Tercel Pr0n! *pics* (Also Wal-Mart wrangling)

[St6fan]

I can't resist Wal-Mart for some things, even though I hate the place and everything it stands for.

Pistol ammo is usually under half-price there and they always have my favourite fishing spoons - the really small Dick Nites and 000 size Needlefish:



Big trout like tiny flashy things.

[takza]

shame on you takza! for all your anti-establishment talk, i can't believe you even set foot in wal-mart. you've seen the video online and surely know the negative impacts wal-mart has worldwide so why wait to see the video in the store before you boycott them?

I buy cheap Chinese stuff...sometimes have no choice. You know the internet...I'd have to see the video in Walmart to believe it. I'm in Walmart maybe 4-5 times a year...about all I can stand.

[HomeSkool]

Man. I'm pretty anti-walmart too. When I can't find it elsewhere sometimes I have no choice. Besides hating what it stands for it also seems like the most stressful place on the planet. Ratz in mazes and usally the lower quality clientell does'nt help. When someone disses walmart I always have to get my 2 cents in as well.... heh

[takza]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iD1AO7o ... re=related

[takza]

Even Hitler has a problem with it....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uau_v2R3 ... re=related

So does this guy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOGUjpEb ... re=related

[Petros]

common you guys, drop the hi-jacked wal-mart rant. If the employees do not like it they are free to quite, if people did not buy the cheap china made stuff they would not exist. So it is not Wal-mart's fault that people like buying cheap china made junk, they are just doing what their customer want. If you do not like it, shop somewhere else.

[takza]

Maybe it isn't just Walmart we're talking about?


http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e25166.htm

[dlb]

If you do not like it, shop somewhere else.

that was exactly my point.

[St6fan]

If the employees do not like it they are free to quit

Not if it's the only employer left in an area. The impact of Wal-Mart is far more reaching than it just closing local business. It funnels cash out of its location, returning about 15C on the dollar back into the local economy. A locally owned and operated business puts about 80C on the dollar back into the local economy, keeping the localised velocity of money high and creating more jobs and, more importantly, more opportunity for independent Americans.

if people did not buy the cheap china made stuff they would not exist.

People have no choice. I will buy an American-made product over a product from anywhere else. Sometimes something I need cannot be bought in the US. The things America doesn't make anymore 46,000 factories closed under Bush, a direct result of Clinton's NAFTA, Bush making it easier to both outsource jobs to the third-world (and withdraw funds from American businesses with his tax-breaks for the wealthy) and Reagan's destruction of America's sensible import tariff structure.

If we repealed NAFTA, taxed outsourced labour properly, made it less attractive to cash out a small/medium business and restored import tariffs to the 1980 rate, America would immediately see a booming economy that benefited everyone.

So it is not Wal-mart's fault that people like buying cheap china made junk, they are just doing what their customer want.

No they don't, they want jobs and American-made products. These basic things have been stripped by presidents making terrible economic blunders.

If you do not like it, shop somewhere else.

See above. There's nowhere locally I can buy many of the lures I fish with because Wal-Mart destroyed most of the local independent tackle shops. Wal-Mart also aggressively stockpiled ammo, meaning that a box of 40S&W costs about $10 there, $25 everywhere else.

[ohcanada_00]

Is the paradox of choice at all entering this argument? I choose to buy the best products or the most inexpensive products or a product from a brand I like/trust/support. Companies like Wal-Mart have the statistics of that choice nailed down to a science and then exploit the numbers to thier advantage in either purchasing, marketing or other areas. I like to buy local as often as possible, more because of the lessened impact on shipping the same bunch of collard greens I could buy from the Puyallup valley versus from Argentina. That doesnt mean though that I as a consumer am willing simply because its locally produced or locally available to pay more or purchase an inferior product. The finest watches are not made in California, they are made in Switzerland. The finest diamonds dont come from Arkansas, they come from Canada. The most premium cameras are Japanese! We cant as a society keep going around saying that Chinese/Asian/third world goods are crappy just because they come from those places then turn around and demand the finest things from the rest of the world. The ultimate sports cars come from Europe so why are they thought of as exclusive and the pinnicle when on the other hand some of the best clothing is made in China and its 'not as good'. Is it because China isnt yet producing our luxury goods so the mundane every day items like undershirts, socks and toys dont rate as highly on the thought process? What if Ferraris were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart in the same limited number, fashion? Would you turn your nose up at a Ferrari because it was made in China? Because it was sold at WalMart?

