Nayas Admits Errors, Promises to Be Honest Going Forward, Switches to Verizon

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You of course can (and do) claim a lot of things that aren't true.

Try Google rather than just speculating (as usual).

You are of course inclined to think the worst of Walmart no matter what the facts.

And other retailers, because foreign producers are often much more efficient than our own.

As I've noted before, most of those employees are happy to have their jobs. Were it not for Walmart, they would probably be making less, or even out of work entirely. That Walmart is able to do business with least skilled labor is a good thing, not a bad thing.

How can it be "sad" that the majority of us are getting what we want?

That gobbledegook is nonsense.

People are in fact asking for what they want, not what someone else (like you, or like your Evil Empire) thinks they should want.

Presumably because you have no real case to make.

Personal opinion noted ( not that we really needed to be reminded :).

My wager is that you're wrong, that they do it because it's simply good business, but it's irrelevant in any event -- what they do cannot be discounted that way.

The fact remains that most mom and pop shops do little or nothing for their local communities, no matter how you feel about them.

Condemning them for providing jobs makes no sense at all.

That's just a (nasty) allegation -- there's no proof that they cause overall downgrading of the local retail "ecosystem" -- if anything, just the opposite, given the efficiency and draw they provide to their communities.

Rarely provide in actuality, and probably not enough to offset the harm of their inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

"When you haven't got evidence, attack character."

Great. If they have a sufficient value proposition, then they will survive and prosper. It's all about them, not their competition.

My favorite coffee place is prospering in the face of tough competition from Starbucks and Peets.

Those that are good will do well regardless. Those that aren't will fail. That's how the market works.

For the other side of the story, see .

About Us americansforwalmart.org is the founding and sole campaign of Americans for Free Enterprise Inc., a Georgia-based non-profit corporation dedicated to defending our nation's economic freedom and prosperity.

We believe the current controversy over Wal-Mart is fundamentally about freedom. We believe Americans should be free to shop where they want to shop -- and served as they want to be served -- without being criticized by a small but vocal minority of critics.

We're focusing on Wal-Mart because critics of free enterprise have singled out this company as emblematic of everything they believe is wrong with America and our free market system. We believe there is precious little wrong with our nation, our economic system, or our most successful retailer.

Americans for Free Enterprise and americansforwalmart.org are wholly independent from Wal-Mart. We are supported by families and individuals who share our passion for economic freedom -- and for defending that freedom wherever it is threatened.

The founder and executive director of americansforwalmart.org is an enthusiastic fan of the free market and a proud Wal-Mart customer. Luke Boggs is a professional writer and a contributor to publications including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Not an issue here. I went to Home Depot and bought a large supply of tin foil ;-)

And if Cole Hardware was reasonably convenient for me, I'd likely be a frequent customer. But I'm in Fremont and it isn't.

As it happens, there is a somewhat similar store in our city -- Dale Hardware. Sadly it's at the wrong end of town for me, whereas HD is 0.5 miles and Lowes is 1 mile.

Having said that, I do have my own list of small local businesses that I really like. And I'll frequently support them even when they're a little more costly or less convenient than alternatives. But they offer me something that I value (even if it's really quite intangible).

For the latest definition of the word cynical, I just heard a piece on the radio today where Walmart defends their practice of not providing health benefits, preferring instead to refer staff to public services -- they say they're providing a valuable serice, because otherwise, where would their people get information on the availability of valuable services which they (the employees) already support throughtheir taxes.

I nearly hurled on the car seat when I heard that.

As Malcolm pointed out, one of the problems in the case of the "big box" stores vs local merchants is that Americans for the last 10 years or so have had a love-affair with big-box retailers and their style of retailing. (while I personally despise the format, lots of others apparently think it's great) So that's a big part of *that* problem. I also think that consumers are just being sucked into the following things, causing them to ignore the balancing negative impacts on the community:

1) LOTS of advertising 2) Lots of items under one roof ("convenience" to some, annoyance in many cases to people like me) 3) Cheaper prices on certain things, but then again a lot of the items are cheaper-made as well.

It was never suggested so simplistically by me that "national chains are being bad". I have said that some of them are notorious for poor treatment and compensation of employees, near-illegal union- busting, and the mere presence of their style of giganto-store causing many local businesses great hardship simply because they skim off the bread-and-butter business (ie lightbulbs) and leave the low-profit difficult business for the others. As Malcolm also pointed out, some of the blame must also go to the municipalities that give them the green light to open stores in their communities, often due to expensive lobbyists wining/dining them and/or holding out certain carrots that local businesses can't offer because quite simply they'd have to band 100 of them together to be able to begin to compete with that kind of economic clout.

