Wal-Mart Chief Writes Off New York
15th August 2011
Wonder what took him so long. The rest of America wrote off New York years (nay, decades) ago.
Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart in cities like New York is led by unions. Organized labor, fearing that the retailer’s low prices and modest wages will undercut unionized stores, have built anti-Wal-Mart alliances with Democratic members of city councils.
Low prices for consumers don’t matter — what matters is high wages for union members. The Democrat party at prayer.
“We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”
Says somebody who’s never had to shop for stuff in New York. If you’re Warren Buffett, and can afford Warren Buffett prices, you’re golden; for anybody else, it’s arm-and-a-leg time. Asshole probably lives in the suburbs on Long Island or Westchester.
But Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.
“Dowdy merchandise”? There’s your ‘objective reporting’ in the New York Times for you.
Wal-Mart, which has nearly 4,000 stores in the United States, has sought to open stores in Rego Park, Queens, and in Staten Island, but both plans fell through in the face of intense union, community and political opposition.
Note that the opposition is not on the part of consumers, but on the part of those who want to keep consumers enslaved to their political rent-seeking. If consumers, especially the poor people who Walmart helps stretch their paychecks, didn’t want Walmart, then they wouldn’t shop there, and the places would go broke; but that never happens. Democrats love democracy except where it counts, at the checkout line.
Despite setbacks in each of these cities, Wal-Mart has had success in urban areas. In Chicago, for example, Wal-Mart opened a store last year that attracted thousands of job applicants and has, Mr. Scott said, performed better than expected.
Gee, I wonder why.
“We don’t like how they do business,” Mr. Ott, the New York union official, said.
And, of course, you must impose that dislike on other people. No wonder people characterize unions as un-American.
August 15th, 2011 at 08:29
Seems like another win-win to me. I don’t want NYC’s corrupt corporatism to be ameliorated by capitalism; they don’t want capitalism. They want poverty and oppression. I want them to be oppressed and poor. It’s win-win!
August 15th, 2011 at 11:37
This opposition to WalMart almost approaches East German paranoia during the Cold War. What they are afraid of is that people will see that they can buy toilet paper cheaper at the non-union store and maybe get the idea that unions are a bad idea.
August 15th, 2011 at 13:57
WalMart has the perfect business plan–make your suppliers dependent on your huge buying power to survive, then strong-arm them into offshoring their operations (it’s been documented–look it up) so that they can meet your unilaterally set low pricing demands. Then when everybody here has been outsourced into low-paying service jobs, they won’t be able to afford shopping anywhere else BUT WalMart.
A perpetual positive feedback loop with WalMart both the cause of lowered living standards and at the same time the only viable alternative for folks once their living standard has collapsed. Shades of the mining company towns and sharecropper arrangements of the mid-19th through mid-20th centuries.
Absolutley brilliant! Who wouldn’t want one in their town, or better yet, on their block?
August 15th, 2011 at 15:16
They wouldn’t allow themselves to be strong-armed if they weren’t making money on the deal. My sympathy for them is … let me check … yup, non-existent.
What are these ‘lowered living standards’ of which you speak? Not Walmart’s customers. Walmart helps stretch the paychecks of poor people across the country. Before Walmart, I couldn’t buy a pair of shoes for $12 that would last a couple of years. Now I can. The rest is all left-wing bloody-mindedness.
August 15th, 2011 at 19:45
I’m just tickled pink for you, as are all the folks who used to work in the shoe factories and now flip burgers and mow lawns. And I certain the 9-year-old Indonesian is just happy as a clam with the $.10 she got for making them. The One-Worlders are proud of you, son.
Oh, BTW, she’s a Muslim; better check for C4 the next time you buy a pair. You know how those people are…
August 15th, 2011 at 20:54
Yes, I’m sure you can speak for all the folks who used to work in the shoe factories, etc., etc. Just a man of the people, that’s you.
August 15th, 2011 at 21:01
If you believe union rhetoric, WalMart has managed to destroy American business and turned the Third World into slaves. Those of you who aren’t Dennis understand that there have been many companies in exactly the same business and all WalMart has done is a better job of distribution. (Sears was doing that in the 1890’s.)
What good does it do to force union wages when no one can afford to buy the goods? That Indonesian kid isn’t poor because of WalMart. Paying him more money won’t fix the corruption and ignorance that plague the area; not paying him may mean he starves.
As for C4, what aisle did you find that in, Dennis?
August 15th, 2011 at 22:32
To Dennis Nagle: Every dollar we send overseas comes back eventually … unless you think foreigners use dollars as wallpaper. In any case, trying to force prices higher is one of the things that prolonged the Depression (starting under Hoover and continuing under Roosevelt).
Back to the actual topic: Walmart is almost as interested in suppressing competition as unions are. One way they might try to suppress competition is to convince potential competitors to stay out of some markets.