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Amazon and Walmart Are In An All-Out Price War That Is Terrifying Big Brands (recode.net)
gollum123 quotes a report from Recode: Last month, Walmart gathered some of America's biggest household brands near its Arkansas headquarters for a tough talk. For years, Walmart had dominated the retail landscape on the back of its "Everyday Low Price" guarantee. Walmart wants to have the lowest price on 80 percent of its sales, according to a presentation the company made at the summit, which Recode reviewed. To accomplish that, the brands that sell their goods through Walmart would have to cut their wholesale prices or make other cost adjustments to shave at least 15 percent off. In some cases, vendors say they would lose money on each sale if they met Walmart's demands. Brands that agree to play ball with Walmart could expect better distribution and more strategic help from the giant retailer. And to those that didn't? Walmart said it would limit their distribution and create its own branded products to directly challenge its own suppliers. But this time around, Walmart's renewed focus on its "Everyday Low Price" promise coincides with Amazon's increased aggressiveness in its own pricing of the packaged goods that are found on supermarket shelves and are core to Walmart's success, industry executives and consultants say. The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between Walmart and Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.
But much more of Amazon (avg maybe $100/month), I hope Wal-Mart at least holds its own. Because Amazon is destroying brick-and-mortar retail across America, which in turn is doing a bad number on both suburban malls and town centers.
During a boom when nearly everybody has a good job, there's plenty of business for both online and brick-and-mortar retailers. But when times are hard, people are counting dollars and Amazon wins that game. Not because they're always cheaper, but because they're cheaper in tactical ways - for example, they drove Tower Records, HMV, and Virgin Records out of business by discounting most pop music titles by 35 percent, only to jack prices back up to near-list after their competitors went out of business. Amazon is ruthless. They're not the consumers' friend, and they're certainly not the workers' friend. But they are very good.
Walmart. If the companies cannot undercut themselves then Walmart won't stock their products.
Guess which department doesn't create value when it comes to making products for the shelf? IT.
The second is ultra expensive health insurance making robots cheaper
http://saveie6.com/
I used to be willing to shop at Walmart, but with their race to the bottom it's become an unbearable place to shop. Their rock-bottom pricing gospel has always attracted people who can't afford to pay anything more than that. Of course this includes many decent people of modest means and quite a few thoroughly unpleasant people. It used to work out well enough when the stores were reasonably staffed and they could keep things in check, but now it seems most of them are being run by a skeleton crew and the damages of the resulting circus are being considered just a cost of doing business. With Amazon, you never have to see these people and suffer the misery of queuing for 15 minutes just to check out. With Walmart, the experience is horrible. So if I'm looking to cheap-out on regular supplies, you can bet I'm going with Amazon. That's why I think they will win out in the end.
Speaking as as big Amazon spender who does practically no shopping at Wal-Mart brick and mortar or online, the very best thing that can happen is that Wal-Mart will hold their own in this war. One thing we know is that when faced with a virtual monopoly in any field or domain, large corporations will screw over the consumer again and again.
Walmart is now offering free 2 day shipping (above a certain threshold)
Returns are free in store (no shipping).
Now what's the difference?
If only we could get this kind of competitive pressure to occur in the healthcare market!
At what point does this race to the bottom on prices result in nothing but garbage products?
I think that point came somewhere in the 1990s.
Today, I go to WalMart to buy disposables, like diapers, sun-screen, branded anti-freeze and motor oil - things that alternate suppliers have jacked up to 2.5x the cost for the same commodity. It's remarkable how much other crap they sell, and how little of it we ever buy.
We'll lose money with every sale, but we'll make it up in volume.
I would think that if the big brands are being shut out, isn't this a great opportunity for small, regionally manufactured technology products to be brought in and promoted?
It would seem that company with a very low-overhead and just in time manufacturing (ordering components when the PO comes in and shipping within the 30-60 days of the contract) could be a viable business. It would be tough for Apple, Sony, and other big brands, but if these companies handle the logistics as well as the promotion, I would think high quality, low cost products which are built in the US (which would make Mr. Trump happy) could be the result of working with them.