If I want to buy a Toyota, there are reasons. Good quality, affordable, good features...etc. Making that choice though forfeits my right to complain about parts being made in Japan, China, Mexico etc... Same goes for things like clothing. If I want a pair of sweat pants to go work out in, I dont want to pay the extra price for something 'made in America' and will forfeit my right to complain about quality when my only concern is price. Same thing goes for the WalMart strips the community of jobs and money. Some of the communities yes. No argument. The vast number of other communities though are saved by WalMart on average 200-400 jobs are created with a new WalMart. More jobs are created or extended or saved in the planning, contruction and maintenence of a WalMart property. Can they do better? sure. Can they treat worker better? sure. but are they the monster everyone makes them out to be? I dont think so.

Another argument in the broader range of this topic is that of the perceived quality of American made goods. In some cases, i think its justified but look around and tell me the last time you bought a camera and felt guilty it wasnt made in America. I've had things made in America that were ultra high quality but I've also got my famous Chinesse torque wrench from Harbor Freight that looks like it has been to war several times over and back and still is only 4% off and works like a charm. On the flip side, I had a pair of pants made in the USA that I loved and fell apart after about 3 months, and had a Sony laptop utterly melt down after 4 months of extremely light use due to a production flaw.

I think we as Americans (and Canadians) (and those of us that are dual citizens) need to stop using the argument of inferior quality and loss of jobs and realize that as the world changes, its not going to stop for us/U.S. (<---- ha! clever pun) Yes, manufacturing jobs were lost but how many logistics and shipping and transportation jobs have been created? I used to be in the logistics industry and never once did anyone feel like we had enough people to do the job. We were always hiring! Perhaps some companies no longer make TV's in America because the quality was inferior or the market just didnt want what they had to offer? Maybe we can look even closer and ask if the pervailing attitude of certain Detriot based businesses was more widespread than we thought? The thought of 'people will buy whatever we make just because its made in America' doesnt fly any more. Ask Ford, GM or Chrysler how that worked out for them. I dont think Wal-Mart is the monster, nor the Wal-Mart consumer. They are simply a comapny who found a niche, filled the niche and then from within has continued to expand and fill the niche over and over and over again.

(and by the way, I think this is a great discussion and this is by far the only board I participate on where adult conversations like this can take place. Seems elsewhere this would have degraded by now to a name calling flame fest.)

[ARCHINSTL]

ohcanada_00 - I think you are certainly correct in your last paragraph - our site is certainly different from a lot of other J-tin sites (fortunately). I guess most of us are just realistic about our little cars and that carries over into other discourse.

You do make a good explanation about Walmart without being an apologist for it.

I operated a bicycle store for 30 years and, while the stuff that WalMart carried in that commodity was certainly not my competition, I have always despised the company and, indeed, am proud that I have NEVER entered a W-M store. A qualifier, of course, is that I live in a large metropolitan area and still have many more choices of vendors (whether they carry North American-made products or not) than more rural areas.

In fact, W-M (and Target, et al) products were frequently a boon, as the consumers had to go somewhere to get the items fixed/assembled properly - and that was your friendly local bicycle store. I'd imagine that would be true for other articles as well. Some colleagues wouldn't work on W-M bikes - but I always viewed a buck as a buck... Besides, the owner got to look at a lot of goodies in my store that those mass vendors did not carry - and maybe learn a thing or two about quality and discover that quality need not cost THAT much more than shoddy stuff.