I for one (and I realize I'm probably in the minority on this) would rather pay a premium for local, professional, knowledgeable service, than make impulse purchases at a no-service warehouse store that (for example) has nothing but "super mega jumbo" sizes of everything, where you can't even call them on the telephone, where you have to wait in line forever to checkout no matter when you go, where in some cases you cannot even use a credit card, etc etc. I DON'T CARE what the return policy is if I'm going to have to waste hours of my time with the wrong item, making special trips back to return things and waiting in a long time each time, bla bla bla. That so many people seem to have no problem with all of this is rather amazing to me, actually.

That's actually the exception in places I'm talking about, rather than the rule. I don't know of any local hardware stores that pay commissions or spiffs to clerks, and even if they did, their people are obviously not allowing it to affect their quality of service in a noticeable way.

Whereas you go to places like Costco and their cellular booths are, guess what - staffed by salespeople on commission. One of the few places where this doesn't appear to be the case are the office supply chains. The clerks are generally much more available than the ones at Frys/HomeDepot/WalMart/CompUSA, yet they are hardly "in your face". They will put as much energy (generally) helping you with a 99 cent item as for a $300 item. That's a pretty good benchmark as far as I'm concerned, and when you combine that with superior professional knowledge, courtesy, less time wasted in the store itself, etc etc, the experience is way better. Better yet, try going to Pastime hardware in El Cerrito sometime, or Cole Hardware in SF, and see if you don't agree with me that you can go in, get what you want, and get out of there far faster and with the correct merchandise (assuming you needed guidance on what to buy) far faster than one of the "big box" stores.

If that is truly the case, then you are not seeing a perspective that is applicable to the average shopper. But even so, when I go to places like Walmart or Costco or Home Depot, it is OFTEN a challenge for me to even 1) find a clerk to ask a question of, and 2) get useful information from them, even if it is just a trivial question like "do you carry X", or "where is Y located". It actually is rather mind-boggling to me just how pathetic those places can be in that respect.

I am not so much "blaming competitors" as much as pointing out a retail trend which citizens and municipalities have encouraged, I believe short-sightedly. Added to that, many of the organizations which have thrived in that environment have proven themselves to be less-than-stellar contributors to the communities in which they do business.

One striking example here in SF are Walgreens and Rite-Aid. Both are very large national chains, but the differences between the 2 are striking. Rite-Aid is the "new entrant" - having bought out and taken over Thrifty/Payless, they inherited some local locations and built some others. Their employees tend to be unavailable, disinterested, unhappy, un-helpful in general. Their merchandise, (much like 7-11) is cookie-cutter: it is virtually the same wherever you go. Their merchandising is, to say the least, uninspired. I encountered one of my favorite examples one day at a Rite-Aid on Market St. in SF: in the midst of a long rainy spell which is common in SF in spring (actual hot days, if they do appear, tend to arrive in Sept-Oct timeframe, and June is widely known as the foggiest month of the year), Rite-Aid had a display of nothing but

*summer beachwear* in their window - sunglasses, beach towels, sunscreen. I mean, fer chrissakes, at the beach in SF even in the middle of summer if you go wading in the ocean you can look forward to often numbingly cold water and a stiff freezing wind!

By contrast and in general, Walgreens clerks are happy and helpful, the product mix is obviously tailored to the locale, the merchandising is more inspired, they carry more specialty items in certain areas depending on the market, the store designs tend to be more pleasant, etc etc. The moral of the story is, just because you are a national chain doesn't mean that you have to be a junkpile. They're still not a local business, but if I'm going to patronize a chain-store, clearly some have a much bigger clue than others. When you're talking about something like HD, and competitors have become increasingly non-existent, we end up being stuck with that low level of service and then we all lose.

Both Walmart and Home Depot have been involved in labor disputes that have cost many millions of dollars to settle. There is also (another) class-action now being filed against Walmart for gender discrimination which will be the largest class-action in history if it goes forward. Walmart is crying about it because they think the numbers in the class are "unconstitutionally large" ... lol! (I think that's the risk you take when you become the largest employer in the world, especially when you infamously compensate your employees more poorly than most of your competitors)

Microsoft made a shrewd business-decision to pitch a non-existent OS to IBM (claiming it was much farther along than it was) for a product line that ended up becoming dominant in an industry that grew by leaps and bounds and took Microsoft along with it.

