Wal-Mart, Wall Street and W: Three W's That Sank the American Economy and Boosted China

I've never set foot in a Wal-mart store and never will. There's no shame in shopping at resale stores--where I work, in Ann Arbor, MI, shopping the thrifts has even evolved a certain chic, and women proudly brag about the bargains they've found.

With respect to food, growing your own and learning to can/preserve your crops saves lots and encourages better nutritional choices. Same goes for cooking from scratch with whole ingredients. Skip the convenience foods. When you have time, cook meals in larger batches and set aside/freeze smaller portions for use later when time is scarce. Get a good vegetarian cookbook and learn how to reduce your meat consumption in delicious, healthful ways. Carpooling saves commuting costs as well as wear-and-tear on your vehicle. You can probably think of many other ways to cut your expenses.

With any luck, current economic conditions will foster new habits of self-sufficiency and thrift such that corporate parasites like Wal-mart will need to look elsewhere to sell their wares.

Renard

Now it wants to set up Hispanic Wal-Mart's to profiteer on illegal immigration which just like China has worked to destroy the USA middle class. They want to keep the Hispanics downtrodden and shopping Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart's tactic is to reverse our historic assimilation which encouraged all ethnicities to learn to speak English. It allows them and their children to become successful Americans instead of Irish or Germans or Mexicans living in the USA.

Of course W's impact goes without saying and Jon Stewart addressed Wall Street shenanigans.

Thank you to the poster below that brought us back to the words of MLK. It is the beacon in the dark.

We poor working slobs should be HAPPY this is happening in America. If we have to live on the edge, from paycheck to paycheck with no security whatsoever, why shouldn't THEY? The ones who live on passive income from our labor?

Why should WE live in debt? Why can't we own anything outright? Our homes? Our cars? Our clothing? Everything folks have is on credit.

We need to reject this capitalist system and replace it with Social Democracy... FROM THE GRASS ROOTS UP. Do business with each other only and cut out the pigs (actually octopus) at the top.

Let THEM eat cake.

This is possible how you ask?

Grow your own gardens, trade with your neighbors, raise chickens and rabbits for eggs and meat. Learn to cook. Learn to sew. Repair your clothing and replace it at the Charity shops. Share with your neighbors. Save every dime you can.

Every dime you DON'T SPEND sends them up the wall. It destroys the dreams of the RICH AND FAMOUS, not ours. Aren't you tired of being their slave?

The roots of the problem are in manufacturing and corporate finance. Whether at Walmart or not, it's very hard to buy something made in the USA, even when buying traditional American brands, whose merchandise is now made in China to save on labor. The labor they saved on has been laid off, forcing those people to always look for the lowest prices.

US companies often don't keep up with the latest technology, making their products not competitive -- if a company making such a product even exists in the US anymore. Walmart and other stores responds to what the consumer wants and what is available from manufacturers; it as much the result of the problem with the system as the cause. Some manufacturers can be forced by the system and trade policies to move production overseas and produce cheaper products which can be sold.

The root probem is the failure to properly manage globalization, short term accounting, and greed in those who want to make huge profits at the expense of the nation and US industry. When there is a race to the bottom, the bottom is where the country ends up.

My mother lives in the heart of Wal Mart country. Rogers, Arkansas to be exact, the town where Sam Walton opened his first Wal Mart. But let me tell you how this fine, outstanding American company treated a 75-year-old woman just try to do her job.

My mom, even though she way past retirement age, just can't stay retired. So a few years ago she took a part-time job, just to fill in her weekends, with an independently owned company as one of those little-old-ladies who hands out food samples at the neighborhood grocery store, K-Mart, Wal Mart, what have you.

Anyway, one Saturday she was scheduled to set up a demonstration at her local mega-Wal Mart in Rogers. As she tells me, nothing seemed out of the ordinary that morning: She set up her demonstration and began handing out whatever sample of whatever processed food product the company she worked for was promoting.

But after she was there for about 10 to 15 minutes the store manager, security guard in tow, confronted her, informed her she was trespassing. Now, my mother is all of five feet tall, if that, and 98 pounds soaking wet, so a security guard and a store manager seem like overkill to me, nevertheless they escorted her out of the building like a common thief.

When she got home she called her immediate supervisor, told him what happened and he said he's call Wal Mart and straighten things out.

When her supervisor called back, again according to her, he said Wal Mart management decided the day before, Friday, to use their own employees to hand out food samples--it was cheaper--and the services of the company my mom worked for were no longer needed! And that was news to him!

And I've heard other stories like this about Wal Mart. Not only does this company treat its employees like dirt, it does the same to independent domestic vendors.

I wonder how long it will be until Wal Mart says Chinese labor's too expensive for it to maintain its low-low prices?

... Martin Luther King gave the night before he was assassinated should be heard again today. [mp3] In that speech, King expressed awareness that the economy was rigged, and that if blacks were to achieve any kind of prosperity, they would have to create their own economy and cut as many ties as possible to the rest of the economy. "Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal," he advised. "Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America....collectively we are richer than [most of] the nations in the world...That's power right there, if we know how to pool it.

"I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown....You have six or seven black insurance companies here in the city of Memphis. Take out your insurance there....We begin the process of building a greater economic base."

You know what happened next. Now you know why.

I notice that the immigrant community in our nation is already following King's advice. We have many street vendors who have already established a steady customer base despite governmental opposition. Much of their product line comes from their home countries, bearing brand names these immigrants already know. It will be these communities which will thrive despite the coming economic collapse of the nation. The rest of us have already forgotten how this system works, and will have to relearn the process while already at a disadvantage.

The bottom rail is now on top, and all those white supremacists in America already don't like what they see. They will try to destroy all they cannot control for their sole benefit. If they succeed, the American Experiment is ended unsuccessfully.

...Mr. Karlin repeated what I've been preaching for last 15 years. Just call me prophet...

BTW, last time I set my foot at walmart, it was in summer 1999. The same year I returned my Sam's club card. No, I am not stinking rich. But after all, if you look hard enough, lots of stores have prices BELOW walmart - the problem is, you have to look for them, and they're not all under one roof. American sheeple should get off their overstuffed butts, and start shopping around, avoiding walmart like a disease.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any street demonstrations against Wall St. bailout either. I was willing, I was ready, and if I did go out, I would have been arrested all by my lonesome. Nobody else was interested in DOING something, aside from sitting at home and bitching.

I buy made in China only if I absolutely cannot do without it, whatever it is. I always look at the labels, looking for manufacturer's info. If it is made in China, most of the time it goes back on the shelf. To avoid made in China I shop second hand stores, garage sales etc. More often than not, one can find a real treasure, a quality made stuff (albeit used) for hardly any money at all.

It makes life more interesting.

... and by that of course, one means the entire Military/Industrial cancer.

Look for another big W in 'Weather' [aka climate collapse] becoming even larger than all of them in the near future, regardless of whatever feeble attempts we now make to mitigate the irreversable damage already done.