Capitalism is great, right? It's so American, right? We've all been practising capitalism since childhood by playing Monopoly (the game), right?

Everyone knows how the game ends, right?

Oh, you forgot?

Silly you, you loser.

"To defend Wal-Mart for its low prices is to claim that the most perfect form of economic organization more closely resembles the Soviet Union in 1950 than twentieth-century America. It is to celebrate rationalization to the point of complete irrationality."

Poor people shop at Wal-Mart unknowing of what goes on behind the scenes, such as offshore manufacturing and the like. They are in a position to search for bargains and do not educate themselves on politics and how what is happening is, in part, causing them to remain poor. It's like holdoing out a carrott to a hungry horse. He's going to satisfy his needs without thought of where the carrott came from or what it might do to his digestive syste, This sounds corny, but although I'm well versed in how this country is run, I cannot write in an erudite manner.

When I visited my sister in northeast Alabam, she bought all her needs at Wal-Mart. I was amazed at how the prices compare to the same items I buy at other stores in California. It was tempting to buy six tubes of toothpast to save a few bucks.

As I began to educate myself on Wal-Mart, I stopped buying there.

Anyway, thems my setiments.

We need to educate our citizens.

Amaleota

I went grocery shopping at Walmart yesterday. It's only half a mile beyond Albertsons, which is the nearest store. We have read the propaganda against Walmart, but all in all I think that Walmart is doing a real service. The people who work there are marginal employees and the training that Walmart gives them improves their ability to get a better job. Walmart is actually breaking up local monopolies in banking and now in medicine. Who can be against bringing bankers and doctors into the real world? Walmart has reduced the cost of living for many poor people, and given them better jobs than they could have gotten before Walmart. Whenever I hear how unfair something is to the average citizen, I ask myself whose ox is really being gored? It's generally a group whose excessivley high income is threatened by something new. We are each worth exactly what our replacement will work for, not one cent more. TFL.

Here's a novel idea. Before you lefty morons go and attack a sucessful business for being capitalists, how about you practice what you preach.

Remove the ads from your site, Salon, or you have no right to whinge. Not willing to do that? Then shut the hell up.

Walmart does not represent so called free market Darwinian capitalism no matter how much its apologists clatter. What Walmart does is pull numbers out of its ass regardless the business realities of its own suppliers. I remember hearing about an example with pickles. They demanded their pickle supplier produce a one gallon jug at a given price which undercut all of the pickle suppliers own prices on every other product thereby making it unprofitable to operate. Walmart really didn't need to make a penny on every pickle jar, it chose to to the knowing detriment of its own supplier. It's made-up economics, purely delusional numbers concocted by executives who think wishing makes it so.

Stephen Rifkin, did you pickle suppliers who supplied below cost believe you could make it up on volume?

I don't get it. If the prices that Walmart are offering you to supply a good are unsatisfactory, DONT SUPPLY IT.

No it has to do when Walmart represents 80% of your total sales and then dictates that you can't earn more than a penny a jar. If you were a pickle customer which would you buy - a one gallon jog from Walmart at 1.99 or the more standard 1.5qt jar at the supermarket for 2.99. Clearly it made no sense for the pickle company to do this but their option was to throw away 80% of their sales.

Similarly - that trusty Toro Lawn Mower you own represents 70-75% of the total sales of Toro if you buy it from Walmart. So what Walmart does is insist on engineering changes regardless of the cost of the change to Toro. So what do you do - make the change and eat millions in design changes and retooling or do you tell your 70-75% to go pound sand?

"Oligopoly"! Hahahaha! He said "oligopoly". Hehehe, dat's funny. hehehe.

Breaking the Wal-Mart and Exons will not happen as long as we have the same type of people running our government. I am talking about Democrats as well as Republicans. As long as our government is runed by the corporations the anti-trust laws will exist only on paper and these companies will get bigger and bigger. The middle class in America will get smaller and smaller.