Whether that was luck or "genius" (probably some of both, but IBM themselves did not even remotely predict the degree of success their IBM PC would eventually have at that point), what we do know is that that very lucrative exclusive contract (not altogether different in function from the regulated monopoly once granted to AT&T) helped to put them in a very powerful position in the market, from which they parlayed that power into one market segment and industry after another. Surely Microsoft can take a lot of credit, but they also had that all-important "exclusive contract", combined with being in the right place at the right time, and a good bit of luck. (Had Digital Research not blown off IBM when they were approached first to produce an OS for IBM's PC, most of us may never have even known the name Microsoft today.)

Not really. There really is only one viable OS competitor to Windows, and it's a competitor mostly because it is "free", and because of the fact that it's an all or nothing philosophical battle between "commercial software" and "open source software". MacOS these days remains trivial, Microsoft threw Apple a life- preserver back in 1997 in the form of a $150 million dollar investment in order to keep the company afloat, lest their imminent demise only magnify the impression that Microsoft had killed-off their last remaining remotely-viable commercial competitor. There really is no real commercial OS competitor to Microsoft these days, especially for the x86 platform, period. (please don't try to say Solaris)

Microsoft Windows is certainly not the only product that could have achieved "economy of scale". To Microsoft it is both their meal ticket and their technological ball-and-chain. To abandon the platform in a clean technological shift breaking backwards compatibilty would be economic suicide for them, because their success has hinged largely on the captive Windows customer-base. (largely facilitated by that original exclusive IBM DOS contract)

Yet there is much evidence that their fear of doing just this necessary step to evolve the OS into what it should be has resulted in an antiquated platform which is, after 8 years, evolving more-or-less to something which should rightly be described as "Windows 2000 v3". (and it will be with us for at least another few more years hence)

Not really. A highly-developed country like the USA is never going to be able to compete on a labor-cost basis with undeveloped countries. (otherwise known as the codeword "productivity" in corporate circles, since you get an immediate "productivity gain" when you fire employees) There's only so much "magic" you can perform in the form of things like manufacturing automation - and you still need to find jobs for all those assembly-line workers after you eliminate their jobs.

And that's what the game is coming down to right now, whether it's near minimum-wage employees at Walmart, or highly-paid software engineers. US businesses have a bad habit of looking for simple, short-term solutions to their competitive problems, and trying to compete head-on with the labor costs in undeveloped countries that have a fraction of our infrastructural costs is pretty ridiculous, unless the intent is to either lower our living standard to their level, or put millions of Americans out of work. (one of the high ironies of the business world is that the US Federal Reserve Bank - as they are now doing - threatens to raise interest rates if "unemployment becomes too low". Given those kinds of pressures, it's not too surprising that the management of large corporations aren't particularly worried about the unemployment numbers going up when they outsource all the jobs, because high interest rates cost them money)

Maybe. Or maybe we're closer than you're willing to admit.

Inflammatory language?? I have no doubt that if companies like Walmart didn't feel they had a need to engage in such "community activities", they wouldn't. IE your way of putting it: "good for their business". But that hardly translates to philanthropy.

(Bill Gates finally figured out that it wasn't looking too good for him to be the stingiest billionaire in the world (he was getting a lot of bad press on that), so he formed a foundation and started giving money away. I sincerely doubt he had a dream one day about "doing good for the world", and 10 years after becoming a billionaire, decided to give a little away. Lots of his charity was earmarked toward educational institutions in the form of pushing Microsoft-centered technology, which is not exactly a purely philanthropic endeavor either.)

The first item on the list is "armed forces". I wonder how many San Franciscans see that as a priority, and I wonder how many local businesses like to put that out there as one of their primary community contributions. Walmart would have a tough time convincing people here that their values are in sync with community values.

The second item on the list is basically "sales tax revenues". To me, that's like a car manufacturer telling you that one of the most important features of their cars is that they "move". Given that any business that sells merchandise is legally bound to collect sales-taxes, I have to say it's pretty funny to tout such things as a unique corporate "benefit". People in a community are going to spend their money one way or another, and if it's not going to be at Walmart it's going to be somewhere else. Either way, the taxes are collected.

