Wal-Mart to close unionized store in Quebec

[Guest eureka]

The only violence I ever contemplate is to my hair whenever I read one of your senseless missives.

The links are not broken. Just copy in the full addresses. You will find in them the information I gave you - I never give misleading information or make up little mathematical scenarios - and more that I know but simply will not make time to type out.

So try using your head in absorbing the information instead of for unsuccessful sarcasm.

[Hugo]

The only violence I ever contemplate is to my hair whenever I read one of your senseless missives.

No, you want to use violence against Wal-Mart. You think that unions, who use violence as policy, are a good idea, and you want to force Wal-Mart to, for instance, pay higher wages under threat of violence against property (fines) and violence against the person (imprisonment). You only differ in extent, not in principle, from other great socialists such as Stalin and Hitler.

The links are not broken. Just copy in the full addresses.

You were linking to a URL parameter error?

So try using your head in absorbing the information instead of for unsuccessful sarcasm.

Answer my other questions before you try to get back on your high horse.

[Hugo]

Alright, I got your first link working (use the "http" button in future).

Let's go through it:

Rather than simply oppose the new stores, the labor-community coalition demanded that Wal-Mart sign a “community benefits agreement” promising good corporate behavior, including local hiring, living wages, comprehensive health benefits, neutrality toward union organizing, nondiscrimination in employment and avoidance of predatory pricing. But everyone knew Wal-Mart would never agree.

And why should they? It is up to the consumers to ensure those things, not the retailers. If the consumers genuinely want those goods they will pay more for them, and the fact that they don't means that they don't truly value them more than the price upon them. Therefore, what these people mean to do is to force people do what they don't want to.

Do you see what I mean about socialists being all of the same stripe, now?

Their size destroys community character (the National Trust for Historic Preservation recently said superstores threatened the entire state of Vermont); they create traffic problems and urban sprawl, and they leave behind ugly, unused hulks as business strategies shift (371 Wal-Marts currently stand empty).

371 pre-built retail stores where a competitor could move in and avoid the multi-million-dollar cost of building their own store? Yes, shame on Wal-Mart, giving their competition an advantage.

As to creating "traffic problems", I think traffic was worse when all stores were downtown. Wal-Mart locates stores outside inner cities where traffic is worst. And urban sprawl is almost three hundred years old now, I don't think it's Wal-Mart's fault since it began before Sam Walton's great-great-grandparents were born.

The company’s impact reaches far beyond local communities, where more than 220 “site fights” have successfully blocked Wal-Mart... but not slowed the company’s growth to 3,500 stores and 1.2 million employees in the United States alone.

They assume that bigger is worse. They need to demonstrate it since it is not a priori fact.

Wal-Mart’s low-road labor strategy drives countless other companies to cut wages and benefits of both retail and manufacturing workers and to buy more products from lowest-wage producers overseas

Wal-Mart lowers prices? How evil! We must have higher prices so that everybody can be poorer!

And while Wal-Mart competition does lower prices, it also depresses wages and eliminates jobs. One 1999 study reported that 1.5 jobs had been lost for every job that Wal-Mart created. A recent projection by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Urban Economic Development concluded that the proposed West-Side Chicago store likely would yield a net decrease of about 65 jobs after that Wal-Mart opens, as other retailers in the same shopping area lose business.

Rubbish. Wal-Mart leads to lower prices, as the article even admits in the above quote. Unless they believe that people will hoard their saved money under the mattress, this means that the saved opportunity costs from shopping at Wal-Mart can be spent in other areas, thus creating new jobs.

Did they take this into account? I don't think so! It seems to me that they probably have never heard of Frederic Bastiat, let alone read his fallacy of the broken window, which refutes this entire argument. Basically, they assume zero opportunity costs, which is never, ever the case. This amount of economic ignorance is simply staggering.

Let's assume that these people are correct, and each Wal-Mart job costs 1.5 other jobs. We'll take our town of 50,000 people, and say that Wal-Mart employs 50 of them, which means that 75 of them are now unemployed. Let's assume that those 75 people earned $12 per hour. So far the cost to the town is $360,000 per year in these lost wages.