Anybody have any numbers at Amazon and Walmart that I can call?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
If you even bothered to read the summary, the branded products at Walmart have been given "other cost adjustments". That means they are lower quality products compared to the "same" model at other stores. Walmart is a disease.
Are you willing to risk identity theft with a strip to a store?
Target, Home Depot, TJMaxx/Marshalls, not to mention all the skimmer incidents...they were all huge and pulled from the store info not the online.
Yeah, it sounds easier to hack into the online storefront but there are usually just a couple of servers and all run by relatively well paid and mostly competent IT staff.
There are thousands of branch stores, all setup by competent people but not really well maintained and any trouble shooting is done by either some manager who is fairly clueless about the technology that makes it all work or the young kid in the store who plays the most video games.
Personally, I'll take SSL/TLS over a $15/hour on premise retail employee for security for large chain stores.
A race to the bottom in prices is ... bad for product quality.
You get what you pay for. I noticed that Target has quietly replaced many national brands with their own cheaper brands. They're not as good. I find myself buying more products from Kroger, Costco, and Amazon as a result. If Wal-Mart follows the same path, I imagine that they'll turn off many middle-class shoppers who shop there today.
I know some people who work for Amazon. And they have very little to say about it that's not good. It's a challenging company and you have to constantly be learning their new technologies. But my friends there love it, and are treated very well.
Long time ago, I had a few friends who worked for Walmart. Working there is a dead-end job with no real prospects. The company treated them like crap and they hated every minute.
Easy enough for me to pick which one I'd prefer to win.
Imagine all the people...
Odds are that a long time ago the friends you had were Walmart sales associates, and today your friends are Amazon techies. Just for fun compare the same kind of job levels and you'll be surprised how Walmart employees at the bottom of the pyramid have more opportunities than those at Amazon.
Almost all top managers at Walmart HQ started in Walmart stores. How many top managers at Amazon started in the fulfillment centers?
lucm, indeed.
Look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Home depot. Then look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Walmart. Then tell me their is 'no evidence'.
Walmart is notorious for squeezing so hard, they get a shitty, brand destroying version to sell.
Then you get 'brand destroying' enterprises like MTD mowers and you get a true shitstorm of junk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
At what point does this race to the bottom on prices result in nothing but garbage products?
I think that point came somewhere in the 1990s.
Today, I go to WalMart to buy disposables, like diapers, sun-screen, branded anti-freeze and motor oil - things that alternate suppliers have jacked up to 2.5x the cost for the same commodity. It's remarkable how much other crap they sell, and how little of it we ever buy.
This... I used to buy my oil there but they dropped the higher end Pennzoil Ultra Platinum from the shelves at my local store. Now I buy it from Amazon. But, yeah, windshield washer fluid, sunscreen, Blu-ray movies (when I don't order ahead on Amazon), travel size shaving cream/shampoo (when I travel), printer paper, and the odd time when I need a new air mattress. That's about it.
The war ended, as the last two humans on Earth, locked in desperate combat, struggled to slay the other, but each succumbed to exhaustion at the same moment.
Peace, then reigned, and goodwill was triumphant.
Like this?
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Rubbermaid-Commercial-Products-Brute-10-Qt-Red-Bucket-FG296300RED/202649172
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rubbermaid-Professional-Plus-Round-Brute-Bucket/16622204
Sure, same basic product, but different part numbers; the labeling and packaging is probably visibly different in the stores as well. BTW you can get the crappy model on amazon too.
The walmart one is good enough for 99.9% of us, and anyone who needs a better bucket probably knows not to cheap out in the first place. Some of us don't want to spend double for something made for more heavy duty jobs than we'll ever need it for. And no one's forcing Rubbermaid to manufacture it or do business with walmart at all if it's unprofitable or "destroying their brand". If it were they could sell it under a different brand name altogether.
Not every product from every brand needs to be "premium"; not every car Chevy sells is a Camero.