While I despise WalMart, I will grant that it has fantastic inventory, tracking, and stocking systems - probably the best in the world. A daughter works for an international supplier here in STL and W-M is one of her accounts. She has said that some of the facts W-M has presented about her company/its products were not even available from her company itself! Like many vendors, she dreads making the trip to Bentonville. It is so large that IT has the upper hand and could care less about the amount of profit (if any) that a vendor makes, even going so far as to cause a loss on several products so a minuscule profit can be made by the vendor on another item.

While W-M is not alone in causing the acceptance of mediocrity in products, it is certainly the leader. Years ago it would trumpet "Made in the USA" as a main theme. If IT had not gone to Pacific Rim countries for manufacture, I think it unlikely other vendors would have as well.

I despise W-M from a philosophical point - not because it was a competitor. I despise it because in many ways it has hoodwinked the public into thinking it has the lowest prices on everything all of the time - for (allegedly) the same items.
I especially despise WalMart because of the ways it has pitted municipality against municipality to gain its stores and the resulting sales tax. As if that were not enough, it demands - and gets - huge property and infrastructure tax relief from the 'fortunate' city. The schools and police/fire services suffer from not just losing any kind of windfall, but from an actual reduction of funds due to removal from the tax rolls for a period (or forever). It frequently demands it to be able to charge a special additional sales tax in its specific physical location which can then be used by it to pay for its building and lot maintenance.
And - the local merchants sometimes suffer higher taxes and license fees to take up some of the slack.
In essence - the population and other merchants subsidize WalMart.
And in X number of years, when the special incentives end - W-M will move to the town it first left and dangle the carrot in front of it for concessions - and that town will swoon for it, even though it had been bitten some years before. And of course, town #2 will be left with a huge empty lot and building - and NO sales tax (and of course, merchants affected initially by W-M's presence will have moved on/closed, so no taxes are realized from them either). This has happened time and time again in the St. Louis Metropolitan area - and I daresay this scenario plays out nationally (dunno about Canada - maybe its citizens or governments resist special treatment for W-M).

I will credit you with making one of the most logical explanations for W-M I've ever read.
Tom M.

[St6fan]

Is the paradox of choice at all entering this argument? I choose to buy the best products or the most inexpensive products or a product from a brand I like/trust/support. Companies like Wal-Mart have the statistics of that choice nailed down to a science and then exploit the numbers to thier advantage in either purchasing, marketing or other areas. I like to buy local as often as possible, more because of the lessened impact on shipping the same bunch of collard greens I could buy from the Puyallup valley versus from Argentina. That doesnt mean though that I as a consumer am willing simply because its locally produced or locally available to pay more or purchase an inferior product. The finest watches are not made in California, they are made in Switzerland. The finest diamonds dont come from Arkansas, they come from Canada. The most premium cameras are Japanese! We cant as a society keep going around saying that Chinese/Asian/third world goods are crappy just because they come from those places then turn around and demand the finest things from the rest of the world. The ultimate sports cars come from Europe so why are they thought of as exclusive and the pinnicle when on the other hand some of the best clothing is made in China and its 'not as good'. Is it because China isnt yet producing our luxury goods so the mundane every day items like undershirts, socks and toys dont rate as highly on the thought process? What if Ferraris were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart in the same limited number, fashion? Would you turn your nose up at a Ferrari because it was made in China? Because it was sold at WalMart?

That's such a broken argument on so many levels.

Look the purchase of watches, exotic cars, diamonds are of no concern to the wider economy. You might also notice that I never complained about the general quality of Chinese-manufactured items,

Some of the communities yes. No argument. The vast number of other communities though are saved by WalMart on average 200-400 jobs are created with a new WalMart. More jobs are created or extended or saved in the planning, contruction and maintenence of a WalMart property. Can they do better? sure. Can they treat worker better? sure. but are they the monster everyone makes them out to be? I dont think so.