Now let's assume, again, that a person can save $200 per by shopping at Wal-Mart. This means that the town saves $10,000,000 per year. Net economic gain to the town: $9,640,000 per annum. For Wal-Mart to produce a net economic loss means that Wal-Mart must offer potential annual savings of less than $7.20 per year! It doesn't seem likely to me that people would change their shopping habits for such a piddling amount, which almost certainly wouldn't cover the cost of gas used getting to Wal-Mart's out-of-town location.

Wages are low at notoriously anti-union Wal-Mart—averaging about $9 an hour for full-time workers, around $8 for the roughly 45 percent of “associates” working less than 45 weeks a year. But Wal-Mart also helps hold down wages throughout the retail industry, with a few exceptions like the partly-unionized Costco (where wages average $16 an hour) or more heavily unionized grocery stores.

Same thing again. They pretend that opportunity costs don't exist. They also think that people who take jobs at Wal-Mart must be idiots and need to be saved from themselves, without examining the demographic and qualifications of these employees.

A 1999 study for the Orange County Business Council forecast that the entry of grocery supercenters such as Wal-Mart operates could cost southern California $2.8 billion in lost wages and benefits each year as grocers cut the jobs or wages and benefits of a quarter million largely unionized grocery workers.

You can also look at this as $2.8bn (at least) which southern California consumers can spend in other industries which they previously could not.

The corporation is likely to control 35 percent of all U.S. food and drug sales by 2007.

Big deal. As long as it controls less than 100% that doesn't mean anything, and the only people who control 100% of anything are government. I don't see these people complaining about the government. Why are they so self-contradictory?

A recent study by Good Jobs First, an organization that monitors economic development policies, found that state and local governments had given at least $1 billion in subsidies to stores and distribution centers.

And why is this Wal-Mart's fault? The government steals from people and gives it to Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart is to blame for this? By this logic, the purchaser of a stolen television set should go to jail for the crime!

Wal-Mart also pays so little that many of its workers rely on state healthcare subsidies, food stamps, housing vouchers and other public aid. According to a recent study by the University of California at Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, California alone spends $10 billion annually to subsidize Wal-Mart and similar low-wage employers.

Perhaps if the government were not being so generous with other people's money Wal-Mart would be "forced" to pay more. As it is, they feel no need to, and the workers feel no need to demand more, because the government is forcing taxpayers to take up the slack.

Taming the Wal-Mart beast will require a massive, broad-based crusade.

We could have a Five Year Plan! No, wait - a Cultural Revolution! What about a Purge? A Crystallnacht? A Final Solution?

You have to love socialists and their "crusades." Good stuff.

There’s a need for a broader strategy to hold Wal-Mart accountable and to promote the “high road” alternative of skilled, well-paid retail work advocated in Chicago by the nonprofit Center for Labor and Community Research.

Then tell people about it and let them decide. But if they decide against you, don't try and use violence to make them comply anyway!

[Guest eureka]

I see the reducarion may be taking place. Remember, though, it is entirely voluntary on your part. You can stop whenever it hurts.

Tell me how when there is an economic loss of $2.8 billion it means that the $2.8 billion can be spent on other industries.

Tell me how millions of lost jobs, requiring a social cost of $10 billion in California alone, are good for the economy.

Please stop assuming so much inyour fantasy about the savings in cost to the consumer compensting for the loss of jobs, businesses and taxes. I don't think I need to address all the fallacies in your argument over that. Really, Hugo, you and I disagree about almost everything but I do not see you as being unintelligent. You know the absurdities in your calculations.

And all those good American critics are "socialists!" And all socialists are murderers!

[Hugo]

Tell me how when there is an economic loss of $2.8 billion it means that the $2.8 billion can be spent on other industries.

