No, Walmart doesn?t create jobs
 

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/pol...obs046321.php#

"First, an update on that living wage fight, which I?ve written about before on this site. The bill, which would require Walmart and other big box retailers to pay a minimum wage of $12.50 an hour, passed the DC City Council. It needs the signature of DC Mayor Vincent Gray to become law, but Gray hasn?t received it yet. There have been suggestions that he?s leaning toward a veto and that Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has delayed sending the bill to Gray?s desk because he?s working to shore up support for a veto-proof majority. Walmart has threatened to cancel plans to open new stores in DC if the bill is enacted.

One of the most compelling-seeming arguments that the pro-Walmart forces have been making is that DC should reject the bill and welcome Walmart into the community, because Walmart would create much-needed jobs. So I decided to look at what the research says about Walmart?s impact on employment. Guess what? Contrary to the happy talk, Walmart does not create jobs. Actually, it kills them.

Here?s why: first, at the local level, all Walmart does is put mom-and-pop stores out of business. The overwhelming body of evidence, including the most rigorous peer-reviewed studies, suggests that when Walmart enters a community, the most likely result is a net loss of jobs; at best, it?s a wash. In fact, the biggest, best scholarly study about the impact of Walmart on local employment was done by an economist at University of California at Irvine named David Neumark, who is not exactly a wild-eyed liberal. He?s the kind of economist, actually, who writes anti-minimum wage op-eds for the Wall Street Journal.

The devastating impact Walmart has had on jobs becomes most clear when you go macro, and look at its impact not just locally, but on the national economy. In its relentless quest for low prices, Walmart strong-arms its suppliers to cut labor costs to the bone. What this has meant in practice is that many suppliers have been forced to lay off workers and ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas. Because of Walmart, countless jobs in the U.S. have been lost, mostly in manufacturing.

I?ve been thrilled by the response to my Salon piece ? over 5,000 Facebook ?likes,? and counting! Thus far, none of the prominent pro-Walmart voices have taken issue with it, because the facts I present are hard to dispute.

Back to the DC controversy: neoliberal pundits and politicians hate the DC living wage bill, because they don?t want to drive Walmart away. The politicians want the photo ops at Walmart openings, where they can boast about bringing ?good jobs? ? um, well, okay, ?jobs,? anyway ? into the community.

But when Walmart comes to town, significantly more local retail jobs are destroyed than created. And to the extent Walmart grows and is empowered, even more manufacturing jobs will be lost. If Walmart?s fans understood its anti-worker business model, they would get this. Walmart?s philosophy requires cutting labor costs to a bare minimum, so it makes sense that the company would not only pay workers miserable wages, but also shred as many jobs as possible.

Some of the pro-free market ideologues do grasp this. Here?s Forbes contributor Tim Worstall, for example, with a blog post helpfully entitled: ?Of Course Walmart Destroys Retail Jobs: That?s the Darn Point of it All.?

I appreciate the honesty of Worstall and others of his ilk; they celebrate Walmart for its innovation and productivity-enhancing ?creative destruction.? Fine. What I don?t appreciate is those pundits who then turn around and claim that Walmart is also going to magically create jobs out of thin air, as so many are doing in the current DC debate (see, for example such gold star hacks as Mona Charen, Star Parker and, inevitably, Fox News).

Let?s be clear: the brave new economic world so many conservatives and neoliberals celebrate necessitates massive job loss. In theory, the gains from productivity brought about by Walmart?s ability to produce more output with fewer labor inputs are supposed to benefit everyone. But in practice, they?re going almost entirely to the the top, and the economic hit is being taken by those at the middle and the bottom. To paraphrase the old country song, they got the goldmine, we got the shaft. Progressives need to do all they can to change this dynamic. Supporting living wage bills like the one in DC would be a great place to start."

In a related story, a couple recent studies estimate that each wackmart store costs the taxpayers $1million per year or more. How? Because of the chain's low wages, its workers are often pushed to accept public aid, including food stamps and subsidized housing.

Yeah, they're a bunch of sweethearts...

Try factoring in the countless small businesses forced to close in small towns across the country when walmart comes to town. Not to mention the money not reinvested into the small town but wire transferred each day to their corporate headquarters.

a mini trade imbalance taking place each day as towns grow poorer.

:thumbsup

:thumbsup

Indeed L-Pink, there is a huge knock-on effect, I've spoken with many former shop owners who told me that new supermarkets quickly killed them off

I would rather live on the street and eat my own shit before I would either work for or shop at that shit-hole Walmart!

