employees such low wages that these almost full time employees have to be on benefits programs such as food stamps and Medicaid to survive.

Won't even go into the economic issues about Walmart squeezing it suppliers so hard that some of them have failed. That having Walmart come into a rural area will cause most local retail business to fail leaving more people unemployed than the new store will employ. That their food prices really aren't that good and that the poor shop there because the commercials Walmart runs tell them that the prices are lower. That Walmart varies its prices by area so that in some places (like where I live Plano, TX) their prices are even with standard grocery stores)...

This post is a simple attack on the word liberal. I'm not on the jury or really much a part of the DU universe, but this post sounds like something you might find on another type of site.

These tweets are almost Fox-like in how they make points without context and leave out a lot of very important info (some of which I detail above). Just to take a swipe at those silly liberals.

The primary point to keep in mind is that Walmart and its business model is a major factor in creating these poor that can only shop at Walmart. Walmart is such a huge part of the national economy that it influences the national economy. I think you could make a pretty strong anti-trust argument about Walmart. It is so big that, to compete with it, other retailers have to also pay low wages, squeeze their suppliers, have excessively harsh job rules, be rabidly anti-union, buy everything from China etc.

Look at what happened when they decided to open on Thanksgiving. Most retailers followed suit.

I believe (and these tweets do nothing to change my mind) that Walmart needs to be unionized. But I also believe that we need to petition our government to look at breaking up Walmart due to its almost monopolistic power in our economy. This is what anti-trust laws were designed for.

Oh, and I bet the economic impact of Walmart paying better wages would have such a positive impact on the economy that many of the poor would end up being able to pay the somewhat higher prices that would be necessary to maintain Walmart's current margins.

[xchrom]

15. +1

[regnaD kciN]

17. Right on all points...

WalMart serves the poor...because it helps make sure they stay poor.

And, yes, the OP is the sort of crap I'd expect from Faux Noise.

[ronnie624]

18. Excellent post.

[Incitatus]

28. +1

[prairierose]

14. I have found that some things are cheaper but....

you have to know prices because many things are more expensive than other grocery stores in the area. But I also do not like so many food products that are imported from China. They do not have the same food processing rules that we do (ok, that used to be enforced here) and I do not trust that these products are safe.

I only buy about 4 products at Walmart that I can't find other places for the same price. I buy all of my groceries at local stores.

[Zoeisright]

19. Oh for Chrissake.

We can "whine" about anything we damn well please. Walmart is the nation's biggest welfare queen. That asshole company cheats its employees and creates families dependent on welfare. They import cheap shit and the Walton family has gotten obscenely rich off the backs of workers. I'll whine about this plenty. Suderman can kiss my ass.

[marlakay]

21. While it pains me to admit it they are not 100% evil

My 85 year old mom fell down yesterday. Luckily she wasn't hurt bad. Had a thick coat on and tripped in store that had thick rug. But it did break off and snap those plastic pieces on bridge of her glasses and bent them a bit.

The only glass place open was at Walmart. My husband took them in and told the guy what happened. He fixed them then cleaned them and refused to take any money...

I was shocked!

[bhikkhu]

22. Baloney - Walmart's food prices suck!

In my town, they drove two union groceries stores out of business, and replaced those jobs with minimum wage part-time crap jobs. I know some of the guys who lost their jobs, and I wouldn't shop at Walmart if they were cheaper.

The fact is, on groceries they aren't - there's three good groceries stores in town here left that beat them consistently, and I shop at one that pays well and has a bunch of employees that love the store they work for.

Walmart has spent billions convincing people first they're the cheapest, which is often a lie, and second that its reasonable to drive way out of town to save 12 cents on a pair of socks. The truth is, once you've bought into the advertising and are stuck out there, you're likely to buy whatever you need. in spite of the price penalty.

Walmart is a giant money vacuum, sucking the wealth out of communities and funneling it into the hands of the Waltons, and nowhere else. They create poverty.

[Moral Compass]

26. Their Prices do (in general) suck

I'm the grocery shopper in my household... I tried shopping at Walmart.

I found that, excepting certain items, their prices to be higher than my neighborhood Tom Thumb (I live in Plano, TX)... The atmosphere is also not an atmosphere that I want to spend any time in...

The primary reason, I believe, is that Walmart doesn't have as many items in their Great Value store brand as does Tom Thumb (Safeway). Great Value also is sometimes nowhere near the quality of the national brands whereas Safeway's store brand is usually equivalent if not better.

The result is that I have to buy national brands at Walmart and that pushes my totals much higher.

So, I don't shop at Walmart. This is not only a moral choice, but an economic one. By the way, they manipulate their prices based on where the store is located. So, in the section of Plano that I live in the prices are consistently higher than in another Super Walmart that is also in Plano.

[Starry Messenger]

25. And why are there so many people living in poverty?

Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the Walton family has made it's wealth by shaking it out of the rest of the US?

http://walmart1percent.org/top-reasons-the-walton-family-and-walmart-are-not-job-creators/

[graham4anything]

27. supermarkets have deeper cheaper sales

In areas where there is a choice (granted some areas only have WalMart), the supermarkets are cheaper.

Especially dairy, meats and fish, veggies, fruit, and things like soda.
Around here every week either coke or pepsi is deeply discounted, so is some brand water
and if you get Pathmark or Stp/shop own brands its even cheaper

Same with cereal.

and drugs can be just as cheap as some stores have same structure as Walmart for drugs

But you gotta ask/shop around

again-some areas don't have choice, but for those that do.

[Incitatus]

31. Exactly. That's their trick.

Some items may be 10- 15 cents cheaper, but they never have sales on food. Their competitors have discounts like buy 1 get 1 free every other week on many of those items. If you're fortunate enough to have a choice in your area besides Walmart and keep an eye on sales, you can easily save more.