Yeah, they give to charities, and yeah the amount is in the millions. But they are also the biggest employer in the entire world, the largest company (by sales) in the USA, etc. Are we supposed to be impressed by this, from a company that does $320 BILLION in annual sales?

See my other followup. It is estimated that it cost the state of California $86 Million last year to subsidize health care for Walmart employees who did not have adequate health-care coverage, as just one example. Another study showed that most big-box retailers return only about 1/3 the percentage of profits to the local community compared to local businesses. There are countless such examples.

This is not "charity". It is a well-known fact that the USA has been replacing relatively skilled jobs with less-skilled jobs as the country moves towards a "service economy". One way or another, citizens are going to have to find well-paying jobs. It used to be an axiom in the USA that you could support a family on the income from a manufacturing- sector job, but this is not really the case any longer. You cannot keep demoting blue-collar Americans from real paying work to minimum-wage level work without coming up with some viable alternatives for them. And expecting everyone to be a biotech chemist ain't gonna fly either. (besides, companies may well start outsourcing those positions pretty soon too - and so it goes)

There are many things that are quite a bit more desirable for working citizens in France than here (which I argue contributes to a higher quality of life in many ways), but it's no surprise that most Americans don't see beyond their nose on stuff like that (see .sig), and trying to make giant social value comparisons based on simplistic statistics such as unemployment percentages alone is really pretty bizarre.

(Since I suspect you had that French unemployment number handy because of all the recent news about protests over there, I would like to note that the French government was just forced to back- down from their attempt to impose - with little input from citizens - a law which undermined some of the historical protection from employment exploitation that most European countries are way ahead of the US on. There we have an example of a country where the _citizens_ still have the power to tell the government they think they have gone too far and are exploiting workers. Americans by contrast have become so inoculated by corporate brainwashing, conspicuous consumption and the increasing debt to feed it, along with the puritan-inspired guilt that they should all be working harder, that we have all become complacent. About the only sector showing signs of life are the largely hispanic immigrants - not born here in many cases - upset by congressional attempts to criminalize one of the most important "productive" sectors of the US community. It's a rare sight these days.)

Europe is also undergoing much the same pressures that the US is in terms of trying to compete with cheap offshore labor and so on, but they start out from a very different philosophy of business than here, and as such, even if they agree to massive concessions, they will still not reach the level of stinginess and blame-the-worker tensions that US workers are subjected to.

Actually I would argue that in many ways, the public's acclimatization towards chain fast-food stores (for example) pushes them towards not being willing to experiment with a local alternative, even though in many cases (and I remember many) the local alternative is FAR superior to the chain.

The other shame here is that people become even more socially isolated, because they can travel somewhere and essentially not experience the local community at all. Driving across the country stopping only to dine at national fast-food chains is a really bizarre, almost scary subversion of the whole point of traveling in the first place: experiencing the local community!

There are many other examples that aren't going to hit a "top

10 list". I worked in retail over 10 years, I know the difference between a store that just takes your money and one that really tries to do a better job, including working with the community. Even if it means answering the phone and giving someone patient help that's impossible to get from a big national chain location, it contributes to a better-quality experience. It generates true loyalty and long-term relationships, it makes people feel like they are *home* in their community, not just another cookie-cutter consumer statistic with a credit-card.

Do you reject the notion that some businesses will do things that *cost* them money, strictly because it's "good to do"? It sure sounds like it. You surely won't see too many national chains doing that (some exceptions come to mind, ie Toms of Maine, Newman's Own and the old Ben and Jerrys), but you'd see a decent percentage of local businesses doing so, I'd wager.

Since you have given very little in quantifiable examples yourself, then I would say that's not a particularly stinging criticism. We're all basing our beliefs on our experiences and knowledge and memory. (In the case of HD in SF, they had been trying to get a store into the city for ~10 years, and one of the key areas where they were "weaseling" were the jobs they promised they would provide to the community. Originally the wording they used was that they would make a "good faith effort" to ensure those jobs went to local youths, but when pressed on the issue they demurred. Finally since they were continuing to get lots of resistance from citizens and the board of supes, one of the various concessions they ended up making was making an actual committment of number of jobs earmarked for local residents.)

We could be equally efficient if we just dumped all the laws having to do with slave labor, child labor and environmental protection.

From your ongoing diatribes, I'm assuming you consider all of these to be unwarranted, unwise and counterproductive government meddling and interference in the operation of the free market.