I'm sure it's all the fault of 1) small business owners for not being able to compete with a mega-corporation and 2) the workers, who must certainly be lazy, inferior sub-humans.

You make this sound new. Actually, you don't.

Every penny you spend, casts a vote, is a motto worth making a note of here though :thumbsup.

Last year the here in my little hometown the Rainbow Market - which had been here for generations - closed down, and was replaced by a Wal Mart "Neighborhood Grocery". We all learned some valuable lessons about the evils of Wal Mart.

The Rainbow Market had been here for thirty or forty years, was old and poorly lit, and always looked run down inside. The employees were old and grumpy, and never enough of them. It was located in the old part of town and the elderly shopped there, spending a lot more than they would at the big box grocery stores on the other side of town.

WalMart moved in, and our crappy dumpy store was replaced by a brand new store with a lot more selection and a lot better prices. They employee twice as many people as the old market, and while they don't be health benefits the old Rainbow Market didn't give it's employees health care either.

The best part was the old Rainbow Market, which was in our community for decades, never donated anything to any local programs including the schools and all of the kid's youth sport leagues, including my daughters.

Yea yea yea you have told this fairy tale before

I am sure I have; I pay attention to my local community. We all thought Wal Mart was the root of all evil. Turns out we have yet to see a downside.

Our small town has a similiar example - a local family-owned grocery store that pays its employees barely subsistent wages with no benefits. The owners are verbally abusive to their staff because they know the high unemployment rate in town guarantees they can easily replace someone. Their grocery prices are very high in comparison to other stores and their brand selection is poor.

My daughter worked there for a short while - and often came home with stories of abusive bosses. And she's not prone to exaggeration...a very level-headed, reasonable kid.

I've always tried to buy local and not deal with big box stores like Wal-Mart. But this particular grocery store has had a monopoly in town for generations...they've never felt the pressure to improve their treatment of employees.

Honestly?

Honestly.

The old store didn't pay any better wages, nor did they have health insurance for it's much smaller staff. The prices are better, there is much more section, and the truth is... We were all shopping for groceries at Wal Mart in the next town anyhow.

At the same time so few people shopped at the old store that it was dragging down the entire shopping center. There was three other businesses there, and they all went out of business in the past three years.

This wasn't a loss for my community, it was a huge gain.

i waved to you the other day when you were door greeting at wally world:321GFY

How can a Walmart not create jobs? Mom & pop has how many employees compared to the skeleton shift at a Walmart? We don't need them here but they are definitely of value in flyover states.

Remember folks... in America cooperation's are people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

You really need to start considering walmarts feelings before you post.

Something else similar just happened here where I live - the local Ace Hardware store went out of business just last week. In the past few years both a Home Depot and a Lowes have opened up. Same story as Wal Mart - the Ace Hardware only had a handful of employees and could never even try to keep up with the selection of the bigger stores.

I much prefer Ace over home depot, they have much more knowledge staff, and will have the wacky bolt that I need.

we have 2 walmarts in the small city (160 000 or so population) which I find very stupid and pointless.

Another thing annoying about Walmart is how they are built in a central location of a community to get consumers used to their brand then move the store out by an airport or other low tax area. I don't know if this is still practiced today but 20 years ago this is what was done in my home town and other communities.

Walmart moves in, wipes out all stores in the area, then moves further out to save money leaving a hole where there was once a neighbourhood. I'm glad Vancouver said no to Walmart back in 2005 :)

I'd venture to guess that they would not have two stores if they could not justify it in sales.

Wak-Mart..:upsidedow

you need to buy food and other shit somewhere

no walmart in korea...they saw them for what they were a mile away

I think you're on to something....

:winkwink:

So, let me get this right:

Low wage Walmart worker: receives food stamps and subsidized housing.

Unemployed worker: receives no public aid?

I will explain for you. First someone who works shouldn't have to be on gov programs to pick up the slack but when people get paid next to nothing and no fixed schedules so forget getting a second job. You are paying part of Walmart expenses. Its corporate welfare.
I find it funny here, people here will scream about someone on food stamps buying cigarettes and beer but Walmart fucking you up the ass . Oh thats cool . lol

OK, so using the same example, if a Walmart is in operation and the gov't is subsidizing it by giving $1,000,000 in public benefits to it's employees per year, that's WORSE then there being no Walmart and the gov't paying out exponentially more in public benefits to the same group of people who are unemployed?

They have E-Mart in Korea, also accused of doing the same thing to it's employees there as WalMart is here.