If Wal-Mart is able to cut labour costs by $2.8bn, then that is $2.8bn saved! Labour is not valuable in and of itself, it is actually a negative factor whose reduction is a marked factor in human material progress. It is an incurred cost, an inefficiency, and as we have seen with things like the steam engine, the automobile, and the spinning jenny, less labour creates greater wealth because a given product can be produced at less cost than before. To argue against this is to argue against all technological progress, since if preserving labour is the actual goal we should outlaw cars, trucks, trains and even horses in favour of sherpas. Is that what you advocate?

I didn't think so.

This $2.8bn saving in labour costs is actually a benefit to Southern California. It represents $2.8bn that was previously being used inefficiently (since it was evidently not essential to the production of a given product of a given standard, it must have been inefficient) and which can now be re-allocated to more efficient production of other goods. Economics to study the allocation of finite resources, including labour. The best allocation of these resources is hardly to waste them in unproductive activity.

If consumers save money at Wal-Mart, do you think they spend it elsewhere, or perhaps invest it? The proposed argument assumes that they would take their saved dollar bills and burn them all.

Tell me how millions of lost jobs, requiring a social cost of $10 billion in California alone, are good for the economy.

I already explained this one. "Social costs" have been made an externality for Wal-Mart by the government. The solution here is for government to stop making this an externality, returning the problem to the market where it belongs. The socialist solution to this problem is to heap more problems on top of it by arguing for increased government intervention and increased externalities. For example, state hobbling of Wal-Mart will cause price rises, which will probably create a demand for price fixing. These create even more problems, and the only logical conclusion to this process is a completely centrally planned economy.

Please stop assuming so much inyour fantasy about the savings in cost to the consumer compensting for the loss of jobs, businesses and taxes. I don't think I need to address all the fallacies in your argument over that.

I think you do, since you have not even named these fallacies, let alone defined them. What part of my argument are you disputing? If I've left some factors out of my calculation, by all means, insert them and let's run the figures again! If my figures are wrong, correct me! If my math is wrong, correct me!

But you do none of this, of course.

And all those good American critics are "socialists!" And all socialists are murderers!

Don't bother trying to put words into my mouth. I said that all socialists advocate violence, and these particular socialists are no different.

I see the reducarion may be taking place. Remember, though, it is entirely voluntary on your part. You can stop whenever it hurts.

And you have stopped before you even started. I don't think you read a single one of the articles I referred you to. I did you the courtesy of reading and even critiquing yours since I am always interested in hearing new ideas. Believe me, if I was not, you would not be arguing with me today.

Why are you so afraid to hear new ideas, Eureka?

[August1991]

Tell me how millions of lost jobs, requiring a social cost of $10 billion in California alone, are good for the economy.

eureka, I paid a parking ticket at the Bank of Montreal today. And as I did, I said to the teller: "I rarely come to the branch anymore. I do most of my banking on the Internet."

Then, as I walked out of the bank, I looked at the ATM machines and I thought of you, eureka. (True story.)

ATM machines have eliminated the jobs of tellers.

When we find a better way to do something, overall we're better off. But some people suffer.

Have you seen the movie Quest for Fire? I suggest you do. When humans discovered a way to create fire, the previous "fire-keepers" lost their jobs.

eureka, in defending the fire-keepers, you are thankfully on the wrong side of human history.

[Guest eureka]

August, are you suggesting that to force down wages and not merely in your own "organisation" is a better way? Are you suggesting that to turn the clock back one hundred and fifty years in labour relations and ideas of compensation for labour is a better way?

Where do ATM machines come into that?

Technological progress will, usually, produce a lasting benefir for all and ATM machines may do that. You probably recall as I do, when bank tellers were educated people in monotonous but demanding work. Those people have been freed by technology and are now much more productively engaged. WalMart is only in a minor way, a technoligical innovator.

But thank you for thinking of me!

[August1991]

August, are you suggesting that to force down wages and not merely in your own "organisation" is a better way?

Forcing down wages? What about forcing down wages to zero? That is, what about eliminating the job completely through a technical gizmo?

Is that bad?

[Guest eureka]

Hugo, economic loss is not just Walmart's reduction in labour costs. In the case of the $2.8 billion, it is the loss due to WalMart and all the competitors who have been forced to adopt similar strategies to compete.

