Oh, sorry -- that "we" was an editorial sort of we, meaning roughly the majority in our culture.

Bruce, I don't think a year's gone by, since I started paying attention (in 1981), when there wasn't a major complaint in the air that the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. All it ever turned out to be was a sort of paranoid class warfare combined with wonton misuse of statistics.

In our economy, any waste is located and slowly wrung out. Obviously, it's simpler to manage the movement of huge masses of goods than to sprinkle them over hundreds of little ma and pa stores. Take the cost savings of buying and selling 1 times 100,000 of something, instead of 10000 times 10.

Then see an entire middleman - the warehouser - no longer takes a cut. The savings are passed along to the consumer. Watch as every major retail sector slowly converts to this style of mass-merchandising.

Meanwhile, see how the public demands enormous amounts of choice but how ma and pa can't work out more than about 3000 items, with or without automation. Witness how the slow decline in free time means the average person has less time to discern between smaller stores. Consider the lack of afforable advertising space in most major markets. (I considered running radio ads once -- one of the least effective types of ads btw -- but a full campaign in Philly would have cost $30,000, more than I could possibly afford without knowing what kind of sales it would really turn around.) See how real estate gets cheaper when you buy it in bulk.

Walmart doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Yes, I think Sam would be churning in his graves if he knew what has happened to his company. I think if Wal Mart continues to repress their employees, their success can't last long. In the long run, a repressive system will collapse. Remember, your workers are just as important as your customers. But then again, as the richer gets richer and the poor gets poorer, maybe Wal Mart will uphold its power as more people depend on their super cheap prices.

If Walmart were to collapse, what would happen to Asda (the UK-based supermarket chain they own)?

So a big corporation uses its huge size to try to force better deals from its suppliers. Then they take their business elsewhere if that supplier can't meet their needs. That's the American way. As long as they aren't doing anything anticompetitive, there's nothing wrong with that.

If Wal-Mart has so much control over a supplier that losing them as a buyer can cause the supplier to go under, it sounds like the supplier either isn't managing their business very well, or else didn't try hard enough to keep the contract.

Wal-Mart is trying to make more money, and in doing so they are streamlining the entire retail industry. The economies of scale that are benefiting them benefit the consumer as well.

Another thing -- every company has disgruntled employees. You can find anti-McDonald's, anti-Intel, anti-Home Depot sites all over the internet, with claims of institutional disregard for employees, unfair labor practices, etc. etc. I know there are two sides to every story, but I really don't care enough about the issue to research it further. But I'm certainly not gonna believe a company is corrupt from head to toe because some outspoken, pissed-off workers put up a website.

I'm missing the point here. Who is harmed? The insurance company knows the risk and old folks who typically can't get work make a few bucks.

that's why I only work for "Fortune's Best 100 companies to work for "from now.

Ah yes, the Go-Go eighties. Junk bonds, Bahama banks and the rise of what our Spanish freinds would call Viva Yo. Translated to Philadelphian as Hooray for me- Fuck thee.
The robber barons were always ruthless bastards in business but this new breed thats grown out of this attitude in the last 20 years has no parallel. It's become acceptable to destroy the company and stockholders along with employees to achive personal wealth. Even when you already more money than most countries.
Dismantling healthy companies for a quick buck with enormous bonuses and golden parachutes. Exectutive pay rates grown from 40 times the employees rates to 500, 700 even 1000 times.
Incredibly when the company is dead the move on to the next company because that board of directors are hoping they'll make them filthy rich at the expense of the stockholders and employees.

When a supplier sells to 100 accounts they can manage their business. But when one of those accounts keeps getting bigger by forcing the others to close, then they control your company, not you. You survive by their whim. You even invest and expand if they demand it because you have no choice. Sink or swim. Then, as recently happened to Tupperware when the cost of raw materials went up, Walasaurous stops buying cold and you're in a world of hurt.