You rich people talking about 'ethics' and how employees are being mistreated make me laugh. Only rich people care about such things. The poor people that actually have to work at such shit jobs will be happy that they can buy products cheaply no matter where they come from because otherwise they could not buy them at all. It is amusing to see the astroturfers going to war with each other here. Does anyone else really care about this? It's a good thing and lets hope it continues without either side winning. That would be a win for everyone else. A race to the bottom is really a race to the top for everyone else.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
We're not all 1%ers that can afford to spend ten times the cost of a bottle of water on shipping said bottle of water. Not to mention the environmental costs of shipping individual products to individual homes vise a truck load of the one product to a single location.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Walmart is notorious for squeezing vendors to provide goods for a lower price, or more product for the same price.
This is why you can walk down almost any aisle in Walmart, if you can find one which has actually been stocked, and see what seems like every third product sporting "BONUS! NOW 30% MORE FREE!" stickers and packaging. This is not being done because the vendor is thrilled to give away 30% more for free, but because Walmart has threatened them to either provide a better value in terms of more product for the same price OR pay Walmart to carry the product OR provide some sort of deal on making a private label version of something Walmart needs, OR if none of those work, Walmart will evict them from the shelves.
If you are a vendor who derives a huge percentage of sales from Walmart, you have to think hard whether it makes sense to throw away all those sales or do as Walmart demands and come up with a bonus package or provide some other service Walmart wants.
In most cases, Walmart demands sales results from everybody. If you are taking up shelf space, and even if your company paid for it, you better sell product, or Walmart WILL kick you. They may also demand that jobbers be sent in to do stocking, but this mainly happens to soft drink and snack chips. In my area, Utz bought shelf space but the stuff didn't sell and they didn't want to do "Bonus! 90MILLION OUNCES FREE!" bullshit and eventually Walmart kicked them out.
Which kind of sucks since the stores are supplied by 1099 contractor route salespeople who can't offer better deals to Walmart because those decisions are made at a much higher level, and then they get kicked out and lose what sales they were making there.
Sig for hire.
Now tha tyou posted those two Rubbermaid buckets, it's easy to see where they cheaped out. Check the strengthener collar at the top, and at the places where the handle is attached. These are "small things", but if you're familiar how plastic reacts to continuous bending, it's obvious the lack of these is going to shorten the lifespan of the bucket significantly. Perhpas not significantly enough for you, but at some point, you will have to spend money on another similar bucket earlier if you buy the Walmart edition.
If you fill up that Walmart edition bucket and lift it up, the weight of the contents is going to make bucket collapse inwards from the points where the handles are attached. This will eventually cause the bucket to fail earlier. The materials are probably cheaper too, which contribute toward early failure even more.
Walmart 2-day shipping is a lie. There. That is the difference.
When you order from Amazon with a two-day delivery, you can reasonably expect Amazon will hit that goal, pretty much all the time. It's extremely dependable.
When you do an equivalent order from Walmart, well... they may not even ship it for two days, and it may ship ground from halfway across the country, and may show up for in-store pickup in five or seven days.
I ordered a TV with two-day delivery a couple summers ago, so not during Christmas or any rush period. Silly me, I assumed two-day meant two-day. In reality, they shipped it via Fedex Ground from over 1000 miles away, and it took five whole days, not two, and then I had to stand in line in the store for 45 minutes behind people doing returns and buying Western Union and money orders, just to claim my item, which they initially could not find. Mind you, it was a 40" TV so not small or anything. It turned out they had been using my TV box to prop open the door to the pick-up area.
More recently, I tried to order a smartphone for in-store pick-up. It was supposed to be at the store and I could just walk in and get it, but I did pick-up just to save time. Paid for it online before the store opened for the day and waited for the email to come pick it up. Never got the email. So I called them. And well, they never bothered to go fulfil the online orders that morning and the stock they had, including the one I had already paid for, got sold when the doors opened and regular customers came in. And now they were out of stock and sucks to be me. Nobody in the store gave a shit. Online is a whole other department and nobody in the store felt any responsibility to do anything for them. At best, they worried only about their own store stuff, not online orders, so nobody even cared that they had failed to secure an item that had been paid for. Oh well.
This happens so often, the online side instantly refunded the money the moment I asked. That's the only thing that actually happened as promised. Refunds.
tl;dr Walmart has grand goals to be like Amazon but they drop the ball in making it happen. Their ads promise what they can't deliver, so no, it's not equivalent
at all.
Sig for hire.