Those people do not save $200 by shopping at WalMart. They lost more than 200 dollars - a lot more. And, any WalMart store has a lot more than 50 employees. And, the 50,000 in the community do not all shop at WalMart. And, the tax base is diminished both at a municipal level and at higher levels. And, the reduction in jobs is not replaced either at WalMart or its suppliers. The lost jobs are replaced offshore bringing a further diminishing of taxes and economic activity with a concomitant higher social burden on the lower tax base.

But you know all that, don't you?

I do not argue against technological progress: you do that quite nicely. Your thesis is utterly idiotic. If your "progress" reduces employment without finding replacement work, it reduces wealth for all but owners in the short run and for owners too in the long run. You don't want that, do you?

I didn't think so.

It is not a "socialist" solution to demand government intervention to stop WalMart's piracy. Not anymore than it was to demand that governments protect its merchants and seamen from Blackbeard and his like.

Society as a whole suffers from the WalMart "Effect" and the function of government is to protect society not your mythical market which operates in the way you think it does only in Monopoly games on your dining room table.

The process does not lead to "central planning." It leads to a more equal market.

New ideas, Hugo! Your ideas are as old as the hills and have been eroded into a sticky morass.

[Hugo]

Hugo, economic loss is not just Walmart's reduction in labour costs. In the case of the $2.8 billion, it is the loss due to WalMart and all the competitors who have been forced to adopt similar strategies to compete.

Even better! A total of $2.8bn saved over the whole retail industry.

Those people do not save $200 by shopping at WalMart. They lost more than 200 dollars - a lot more. And, any WalMart store has a lot more than 50 employees. And, the 50,000 in the community do not all shop at WalMart.

Alright, then let's assume Wal-Mart employs 100 people at $9 per hour, rendered 150 $12-per-hour workers permanently unemployed, and that one-quarter of the community saves $200 per year by shopping at Wal-Mart, i.e. the average yearly saving is $50 per person.

Net gain to the town: $700,000 per year. And that's being very generous to you. This study reports that the average household saves about $524 per year on groceries alone by shopping at Wal-Mart, which, assuming an average 3-person household, makes our annual net gain over $6.9m for the town if they only bought groceries at Wal-Mart!

And, the tax base is diminished both at a municipal level and at higher levels.

Government gets to steal less money? My heart bleeds.

And, the reduction in jobs is not replaced either at WalMart or its suppliers. The lost jobs are replaced offshore bringing a further diminishing of taxes and economic activity with a concomitant higher social burden on the lower tax base.

And for every $1 the USA outsources, it gets a $1.14 return, on average. Not much else needs to be said, the empirical evidence demolishes your argument.

I do not argue against technological progress: you do that quite nicely. Your thesis is utterly idiotic. If your "progress" reduces employment without finding replacement work, it reduces wealth for all but owners in the short run and for owners too in the long run.

You are indeed arguing against technological progress. Wal-Mart has found a method - a technology - of offering the same goods and services using less labour, much like James Watt, or James Hargreaves, or Henry Ford did. Like the weavers who attacked Hargreaves, you want to see that progress done away with. As August said, you would want to preserve the jobs of the fire-keepers.

As to preserving employment, let me ask you: if you won $20 million in a lottery tomorrow, would you still work? Because if the answer is "no" (and I guarantee it would be, from almost everybody) you have said that labour is not an end in itself, but just a means to another end, be that wealth, material comfort, happiness, whatever.

However, you have made labour an end unto itself. That's wrong. Labour is a cost you incur while striving for a given end, and if you can achieve the end without incurring that cost, that is better and not worse as you claim.

Now, as to replacement work. When consumers save money they will spend it elsewhere, often creating entirely new industries. Who could have foreseen the modern multi-billion-dollar IT industry forty years ago? Again, your argument assumes that consumers will take their saved dollars and burn them, removing them from the economy. But they don't. I shop at Wal-Mart, and I find a use for all my money, so evidently what I save at Wal-Mart is going somewhere!

It is not a "socialist" solution to demand government intervention to stop WalMart's piracy.