The cheaper food at Walmart meme is total bullshit.

[NickB79]

29. If you consider pizza, chips and soda food

Then yes, Walmart beats most stores when it comes to the bagged, processed, heavily salted, fat-laden garbage that most Americans consider part of a well-rounded diet.

Now, if you're talking about REAL food that won't give you diabetes and a heart attack by the age of 45, like fresh vegetables, lean meats, grains, pastas, etc, they flat-out suck.

[Marrah_G]

30. Walmart can and should pay their employees more

How much more money does the walton family need? how much is enough?

[SomethingFishy]

33. Bwhahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

A fucking clown selling clown shoes. His bio:

Peter Suderman is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com, where he writes regularly on health care, the federal budget, tech policy, and pop culture. He is also a film critic for The Washington Times and a 2010 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.

Before joining Reason, Suderman worked as a writer and editor at National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Doublethink, and Culture11. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Newsweek.com, theAtlantic.com, the Washington Examiner, The New Atlantis, The American Conservative, the Orange County Register, and numerous other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Yeah "Film critic for the Washington Times".... Bwhahahahahahahahahaha!!

Writer and editor for National Review.. Bwhahahahahahahaha...

CEI? FreedomWorks? American Conservative?

Yeah this guy has it all

[NuttyFluffers]

46. yup total RW mouthpiece fronting for the company store

wage slavery and gutted local commerce is the new indentured servitude!

what!? you don't like how things are run on the plantation? but think of where those poor bastards would be if i just kicked all my peons out into the cold? i simple must save them from such unknown deprivation...

... with my depredation.

[daleo]

34. If they are so great for the poor

They could go an extra step and donate 90 percent of their profits to charity.

[northoftheborder]

35. I read or heard somewhere that if ALL the discount box stores in the US paid their workers a ......

.....LIVING wage, it would raise the price of each receipt at those stores (averaged) FIFTEEN CENTS. Then those employees could buy more food, etc. that they need, would not usually need welfare, (lower taxes on everyone) and we would have a more equitable society.

I was watching the History Channel last night. They had a series on "The men Who Made America". Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Carnegie..... of course paying almost slave wages and becoming very very very wealthy in the process. They "bought" McKinley the presidency because he was sympathetic to their monopolistic ways over Teddy Roosevelt, who campaigned against them. They "gave" Roosevelt the vice-presidency to shut him up, then of course, McKinley was assassinated and Roos. became pres. anyway. He did not hesitate one minute to start rolling back the monopolies; of course the courts helped with that effort. History just repeats itself. We are living the last century all over again, with more and more power and money accrued to a few insanely wealthy individuals. What is it going to take to change it this time? The courts are scarcely helpful (think the S.C. and Citizens United). We need another Teddy Roosevelt. I do not thing Obama is going to take them on by himself. I haven't heard much serious discussion from anyone in office complaining about the existing and growing monopolization of the economy.

[Egalitarian Thug]

36. Circular argument. Walmart kills low-cost competition, resulting in higher average prices,

which is used to justify walmart's existence because their higher prices are, in some locations, lower than the limited choice left.

[democrattotheend]

37. I won't criticize people who don't have alternatives to shopping there

Whether it's for financial reasons or because of lack of local alternatives. My dad has a good friend who is on food stamps and can't afford to shop anywhere but Walmart and I can understand that. But those who can afford to shop elsewhere should, since I believe Walmart is toxic to the economy in the long run. They drive small businesses out of business, pay poverty wages that makes their own workers unable to shop anywhere else, drive down wages at other businesses struggling to compete, push suppliers so hard on price that many of them are forced to send their factories overseas, and help their workers get on public assistance rather than paying them a living wage so they don't need public benefits.

Some people have no choice but to shop at Walmart, but many more could afford to shop elsewhere but have become addicted to cheap prices. It's sad how so many people, even those with means, have become so focused on cheap cheap cheap, at the expense of quality or social responsibility. And many of those who claim the "need" to shop at Walmart only have such a need because they feel they "need" things like huge flatscreen TV's and all the latest video games. You cannot tell me that all of the people we saw in those videos grabbing and shoving and acting like animals really "need" the stuff they are buying.

[aandegoons]

40. So Walmart preys on the poor.

Odd isn't that what we are saying?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

41. More libertarian lies.

[TeamPooka]

42. "Wal-Mart is so cheap employers don't have to pay Americans a living wage"

that's what it sounds like he is saying IMHO

[rucky]

43. Wal-Mart sells groceries.

People eat food.
Poor people spend a good chunk of their income on food.

I'm with him so far... groceries are important. But I lose him on the assumption that Walmart's prices are lower.

Is he saying that Walmart shoppers save $50b a year, compared to other grocery stores? or just that much in savings over their listed retail prices?

So here's the study that Jason Furman cites:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w11809.pdf?new_window=1

which says: Various studies have demonstrated that food prices at Wal-Mart are 8%-27%
lower than at the large supermarket chains, even after discounts for loyalty card and other
specials are taken into account.

So after knowing that, i guess we should figure in how much Walmart costs taxpayers to maintain that savings?

[knitter4democracy]

44. Aldi is always cheaper.

Big Lots, Aldi, Dollar Tree, and Meijer are cheaper every time. I don't shop Walmart anyway, but sometimes I price check out of curiosity, and Aldi beats them, hands-down, every time.

Aldi has great customer service, too. Their return policy is amazing, their brands are top-quality, and they've helped me and my children be able to afford to eat and have nice things.

[JaneyVee]

47. They can keep their prices low while paying employees more. They have a HUGE profit margin.