Well yeah, but it's still only a cleaning bucket. You don't expect it to last forever, and you'll probably replace it with something new and shiny long before it outright falls apart anyway. Who cares if the math shows you'll save 50 cents a year on average over the next decade using the good, expensive one instead of repeatedly buying new crappy ones?
That's not to say there aren't areas where quality is important for everyone and buying shitty walmart junk is a terrible, possibly even dangerous idea (many types of sports equipment for instance, bikes especially), but in many cases cheap, generic crap is perfectly serviceable. In fact sometimes the walmart stuff is still more than we really need, which is why dollar stores are a thing.
Look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Home depot. Then look at a rubbermaid mop bucket at Walmart. Then tell me their is 'no evidence'.
As long as the Walmart bucket is "good enough", I prefer to save money.
If I need a bucket to take on an expedition up the Amazon I might pay extra.
But to clean my kitchen floor, the Walmart bucket will suffice.
It turns out that the vast majority of consumers prioritize cost over quality. This is not irrational and those that have a need can usually do otherwise.
For example, Harbor Freight tools are generally crap. But they are cheap. Professionals who use them ten hours a day, six days a week are not going to buy them unless they work in an environment where the tools "disappear" after a couple months (both because they fail more often and because they, generally, are not as easy to do quality work with quickly) -- these professionals buy professional tools. The rest of us are well served by buying a $19.99 "sawzall". If it ends up that we wear it out in five years or less than ten hours of "run-time", we will buy another OR a better brand -- but, in reality, most of these tools end up working for the rest of your life (at least as a backup to the better one you bought because you decided you wanted the cool features or smooth operation of the better one). Sometimes, the best tool from 40 years ago is inferior to the Harbor Freight tool (due to technology advances) and it is better to just buy new tools incorporating recent technology every ten years than using "great" tools that are thirty years old but can't hold a candle to the cheap tools available now.
If you build a new server/desktop, do you buy the "highest quality" bits? If you're wealthy, doing so makes sense for bragging rights. However, for most engineers who are going to toss it in three to four years, it really doesn't matter if the case is plastic or thick steel or flimsy steel -- the resale value of the case is essentially zero and all three types of cases work fine if you don't have a full grown pet gorilla in your household who likes to play "toss the computer against the wall" (in which case, the quality of the case is likely the least of your worries as the gorilla grows up).
Most of the durable goods bought at Walmart (tools, kitchen utensils, small kitchen appliances etc) probably end up being used a few times over the owner's lifetime. If they are going to bake all day, every day, they will buy a professional mixer instead of the deprecated KitchenAid crap that Target or Kohls or Walmart sells. Generally, why pay for "quality" -- do you really care if the kitchen gadget still works when your great grandchild inherits it and it's completely technologically obsolete anyway? Engineers should understand "cost:benefit" tradeoffs very well.
I've got a very cool looking meat grinder that got passed down from my grandparents that still works as it did when my grandmother used it. Guess what, I look at it but don't use it. It's not dishwasher proof (my grandmother probably never saw a dishwasher), it's a pain to clean (my grandmother was used to things being a pain to clean), it spews blood around while grinding (my grandmother probably never thought about that - "it is what it is" - as all her friends' grinders did the same), I have to find a place to clamp it and there's no rational place to do so my kitchen (but probably was in my grandmother's kitchen).
If you care about "quality" (or false pretenses of same), you're not shopping at Walmart, Home Depot, Target, or McDonalds. However, every one of those vendors has multiple competitors who DO offer quality products and better selection (of course at a higher price). For a tiny example, if you want selection and access to quality products, check out McMaster-Carr or similar -- but make sure you've got a high limit on your credit card.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I suppose there is no suitable car analogy?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The problem is, when people live close to the line, they claim that they can't afford to buy the high-quality brand. But they all have the latest smartphone and a big LCD TV.
No, they don't.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you are a vendor who derives a huge percentage of sales from Walmart, you have to think hard whether it makes sense to throw away all those sales or do as Walmart demands and come up with a bonus package or provide some other service Walmart wants.
With all this cost cutting and pressure on suppliers, I wonder how much of the so called obesity epidemic is due to replacing better ingredients with cheaper, more fattening alternatives.