How can free trade be piracy? Do you see Wal-Mart employees with eyepatches and parrots robbing shoppers at gunpoint?

Not anymore than it was to demand that governments protect its merchants and seamen from Blackbeard and his like.

The government is "Blackbeard and his like", Eureka. Modern government is the biggest organized crime racket in history. Its robberies and thefts are on an unimaginable scale. Ralph Goodale has just proposed to steal $196 billion from Canadians this budget year. That's over $6,500 per Canadian citizen. Plus the provincial taxes.

The process does not lead to "central planning."

Yes, it does. Look at the picture a decade ago, and a decade before that, and so on. Each time, government is bigger, there are more regulations, more taxes, more interventionism.

Even the American experiment in minimalist government failed, proving Jefferson's warning that it is the rule for goverment to grow and liberty to shrink.

It leads to a more equal market.

Why is equal better? If it is better, why don't we lobotomize every intelligent person until their IQs fall to the level of the most stupid person in our society?

New ideas, Hugo! Your ideas are as old as the hills and have been eroded into a sticky morass.

My economic ideas date back to the 19th Century (although they are still being revised to this day), although their roots trace back to Cicero and Aristotle.

Your ideas are also as old as the hills, being traceable back through Marx all the way to Plato. So let's not start arguing about whose ideas are older. My point was that my ideas are clearly new to you, and you are afraid of reading about them, even though I have taken your ideas by the horns!

[Guest eureka]

I think, Hugo, that you have already been lobotomized. You blunder from absurdity to absurdity. You get your ideas from Cicero and Aristotle and I get mine from Plaro. If yours are influenced by Aristotle, then where did Alexander get in there? Oh, I forgot Marx in mine. Shall we extend this to a discussion of Marxism and also how your ideas have necessaritly led to totalitarianism?

I really don't want to do that since this is about WalMart.

You still seem unable to enter the factors of loss into your little calculations of a community. Most of what is in the piece that you must have looked at to criticize is not accounted for in your loss/profit calculation. And, the return of 1.14 for 1 is a patent absurdity. When millions of jobs are lost and the losers must be supported then there is a drain not a return. The return is in those nations to which the jobs and production have been removed.

You seem to be quite immune to the reality that, even if your silly calculation of $6.9 million to a typical town were justifiable, there is a larger loss in ales to the competitors who have gone or are diminished.

Come back to me after you have read your arithmetic primer!

[Hugo]

You get your ideas from Cicero and Aristotle and I get mine from Plaro. If yours are influenced by Aristotle, then where did Alexander get in there? Oh, I forgot Marx in mine. Shall we extend this to a discussion of Marxism and also how your ideas have necessaritly led to totalitarianism?

Good attempt at distraction, but I notice that you still refuse to read the articles I linked to. Why are you so afraid of new ideas? Answer the question and stop flailing around with irrelevancies.

Debating Marx or Cicero would indeed be largely irrelevant, but it was you who originally brought up the question of the age and pedigree of the ideas we are discussing, not I.

You still seem unable to enter the factors of loss into your little calculations of a community. Most of what is in the piece that you must have looked at to criticize is not accounted for in your loss/profit calculation.

What is lost, then, and how much is it worth? I see a lot of whining about traffic congestion or urban sprawl, but it is incredibly vague and nobody has tried to put any kind of economic cost on it, let alone bothered to find out how much can be attributed to Wal-Mart.

As regards the "social costs", as I am saying for the third time now, this problem is created by government externalizing a market factor. The solution is less government intervention, not more! If government stopped externalizing labour costs for Wal-Mart, the wages would go up, entirely due to the market. This is what happens when you get government to defeat market outcomes, but you won't learn this lesson.

And, the return of 1.14 for 1 is a patent absurdity.

You can read the report here. It is written by Martin Baily, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics and a Senior Advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), and Diana Farrell, Director, MGI.

You can read the same thing from Bruce Bartlett, Senior Fellow at the National Institute of Policy Analysis, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, former Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy Development at the White House, former Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C, former Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. His article is here.