I'm sure you would be happier if all labor laws were abolished and the worthy masters of the universe were given a free hand to pursue efficiency with no regulation or oversight at all.

As always, one actual counter-example to a JN universal statement doesn't a contradiction make. Pity.

Translation -- Busted again.

I read that the top selling item at Sharper Image is the Ionic Breeze, which has been shown to have no effect on air purification. Of course that may be why their sales are in the tank.

The promise of more sales tax revenue is a powerful lure to cities, and Home Depot is probably second only to a car dealership in terms of sales tax generation, since all of Home Depot's products are taxable.

Sometimes it can get ridiculous. In my city, the local mall is undergoing renovation. The owners claimed that increases in the cost of steel and concrete require that they be permitted to build condominiums in one of the mall's parking lots, in order to generate cash for the mall renovation. The city agreed to rezone the parking lot to high-density residential, though it's probably going to a referendum where the rezoning will be overturned. Why did the city agree to rezone a parking lot to high-density residential? Because the mall owners claim that the renovated mall will bring in another $3 million dollars in revenue per year, even though they have no new stores that have said that they will lease space.

Pretty bizarre sweeping generalization.. based on what? That I disagree with you? I've shopped there, I've bought things there, I've read about their business history and goings-on, I've seen analysis and studies. Ergo, I think I've got a pretty decent collection of facts from which to formulate an opinion. You're welcome to disagree (based on your own personal biases and experiences) but to make such a blanket generalization simply because I disagree with your analysis is not warranted, and borderline Ad Hominem.

Of course you think that. :-)

I did not "condemn them for providing jobs", Mr. Spinmeister/ Snipmeister. See various documented items below.

There are actually studies which codify this, and I have cited a number of them below.

Sounds like you had your mind made-up before considering other points of view on this. Pity.

Oh, the owner of CH was one of the most vocal opponents of the HD store. But their side lost. He has no illusions about the impact it will have on his business, because the community impact of these types of stores has been documented many times.

[...]

I must admit that I always love an organization which starts right out and "proclaims" that there is "virtually nothing wrong with..." things as specific as.. "our nation"! LOL! Credibility --> poof!

Luke Boggs seems to get published and/or quoted in mostly right-wing publications. One of his bylines from "Human Events Online - The National Conservative Weekly":

"Mr. Boggs is a corporate speechwriter and freelance columnist in Atlanta, Ga. He worked for Zell Miller's Republican challenger in the 1994 Georgia governor's race."

"Corporate speechwriter, eh?

Speaking of "the other side", read about the various labor actions, store closings, how they squeeze suppliers, etc:

Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, who made two trips to China in the last year (2004), says: "Wal-Mart has really been at the forefront in driving down wages and working conditions. They're not only exporting the Wal-Mart name and the corporation and the identity. They're also exporting that way of doing business."

And he's talking about driving down wages and working-conditions in places like *China* and *Bangladesh*!

This document describes the large subsidies that Walmart often gets from local government. Do you think that the small local businesses are getting these same subsidies?

FastCompany asks: Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

From a study done by the University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Urban Economic Development, 3/2004, pertaining to a proposed Chicago-area Walmart store:

The analysis that follows suggests that after accounting for jobs and income lost due to competition, the overall employment and income impact of the new Wal-Mart store will be negative. In other words, despite creating approximately 250 jobs, Wal-Mart?s net impact will be a reduction in local jobs and income. On the other hand, the City of Chicago can expect a slight net increase in tax revenue from the new store. The analysis begins with a description of the model used and the assumptions made to predict the economic impact of the proposed Wal-Mart store.

The study that I referenced earlier that showed that (as of August 2004), it was estimated that the cost to California taxpayers incurred by California Walmart employees usage of "safety net" programs such as subsidized health-care due to inadequate company health insurance and low wages, was about $86 Million per year. Other key findings:

- The families of Wal-Mart employees in California utilize an estimated 40 percent more in taxpayer-funded health care than the average for families of all large retail employees.

- The families of Wal-Mart employees use an estimated 38 percent more in other (non-health care) public assistance programs (such as food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing) than the average for families of all large retail employees.

- If other large California retailers adopted Wal-Mart's wage and benefits standards, it would cost taxpayers an additional $410 million a year in public assistance to employees.

More analysis - including quotations from internal Wal-Mart memos that acknowledge their higher-than-usual percentage of employees on public assistance, even stating at one point that certain public assistance programs were "so lucrative it's hard to be competitive". The largest employer in the country decrying the "competition" of welfare?!?