Griff, you don't see any problem with the one that determines the level and quality of your health care, holding a secret life insurance policy on you? That's why so many states have made it illegal. Oh, and it's on all employees. Sorry if I misled you on that, but it does give them impetus to hire as many oldsters as they can.

Ah, elimination of the irrelevant middleman. Streamlining the process. Good for you, good for me, good for Wal-Mart, good for the country's productivity and GNP. Maybe bad for said middleman in the short term, but he'll find another job.

Why should Joe Consumer have to pay to subsidize an irrelevant, unnecessary position?

The suppliers have to understand the rule changes too. Of course there is danger in selling a huge percentage of your sales to a single customer without a good contract involved.

But when you think about it, all Walmart has done is to speed up the economic process.

The customer doesn't want Tupperware; the customer wants "cheap unbreakable containers to hold their stuff". If the raw materials to produce Tupperware are too expensive, it is of benefit to the whole economy if people stop buying it and start buying cheap unbreakable containers made of something else. Walmart sends that message faster than the consumers by being relentless about its choices.

Also, frankly, Tupperware sucks. It is not air-tight and so the whole "burping" concept is useless marketing fluff. Most stuff that needs to be stored also wants to be air-tight. If people don't prefer the brand maybe something is wrong with the brand.

The only choice the people have is to buy, what Walasaurous chooses to put on the shelf, or not. You know damn well if the customer needs a plastic container and they're at walmart they'll buy whatever's there. They're not going to comparison shop or check the net for a plastic container.
Of course around here, if you're adamant, you can go somewhere else. But across much of America they don't have an alternative, other than driving for hours, because the local businesses have been driven out.
Oh, and MY Tupperware doesn't leak and will hold its "burp" for weeks. Perhaps you got some substandard stuff from Walmart.:p

The "secret" policy had to be underwritten by an insurance company. If that company thinks the oldsters are not getting a reasonable level of health care the rates for the life insurance policy should go up. Were they secret because the states have arcane laws or because Wal Mart is murdering its employees? ;) I don't really want to be the WallyWorld defender here. It sounds like Mart thought they knew more about their employees than the insurance company but its a risk the insurance company wanted to take so...

<drowsy rant>As with any big corp I'm gonna assume they are guilty of playing with the system and owning politicians. Thats the danger of allowing the states to sanction corporations, it stops being about personal responsibility, morality, or fear of doing time, and becomes about limiting liability, writing law useful to the company, screwing the system most efficiently, sopping up tax dollars, and out-litigating any trouble makers. Its a modern take on good old fashioned mercantilism. Haliburton gets to play the East India Company in this administrations production but I'm sure Kerry will have his favored actors as well.</drowsy rant>

They were group term policy deals. Strictly actuarial stuff for the insurance companies. Walasaurus was the only one to benefit or in a position to influence the outcome.:(

I still don't get the big picture... why was this bad again? Because they were betting they could kill the employees?

If the customer cares so little about the brand of plastic container they buy that they'll just go get whatever is at Wal-Mart, then it sounds like Wal-Mart is doing them a favor by finding the most economic alternative, and then getting the best deal they can for that product.

Kinda like the whole generic drug situation. Many patients don't know there are generic equivalents to name-brand drugs, so they pay out the nose for the exact same thing in a different package. If Kupperware is almost as good as the "real" thing, at half the price, please explain to me again how the consumers are harmed.

So what about those two people in that small town, who absolutely demand Tupperware? Before, they could go to Mom 'n' Pop's grocery store and get it, and now they can't because Wal Mart drove them out. The reason that Mom 'n' Pop were driven out is that <I>most</I> people liked Wal Mart better. Wal Mart has no power except what they're given by consumers, conspiracy theories aside. Those consumers decided they didn't want to subsidize those two people who want name-brand Tupperware.

The market has spoken.

Just a short chime-in on the life insurance deal. I believe the big stink about the policies wasn't that they were taken out, and in secret, but that the monies from said policies were given to Wal-Mart, not the families of the deceased.