You can read the same thing again from Daniel Drezner, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, right here.

Do you have a refutation of any of these articles?

The return is in those nations to which the jobs and production have been removed.

Did you know that the USA is a net recipient of outsourcing? Far more jobs are outsourced to the USA than are outsourced from the USA. If outsourcing was outlawed, far more jobs would be lost than gained. Trade and job protectionism is a beggar-thy-neighbour game and, as the Great Depression illustrated so neatly, it's a game that everybody must lose. Protective tarriffs in that era slashed international trade to a fraction of what it had been before and did massive damage to the economies of all participants.

You seem to be quite immune to the reality that, even if your silly calculation of $6.9 million to a typical town were justifiable, there is a larger loss in ales to the competitors who have gone or are diminished.

We already took that into account by having Wal-Mart render 150 people (the employees and owners of the businesses that lost sales to Wal-Mart) unemployed. Talking of net sales, this will increase, not decrease, since Wal-Mart has lowered prices and raised real income thus causing demand to increase.

Come back to me after you have read your arithmetic primer!

It's a real pity that you don't put as much effort into your arguments as you do into your insults.

[Guest eureka]

This is really hopeless, Hugo.

It is not only retail jobs that are lost. It is suppliers and manufacturers in even greater numbers. They are gone; caput. They are in China and a few other slave labour states. They are lost to America.

What an absurdity to say that they are replaced by 1.14 jobs. You know about the multiplier in jobs and money. A new job creates more than one and a lost job loses more than one. This is my refutation of your sources. It needs no mor than to point to the real effect.

BTW, I was not attempting to distract: I simply found your attempt to distract amusing. My reference to Alexander was to wonder at Aristotle's influence on you when his more direct influence on Alexander did not induce libertarian thoughts. You brought up the question, not I.

You still refuse to factor in the lost taxes and reduced purchasing power in your ideal community. Sprawl, urban or otherwise; lost businesses. Lost businesses in other communities that were engaged in the manufaturing of the commodities no longer produced domestically. These all come into it. The effect on your mythical community does not calculate the effect on other communities which is a shared cost over all communities. The effect on your community alone is negative if all the factors are considerd . They are exacerbated by the general malaise.

You can say as many times as you wish that it is the fault of government for "externalizing." That doesn't make it so. That is only your own penchant for thinking only in terms of your anarchism. The real world does not accept that thinking which is as dead as the proverbial dodo in rational thought now.

It is not outsourcing that must be outlawed, Hugo. It is the conditions surrounding outsourcing. It is the wage slave mentality of the employers who misuse it. Outsourcing, in itself, can be a vety good economic tool. It is not so when it is for the sole purpose of driving down costs through the labour component: continuing distress in the new sources and creating distress in the old.

The Great Depression was not so simply caused as you seem to assume. Previous attempts at this kind of "outsourcing" were a significant factor in weakening the economies of the industrialized nations while doing very little for the underveloped countries - indeed, weakening them also but that is a complex of production relationships.

Globalization is a very good thing, Hugo. It is a good thing when it is done with the benefit of all in mind and not the profit of a few. Globalization as it was practised not so long before the Depression and as it is being practised now, is not a good. It is the kind of beggar the rest piracy that I speak of.

Unfortunately, I know that I am going to have to read more about the "Free Market" in reply: the "Free Market" that even Adam Smith abhored. Free for whom?

[August1991]

It is not only retail jobs that are lost. It is suppliers and manufacturers in even greater numbers. They are gone; caput. They are in China and a few other slave labour states. They are lost to America.

That is a good thing, eureka.

In a sense, a machine eliminates jobs by willing to work for a lower salary. That's what ATMs do.

This is in no way different from foreign trade and WalMart.

In both cases, we find a better way to do something and in the process, some people lose their jobs. That's good because those unemployed people then go on to do something else and the pie gets bigger. (BTW, that's called economic growth and without it, we'd still be living in caves.)

eureka, if you are against WalMart and trade with China, then you must be even more strongly against new technology. New technology is the real job killer.