I can't believe you can actually say that and not be joking. Yes, jobs are required by Wal-Mart in order for it to operate. However, study after study has proven that those jobs come at the expense off better paying and generally better jobs inside the same community. You simply cannot argue that it's not better for a town to keep most of its money circulating in its own businesses than it is to have nearly all of it taken out of local circulation. It's basic economics.

The same as if we carry on buying things from China, (or anywhere else) rather than making them in the US, we'll follow a path that ruins the great majority of people in the country. Again, absolutely basic economics.

http://walmartwatch.com/pages/wal_marts ... mmunities/

Another argument in the broader range of this topic is that of the perceived quality of American made goods. In some cases, i think its justified but look around and tell me the last time you bought a camera and felt guilty it wasnt made in America. I've had things made in America that were ultra high quality but I've also got my famous Chinesse torque wrench from Harbor Freight that looks like it has been to war several times over and back and still is only 4% off and works like a charm. On the flip side, I had a pair of pants made in the USA that I loved and fell apart after about 3 months, and had a Sony laptop utterly melt down after 4 months of extremely light use due to a production flaw.

I don't believe it's a qualitative issue as much as it is a socioeconomic issue.

I think we as Americans (and Canadians) (and those of us that are dual citizens) need to stop using the argument of inferior quality and loss of jobs and realize that as the world changes, its not going to stop for us/U.S. (<---- ha! clever pun) Yes, manufacturing jobs were lost but how many logistics and shipping and transportation jobs have been created? I used to be in the logistics industry and never once did anyone feel like we had enough people to do the job. We were always hiring! Perhaps some companies no longer make TV's in America because the quality was inferior or the market just didnt want what they had to offer? Maybe we can look even closer and ask if the pervailing attitude of certain Detriot based businesses was more widespread than we thought? The thought of 'people will buy whatever we make just because its made in America' doesnt fly any more. Ask Ford, GM or Chrysler how that worked out for them. I dont think Wal-Mart is the monster, nor the Wal-Mart consumer. They are simply a comapny who found a niche, filled the niche and then from within has continued to expand and fill the niche over and over and over again.

Another broken argument. If the end result of those freight jobs is selling products from which the profits go offshore, basic economics (sorry to be repetitive) suggests that eventually our money will run out and there will be nobody buying and shipping things. You can't export freight service. And when your tangible exports are massively outweighed by your imports, your entire economy is a ticking time-bomb and can only be destined to fail.

The auto industry is an anomaly pretty much across the board. I could have fixed the American auto-manufacturers' problems in an afternoon ten years ago.

Take a look at any of these graphs:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe ... 0&bih=1024

I don't believe Wal-Mart is the disease, it's just a very noticeable symptom of the disease of trade deficit cause by Reagan, Clinton and Bush, all of whom were corporatist shills.

[Petros]

A lot of common media myths are being shown here, manufacturing jobs in the USA have been about 20 percent of the total jobs (plus or minus about 2 percent) for the last 100 years. this is still true today, we have a higher standard of living, and have for at least 100 years, so all the new-technology jobs are the ones that we do here. Jobs that require skilled and better educated workers (consider that in most 3rd world countries most of the workers can not even read directions) will pay more. Hi skill jobs are actually cheaper and easier to have done here, American workers are more productive and better trained than even most European companies. The old technology jobs are the ones that are exported to low wage countries, those are jobs most do not want anyway. Most of the examples of lost jobs used by union activist and politicians are these obsolete, old technology jobs (like textiles, steel production, etc.). they never cite the high wage specialty (mostly non-union) jobs that are being created everyday. We are the world's largest producers of software, and entertainment, and new technology communicators equipment (like satellites), among others.

Putting heavy import duties on goods made overseas has always resulted in economic disasters, that is one of the issues (because of the same wrong old argument) that made a recession in 1929 turn into the great depression of 1932. Import duties always results in economic slows downs for everyone, it is a mistake. Free trade has historically always resulted in more prosperity for more people everywhere. this is a historical fact. Protectionist laws designed to benefit some special interest group (like unionized laborers in a particular industry) always ends up costing everyone, and is always a bad idea. If that obsolete form of manufacturing can not compete, it needs to modernize or go out of business. Otherwise it drags the whole economy down.