So then by the logic in this thread, every company in the US that pays minimum wage is being supported by taxes because their employees qualify for government assistance. I hope that every person in this thread that rails against WalMart is also boycotting :

restaurants,
fast food places,
quick oil change places
income tax preparation services,
etc....


They all have employees that make minimum wage.

In fact these days if you make less then $17 per hour and you have a family then you qualify for some form of government assistance, so I guess the minimum wage needs to be $17 per hour, eh?


(of course when that happens then the government will simply raise the levels under which you qualify for some form of federal assistance again, and the cycle will go around and around.... After all we can't have people NOT relying on government assistance, that might make them self-reliant!)
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Take your common sense and get the hell out of this thread.


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For every negative there is usually a semi balancing positive.

So they dont hire as many employees as the mom and pops lose but they save a lot of people a lot of money that they do end up spending elsewhere. I wonder if anyone has done an impact study showing that.

Oh wait, why would we it would make Wal mart look good.

No the better way would be they pay a decent wage so we dont have to pay for those people.Costco does it and OMG makes money.

Small mom & pop stores recycle profits back into the community. They purchase houses, buy cars, eat at restaurants, etc ? Walmart on the other hand transfers all profits back to corp headquarters, in effect slowly reducing the money supply in that town.

Year after year the biggest retailer taking money out of a town does reduce the living standard in that town.

Well, they pay the wage that they want to pay. It's part of the system called Free Market Capitalism. No one is forced to buy at Walmart. And no one is forced to work there. When enough people neither work nor buy there, Walmart will close, move or cease to exist.

I often wonder why people have such a hard-on for Walmart and not Home Depot or any of the fast food chains? Don't they do the same thing? Maybe if Michael Moore would do a "documentary" on Home Depot, they would draw the heat, as opposed to Walmart? I believe part of it is it's easier to jump on a bandwagon than to start your own.

Personally, I do virtually all of my shopping online or in my Bronx neighboorhood at the mom and pop stores - I'm at the Golden Eagle Diner right now and just ordered a pair of 4E Sketchers from Zappos.com.

To each his own.

That's a great way of describing it! :2 cents: :thumbsup

Delusion is not a river in Egypt.

denial. 'denile is not a river in egypt'

rhythms with 'senile'

What? Low minimum wages COST the country money, keeps people dependent on government and keeps taxes higher? But but but but but..

When home depot starts selling groceries, baby clothes & video games, sports equipment.

Walmart puts tons of different businesses out of business.

Actually, Walmart doesn't have the power to put anyone out of business. It's the customers that all decide that they would rather shop at Walmart then at their competitors, that causes those other shops to go out of business. Obviously, for whatever reason, customers feel that Walmart provides them with a better value than the other stores.


Just pointing that out....



:2 cents:



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so if one shop is using a government subsidy to put others out of business..

It's not corporate welfare at all. There are lots of jobs that are part time and minimum wage.

It's just like saying that families in the military live below the poverty level. When I was in the military I lived like a king; I got a paycheck and all of my major expenses were covered - housing, food, medical, even transportation and to a degree clothes. But if you are eighteen years old and have two kids and a wife, no, it's not going to be enough to live off of. If you are eighteen and married and have two kids chances are you'll be living in poverty no matter what.

I worked these crappy part time jobs too, making minimum wage. At one point I was working full time at a restaurant, part time at fast food and part time at Target on a push crew and (please don't laught) also a newspaper route.

The entire point of these crappy jobs are so that you get experience and eventually move up in the world.

it's corporate welfare.

what's the name of the family owned store? wanna see if i remember it.

Referring back to my other post above.... the government has been raising the income levels, and lowering the restrictions and qualifications on government assistance programs...

"So then by the logic in this thread, every company in the US that pays minimum wage is being supported by taxes because their employees qualify for government assistance. I hope that every person in this thread that rails against WalMart is also boycotting :

restaurants,
fast food places,
quick oil change places
income tax preparation services,
etc....


They all have employees that make minimum wage.

In fact these days if you make less then $17 per hour and you have a family then you qualify for some form of government assistance, so I guess the minimum wage needs to be $17 per hour, eh?


(of course when that happens then the government will simply raise the levels under which you qualify for some form of federal assistance again, and the cycle will go around and around.... After all we can't have people NOT relying on government assistance, that might make them self-reliant!)"


.:2 cents:







So by your logic, then every restaurant, and fast food place, etc.... that pays minimum wage, is using government assistance to put other business out of business....



:upsidedow
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:thumbsup:thumbsup