[Hugo]

It is not only retail jobs that are lost. It is suppliers and manufacturers in even greater numbers. They are gone; caput. They are in China and a few other slave labour states. They are lost to America.

Your argument assumes that the sole goal of production is production itself, otherwise the elimination of jobs would not be a concern at all. Is this what you are saying - that the only goal of an economy is to produce things?

What an absurdity to say that they are replaced by 1.14 jobs. You know about the multiplier in jobs and money. A new job creates more than one and a lost job loses more than one.

Demonstrate that, please. I have cited the works of four very intelligent and highly qualified minds who disagree with you, so evidently this is not a priori fact at all and you must prove it.

This is my refutation of your sources.

I am 99% certain you did not even read them. You refuse to read anything that challenges your prejudices.

Need I point out again that I not only read but actually critiqued everything you gave me?

BTW, I was not attempting to distract: I simply found your attempt to distract amusing.

This was what you said before I even brought it up:

Your ideas are as old as the hills and have been eroded into a sticky morass.

Why would you make a contention and then accuse me of distraction when I reply to it? That makes absolutely no sense. If you feel it is a distraction, don't make the point!

If you disagree, quote me bringing up the history of these ideas before you said that.

You still refuse to factor in the lost taxes and reduced purchasing power in your ideal community.

Purchasing power is increased. How can lower prices mean decreased purchasing power? This is completely and utterly illogical.

Sprawl, urban or otherwise; lost businesses. Lost businesses in other communities that were engaged in the manufaturing of the commodities no longer produced domestically. These all come into it.

And yet you can neither quantify nor identify these problems.

You can say as many times as you wish that it is the fault of government for "externalizing." That doesn't make it so.

No, the truth of it makes it so. Wal-Mart does not force anybody to subsidize another, that is solely performed by government. If government were to stop, Wal-Mart would not be able to take over.

The Great Depression was not so simply caused as you seem to assume.

No, it also has to do with excessive inflation and deficit spending, with the failure to fix currencies to the gold standard at market rates, with excessive regulation and interventionism and so forth.

Make no mistake, though, there is not one cause of the Depression which cannot be traced back to government intervention.

Previous attempts at this kind of "outsourcing" were a significant factor in weakening the economies of the industrialized nations while doing very little for the underveloped countries - indeed, weakening them also but that is a complex of production relationships.

What attempts? Give an example.

Globalization is a very good thing, Hugo. It is a good thing when it is done with the benefit of all in mind and not the profit of a few.

You do not understand how trade works. The iron law of trade is that it pays a cost to receive a greater benefit. The cost is concentrated in a few, the benefit is diffused throughout the economy. Globalisation is always about the benefit of the many at the expense of the few and cannot be any other way.

Unfortunately, I know that I am going to have to read more about the "Free Market" in reply: the "Free Market" that even Adam Smith abhored.

Adam Smith had some important contributions but also made some crucial mistakes, such as his theory of value. Don't take what he says to heart too much. He's a classical economist.

eureka, if you are against WalMart and trade with China, then you must be even more strongly against new technology. New technology is the real job killer.

Why don't you answer August?

More to the point, why don't you answer me? Have you read my links yet? If not, why not?

[Renegade]

New developments on this story:

Jobless Wal-Mart employees get day in Supreme Court

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear appeals from a number of workers who lost their jobs when Wal-mart Canada closed its unionized store in Saguenay, Que., three years ago.

As is usual, the court gave no reasons for its decision to consider the two related cases, and no date has been set for the hearing.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union won certification at the Wal Mart outlet in September, 2004, but could not reach a contract agreement with the retail giant.

The union asked to take the matter to arbitration, but Wal-Mart then announced it was closing the store.

It will be interesting to see how the SCC rules in this case. Personally, I can't see any justification for the SCC to rule against Walmart in this case.

[Peter F]

New developments on this story:

Jobless Wal-Mart employees get day in Supreme Court

It will be interesting to see how the SCC rules in this case. Personally, I can't see any justification for the SCC to rule against Walmart in this case.

I can see justification.

