The Glade 4.0

I'm not buying that Wal Mart or Kohls or other large chains in any way cause a loss of quality. I'm especially not buying on anecdotal evidence that the same show is magically worse if you buy it from Kohl's nor can that be generalized to goods at large.

As for goods from China, I don't think Wal Mart is in any way responsible for China producing shitty goods. I don't think that pressure from Wal Mart is likely to put China (or any buisness based in China) out of buisness.

As for "price-fixing", it's silly to complain that price-fixing keeps prices low. Ok, even if it means lower quality, you get what you pay for. If it were agreeing to keep it high with shitty goods, that might be a problem, but if you want higher-quality goods, that's where the opportunity for new competition comes in. Having a bunch of small buisnesses compete with each other just means higher prices because none of them get as much volume to create economy of scale, and eventually some will go out of buisness anyhow because they can't afford a price war.

As for what's "good for consumers", that's really not an inherent goal of buisness or the market. Consumers have to accept that their interests are not the only driving force of the economy.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You need better sources, Hopwin. Wal-Mart isn't the world's largest company.

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http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ ... full_list/

Right. They're #3.
And the world's biggest companies are...
1 Royal Dutch Shell 458,361 26,277
2 Exxon Mobil 442,851 45,220
3 Wal-Mart Stores 405,607 13,400
4 BP 367,053 21,157
5 Chevron 263,159 23,931
6 Total 234,674 15,500
7 ConocoPhillips 230,764 -16,998
8 ING Group 226,577 -1,067
9 Sinopec 207,814 1,961
10 Toyota Motor 204,352 -4,349

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Holy shitsnacks!

Actually its pretty well documented that some brands have inferior quality product lines which ares specific only to Walmart, they differ from the regular models by a slight change in model #.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Arafys:

Yes, but both of his sources specifically claim Walmart to be larger than Exxon-Mobil, RDS, and a few other companies.

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Factual error noted and acknowledged.

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"Made for Wal-Mart" is not uncommon to find on name brand products at Wal-Mart.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

How do you even define a "company" anyway? Saudi Aramco dwarfs Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon in size and it's not even on the list.

Not a big fan of Wal-Mart myself, but there's a couple of very unfactual statements here.

1) Full-time at Wal-Mart = 34+ hours per week.
2) They don't trick anyone as far as part/full time. It's a seperate job code where it's very transparent.
3) Part-timers are eligible for health insurance through Wal-Mart.

A good friend of mine is on her last year of school for her nursing degree and does Wal-Mart overnight; she had to cut back to 4 days a week. They let her add a half hour per day so that she'd keep at 34 hours and thus maintain full time status.