Behold!! The cancerous growth of Wal Mart!!!
 

Behold the amazing growth of a sucessful buisness model. ;)

I love Wal-Mart. Saves me money on common stuff. Mom and Pop were gouging, sad to see them go but that's competition.

ObWalMart link: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

I'm not a walmart fan, but that was fascinating, actually. I had no idea they only got into the NE in the mid 1990s (I've been in NM for so long).

That said, it certainly doesn't bother me. The same animation for Starbucks would be cool, actually.

Starbucks is shrinking not growing.

LOL they built a brand new one here it was open for two months before they closed it. :haha:

In a bad economy pepole buy their coffee from Wal Mart ;)

I'm not a big Walmart fan either but where else can you go for a power drill and underwear in one stop? :hmmm:

Depends on what you define as successful:

Going by those numbers I live below the poverty line as well.

Well they're a little more successful than is implied in the article you quoted. Full time is 40 hours a week, not 34. That brings an associates annual salary up to about $2500 above the poverty line.

Also a Walmart Associates job was never intended to support a family of four.

Nothing to write home about considering the profits that Walmart makes. Anyway 40 hours is debatable. From wikipedia:

Whatever their intentions, and it is difficult to tell at times with them, their wages are a joke.

Don't forget that Wal-Mart associates also get discounts there, and that includes everything from groceries to power drills. I worked there for awhile. If it had been more than seasonal I'd still be there. It's not bad, as jobs go, and if no one else will hire you it could be a lot worse.

I've been in the American work force since the early 1970's and it's been my experience that any job less than 40 hours is considered a part time job.

That is very true, but again, jobs like that are not intended to be careers that you raise a family on.

I was told at one place that they couldn't give me more than 30 hours a week, because I'd then be "full-time". So, yes, you can be full time at less than 40 hours. My guess is that it's a matter of company policy.

This is the result of a free market society and I am fine with it in that sense compared to the alternative :dead::dead:

At it's core I am a little more disappointed with big businesses swallowing up smaller ones and with that local ownership. By not having local ownership more dollars leave the community and are replaced with lower paying jobs, etc. On the surface it looks fine, more jobs created...., but the larger portion of the dollars ( profits ) do not stay within the community.

Could be, or maybe state law.

WalMart is okay as long as it stays on it'S side of the Atlantic. :DL In Germany, their business model did not work - they ignored too many local habits and customs and demands here, and tried too long to implement american habits. Even well-meant service offers like the young man helping to pack your bags earned them rised eye-brows - Germans simply do not want that and consider that to be "aufdringlich". Like the salesman in a bookstore, you just want to look around and he immediately dives down on you and asks "What are you looking for?" Hehe, I do not want a salesman by my side as long as I do not ask for one.

Spying on their employees' private sphere and gagging them by working treaties, also reports on bad payment, did not help to make WalMart more popular here. Customers started to avoid them, business did not run, and they had to give up. They are not missed.

A real explanation all that is not, becasue we have chain stores and discounters where all this happens, too, bad working conditions, spying, etc. But they stay in business, and expand. Maybe WalMart simply was not liked for being WalMart.

Me too!

This..

I have to admit I am both sides on the walmart issue.

On one side their anti-union crusade leaves a bad taste in the mouth not to mention their constant use of china made products and not even offering the same type of product from an American made source.

On the other hand tho without wal mart there would likely be many many many more people in true poverty today. Atleast with the crap you buy there you can maintain a basic standard of living and they do provide boatloads of jobs that mom and pops just cant support.

mom and pops do not need to be selling general merchandise anyway. They need to sell local made stuff.

Its a sad crappy situation but its not going to change anytime soon.

You seem to be unclear on the concept.

One, what employees make doesn't matter in the least.

Two, assuming that anyone employed by WalMart has to be the sole support for a family of 4 is absurd. Most PROFESSIONALS I know have both spouses working. Why would someone making 10-60 times less per hour not also have a working spouse? Two such average WM employees would make around 40k a year. You'd do quite well on that in the interior of the US, actually. A single parent... should not have churned out so many kids to need to support 3 with an unskilled job (parenthood is a CHOICE, period).