Supposedly in this country, workers have the freedom to be unionized or not. Wich sortof implies that workers who choose union representation should not be punished for that choice.

Walmart opened a store wich subsequently went through the certification process and once they got union certification the store was closed.

Is it possible that Walmart closed the store because the employees exercised thier right of union representation?

Is Walmart saying, in effect, if employees get union representation we will fire them? Is that legal?

Do workers have a right of unionizing or not?

[GostHacked]

Walmart had and has such an impact over the Canadian economy it is rediculous. I work for the largest grocer in Canada. Loblaws and other companies much smaller have had to adjust their business practices to compete with Walmart.

Walmart gets everything on consignment, this is how they sell without needing to really invest in the product. Loblaws cannot operate that way. Food does not work on consignment. It is because of Walmart you now see our Superstores all over Canada. Not only did stores get bigger, our stores are selling more different products than just food. Diversity was needed to keep growing. Many of our stores and warehouses are unionized, so right there it indicated Loblaws will have a tougher time with getting the revenue.

Walmart is unique among retailers. They led the way in many devestating business practices. I will not shop at Walmart.

[Argus]

Wal-Mart - third rate goods with fourth rate service in ugly, crowded stores. White trash central. Who shops in these holes anyway? Occasionally I peer in as I wander by to see if anyone is having sex with their sisters in the aisle.

Want to let someone know how little you think of them? Buy them a present at Wal-Mart.

Bleh. Anyone who considers this a better way of doing things needs a bit of a rethink.

[M.Dancer]

I can see justification.

Supposedly in this country, workers have the freedom to be unionized or not. Wich sortof implies that workers who choose union representation should not be punished for that choice.

Walmart opened a store wich subsequently went through the certification process and once they got union certification the store was closed.

Is it possible that Walmart closed the store because the employees exercised thier right of union representation?

Is Walmart saying, in effect, if employees get union representation we will fire them? Is that legal?

Do workers have a right of unionizing or not?

So business owners don't have the right to close their operations? Owners have the right to open, close, shelve, start new operations and do what ever they decide is in the best interests of the business regardless of whether an operation's workers have unionized or not.

[M.Dancer]

.

Walmart gets everything on consignment, this is how they sell without needing to really invest in the product.

This of course is patently false. My good friend is a product manager for a medi import company and one of her major clients is Walmart. While they make her jump through hoops they pay FOB net 30 just the same as her other clients, The Bay, Zellers, Canadian Tire....

Now that is not to say they don't get some products on consignment, just the same as Zellers, the Bay etc etc....untested products from unknown companies are often launched on consignment....but if you think P&G, Lever sell that way , you are wrong.

[madmax]

Wal-Mart - third rate goods with fourth rate service in ugly, crowded stores. White trash central. Who shops in these holes anyway? Occasionally I peer in as I wander by to see if anyone is having sex with their sisters in the aisle.

Want to let someone know how little you think of them? Buy them a present at Wal-Mart.

Bleh. Anyone who considers this a better way of doing things needs a bit of a rethink.

Don't hold back Argus. Tell us what you really think.

Based on your post, I am willing to bet you would be happy if the UFCW organized all the Walmarts, if only to see Walmart close every store.

[Peter F]

So business owners don't have the right to close their operations? Owners have the right to open, close, shelve, start new operations and do what ever they decide is in the best interests of the business regardless of whether an operation's workers have unionized or not.

Thats right, they do. As you say "regardless of whether an operation's workers have unionized or not".

But perhaps Walmart have not behaved "regardless" of unionization of thier store - but closed it because of unionization. "Pour encourager les autres" so to speak.

Is the right of association a meaningful right or an empty one?

[M.Dancer]

Is the right of association a meaningful right or an empty one?

Both. They have the right to unionise and Walmart has the right not to do business with them. They can't lock them out but they can close the shop.

[Peter F]

Both. They have the right to unionise and Walmart has the right not to do business with them. They can't lock them out but they can close the shop.

So if workers unionize they can lose thier jobs - not because the store becomes unprofitable - but because they unionized. Is that how you see this?