More info:

If you are spending the time to read through some of the novels I recently posted in this thread (wouldn't blame you if you weren't) you would see that nowadays Wal-Mart actually views some forms of *welfare* as *labor competition*...! Talk about one to top them all..

You must be a disciple of Nietzsche!

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What, did you take a poll? How many is "many"?

Yeah, having almost any kind of job is better than living in a van down by the river (if your fortunate enough to even have a van).

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A simplistic view to say the least.

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So it's the fault of smaller retailers that they cannot get the price concessions from manufacturers?

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You should see the movie "Network". Maybe you'll learn something.

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EXACTLY!

--------------------- Some news clips I ran across..............

"Cathedral City, California also reported losses due to its tax deal with Wal-Mart. In 1995, the city gave Wal-Mart a tax subsidy worth $1.8 million to build two stores. Last year, after the city collected its first check for $800,000 from the stores' sales taxes (charged to its customers, not out of Wal-Mart's pocket), the store closed down."

"After losing a cool million just on the up-front deal and millions more over the decade of not paying taxes, Wal-Mart moved the stores to a neighboring city, where, no doubt, they stoked the flames of competition and collected a similar tax break. Meanwhile Cathedral City's encounter with Wal-Mart has put the city in hock for $3 million altogether."

---------- "...large numbers of Wal-Mart workers earn at or less than the federal poverty level and fewer than half actually get Wal-Mart's meager health benefits..."

---------- Wal-Mart dangled the prospect of low prices and new jobs for Cathedral City residents. Pettis says of the 220 jobs Wal-Mart promised, about

180 materialized-and most were part time.

---------- "Supporters also call the new measure a useful planning tool to ensure responsible development, acknowledging that each community has different issues at stake - and it offers a means, too, of protecting cities' own long-term investments in their economic development."

"If all goes well, it may be a way to combat outcomes like that in northern California's Cathedral City, where a new Wal-Mart Supercenter put several local retailers out of business - and then, when it moved to a new location, left the city with a vastly depleted retail tax base."

I imagine the residents of Cathedral City just "Love" Wal-Mart!

I like the complaints from Wall Street analysts that Costco is being too generous in terms of wages and benefits, they cite Wal-Mart as an example to be followed.

It takes a CEO with some morals to not engage in a race to the bottom in terms of how to treat your employees.

I think you'll see more states passing laws regarding large corporations being required to pay a certain percentage of their payroll in health care coverage, or put money into a fund for state health programs. As it stands now, Wal-Mart is a net loss in terms of financial benefits, since the sales tax revenue doesn't cover the cost of welfare for their employees.

Philip J. Koenig wrote: > If you are spending the time to read through some of the

Work 8 hours standing on your feet doing the same thing over and over again at the check line versus staying at home watching Oprah and still make the same kind of money.

Sounds like a no brainer for some people.

Went right over your head, sorry should have been more detailed. What I mean is by shopping with local merchants, they take the profits put them in the local bank, spend the money in town supporting other local merchants and local workers and on and on. Walmart every night sucks all the sales from the previous day to Arkansas. Nothing illegal or immoral about it, but very different then with the local store owner.

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE] :

Health Care Coverage

Fact: Our health care plan insures full-time and part-time associates once eligible. Wal-Mart provides insurance to more than 1 million people and offers up to 18 different plans. Coverage is available for as little as $11 per month for individuals and 30 cents per day for children - no matter how many children an associate has.

Unlike many plans, after the first year, the Wal-Mart medical plan has no lifetime maximum for most expenses, protecting our associates against catastrophic loss and financial ruin.

Associates enrolled in the Associates? Medical Plan also have access to world class health care at the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University Hospital, Johns Hopkins University Hospital and many other health care facilities, all without insurance approval.

Regardless, people are of course free to choose some other employer if they can get a better offer than Walmart, and can increase their chances by upgrading their skills. For many the alternatives to Walmart are no better, or even not having a job at all.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

Welfare does indeed disrupt the labor market, as both studies and welfare reform have shown.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

Godwin's Law concessions from manufacturers?

It's simply a fact of business that small operations generally don't have the economy of scale to match large operations, so choosing to compete that way would indeed be a "fault" (dumb idea). Likewise, if you step in front of a fast moving train you're probably going to die, and I don't see that as the fault of either the train or of physics. Whose fault do you think that is?