And there would be a lot more manufacturing jobs that stay here if it was not for the very costly tax and regulatory environment here. Our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world right now, many companies have went off shore just to survive. You want to punish them further by slapping even more taxes on these companies, that will result even MORE job losses, and even more bankruptcies. IT is total mindlessness to punish struggling companies by trying to lower their operating costs.

IT is very simple, if you want more jobs here, lower the tax burden on employers. Also eliminate many of the silly and costly regulatory burdens on these companies as well. Many are totally unnecessary and only add costs, and often lower the quality of the products. For example, all of our new appliances we bought to put in our house, costly appliances all made in the USA, have all been totally unreliable, all have been repair under warranty (some twice), and I have replaced one of them already. they are all 5 to 7 years old. I asked one of the repair men why are they making such junk, he said it was government regulations that force the manufactures to reduced energy consumption and used "green" components. It makes them less durable. So some how we are saving the planet by filling the land fill with relatively new appliances because of government regulations. I can not even choose to buy a heavy duty appliance because of these same idiotic (unconstitutional) Federal laws. So i have to hunt down the older and better appliances if I want reliability. what a crock. Or I could buy one made off shore.

Since we only want the new technology (high paying) jobs here, we will always have encourage new innovations, new inventions, and products and services. The more regulations can promote innovation and new inversions, the more new technology jobs well paying jobs we will have. When you punish risky investments with high capital gains taxes, the less investors are willing to invest in new technologies (because it is more risky). Or they take their investment money to countries where they are not punished for making technology investments. So once again this idiotic high tax burden has resulted in both jobs and investment money going off shore. this is how our law makers are looking out for out interests (not!).

You can not find US made goods because our tax and regulatory environment has driven manufacturers out of buisness or to flee off shore. You are a fool if you blame the companies for that, you can not help the US by punishing them further, it will only drive your choices down, drive more companies out of business. This country has wandered a long way from the freedoms and liberties it once enjoyed. In my own small business if I employ just one person I have to post no less than 41 different legal notices (in a "prominent location") telling them their right to minimum wage, freedom from drug testing, etc. etc. And I get fined if I do not have all of them posted. What about my right as person to hire who I want, and pay them what ever we agree on? Instead there are a dozen state mandated "benefits" (ripoffs) that comes out of the money I have to hire someone. And again I get fined if I do not comply with this BS ripoff, fines I do not have any say in. I used to have 8 employees, now I have none (I have one part time bookkeeper who works fee for service). If I ever got large enough to employ more than about 30 people, the the BS gets even larger, and more risky.

I can not even earn money without being subject to fines from my city, county or state, or even federal requirements. And I can tell you that this army of government bureaucratizes that are always pestering me for documents, fees and proof of compliance rarely follow their own rules and have virtually unlimited power to levy fines on me, and steal money out of my own bank account. Just for trying to earn a living. There are theoretical limits to their power, but in practice these are always ignored. Who would call this freedom? IT feels like a gulag state, at any time any petty government busybody can make a determination that I am not in compliance with this requirement or that requirement and use the power of the state to take my income or property without a court order or even a trial.

So you should not be so indignant about companies going off shore, they do it to survive. All these stupid regulations that kill jobs and kill business are laws that the people you all voted into office have passed. You only have to look at yourselves to blame for this mess, and your solution is MORE regulations and MORE government. You are all fools if this is what you want. The government is what created the situation, more of that will make it worse. You will never have liberty in a nation of fools who think more government will make things better. The less government we have, the more liberty we have, and the more prosperous and productive we are as a nation.

[hberdan]

Oh c'mon Petros, tell us what you really think!

[St6fan]

Petros, if I debate you on this, will you still be my car buddy?

Serious question.