Skjellyfetti wrote:Yeah, a lot of Apple products are assembled overseas. So are a lot of Walmart products. Nobody is innocent there.
Apple employs more people than you think. Still not as much as Walmart but way more than the 50k that work in their retail stores. App development is a huge industry now -
estimated to employ 500k people. That number was 0 in 2007 before the iPhone came out.
But, my biggest problem with Walmart isn't the fact that they pay minimum wage.
It's the detrimental effect it has on local businesses - especially in small towns and rural areas.
And it has a hugely postive impact on consumers, esp middle and lower income. If it wasn't for Walmart, you'd be paying more for groceries (on top of the high prices you already pay) and a lot of other things, even if you don't shop at Walmart.
Study by Global insight (granted is 9 years old but probably applies even more so today since Walmart has continued its growth in the last decade):
"...
National Impact Results
Global Insight has found evidence that Wal-Mart has directly raised the economy's
potential to produce by investing in more capital, by using all its factors of production
more efficiently, and by helping suppliers operate more efficiently. The higher supply
potential raises productivity, lowers consumer prices, and increases real consumer
purchasing power.
Previous studies have shown that Wal-Mart has contributed to lower consumer prices.
Global Insight conducted a statistical analysis that supports these findings. We found
that the expansion of Wal-Mart over the 1985-2004 period can be associated with a
cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities
(goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices as measured by the
Consumer Price Index - All Items, which includes both goods and services. These
estimates are in line with other researchers' estimates of Wal-Mart's price effects (see
Tables 19 and 20 in Appendix A.
The 3.1% estimate is a cumulative total over the 1985-2004 period and corresponds to a
0.1-0.2% reduction in the annual inflation rate over this period. These results were
generated through a statistical analysis of the variation in consumer prices across a set
of MSAs over time in relation to changes in Wal-Mart's market penetration and other
(non-Wal-Mart) drivers of price variation. Jerry Hausman of M.I.T. has presented an
analysis that the official CPI actually incorporates a bias that excludes some of Wal-
Mart's direct cost savings.Global Insight's analysis only focused on the CPI "as
measured" and did not add any additional cost savings that might be generated by this
hypothesized measurement bias.
The reduction in the price level due to the presence of Wal-Mart translates directly into
savings for consumers amounting to $263 billion by 2004, which amounts to $895 per
person and $2,329 per household......."
http://www.ihsglobalinsight.com/publicD ... almart.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
And using the bls.gov inflation calculator, that $895 per person and $2,329 per household in 2004 dollars = $1,129 per person and $2,938 per household in 2014 dollars.
The one thing I know, whether we want to admit it or not, is that there are actually a lot of intelligent posters on here that simply disagree. I do this too, but what happens is we tend to pick a side and treat this shit like a football game and stand by our team no matter what, unfortunately losing sight of the bigger picture or similar problems or hypocritical stances that we simply would prefer to ignore.