Example, I've had the same damn $300 work boots for 5 years!
Which means that, five years ago, you have $300 of disposable income. Meanwhile, someone else who didn't had to spend $40 every six months on cheap boots that fell apart by the end of that time. At the end of the five years, they've spent $400, you've spent $300 and your boots are still fine, but that doesn't help them if they didn't have $300 to spend on boots at any point. To make things worse, they're now had to spend $100 more of their income than you. This is one of the bit reasons why poverty is difficult to escape.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Some brands will cut corners to survive. Those that won't will be offered buyouts from new owners whose whole business plan is to acquire a brand that built a reputation, and liquidate that reputation by cutting corners and slapping the brand label on it.
Brand destroying? I had an expensive Troy-Bilt mower from Lowes. It had a Chinese Briggs and Stratton engine on it. After three years, a connecting rod end cap bolt came loose, a bolt that is normally held down by a metal tag, the cap went through the crankcase and destroyed the motor. I looked for a new motor from Brig and from Honda. Both are made in China, If I have to have a Chinese motor, then it might as well be a Predator from Harbor Freight. After buying the motor for $104 from Harbor Freight, I looked up the cost on Amazon. Amazon wanted $169 + shipping ($30) for the same motor at the least expensive point and $350 + shipping at the most expensive point. Harbor Freight has these motors manufactured for them by Chingyon-Lifan in China. The same company manufactures the Honda GC Motors that sell for $269 at my local parts importer, and also manufactures the Briggs motors. While the Honda parts interchange with my engine, the Briggs parts do not. As a result, for the cost of the motor and the blade adapter, I have the mower back in commercial service for about 1/4 the cost of a new mower. But Amazon, nor Walmart were of no help whereas a Chinese Importer (Harbor Freight) was of great help. I now have a fine running Tredator.
On the other hand my cleaning bucket is nearly 10 years old already and I have a reasonable expectation that it will last the rest of my life
https://www.manufactum.co.uk/s...
If you look in the right places you can get still buy versions of most stuff that will last. What I have personally been unable to do is buy a clothes horse of the same quality as my mothers. Her's is 50 years old and still going, everything I see in the shops is flimsy junk. I suspect I will end up making a copy myself.
The race to the bottom creates casualties along the way.
While they're busy selling lowest-possible quality products, the acceptable-quality products are losing sales to them. Many times the moderate product lines can't even stay in business, leaving only a few over-the-top/boutique brands for the 1% and the bottom dweller products for everyone else. Once the moderate competition is dead, prices go way up on the poor quality products. So you and I end up with overpriced terrible products with the only alternative being to ridiculously overspend on a luxury product. And few manufacturers want to re-enter the market, because nothing will stop Walmart from simply dropping the prices to anti-competitive levels.
Search for Walmart and Gedney or Walmart and Schwinn for some really tragic stories of good companies being trashed and hundreds of jobs being lost because they tried to do business with Walmart.
One of the funniest differences between men and women: women brag about how new their shoes are, while men brag about how old they are!
While they're busy selling lowest-possible quality products, the acceptable-quality products are losing sales to them. Many times the moderate product lines can't even stay in business, leaving only a few over-the-top/boutique brands for the 1% and the bottom dweller products for everyone else. Once the moderate competition is dead, prices go way up on the poor quality products. So you and I end up with overpriced terrible products with the only alternative being to ridiculously overspend on a luxury product. And few manufacturers want to re-enter the market, because nothing will stop Walmart from simply dropping the prices to anti-competitive levels.
Unless, of course, we don't buy those products. If however, people choose to buy those products, then it looks to me like they value price over quality. At that point, who am I to disagree with their decisions?
To people living paycheck to paycheck, someone with savings looks rich. They are better off then the Majority of Americans. citation: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wh...
Cheap storage VM.
Yep, that is precisely what happened to me. I had a cheap bucket (brand??) probably from Walmart that barely lasted anytime. The next one I got was super thick and it's been working well for years.
Personally I'd rather manufacturers default to making better stuff instead of junk. Most stuff I buy isn't disposable, it is something I want to last a couple of decades so I don't have to go through the hassle of shopping again.
And shopping for some things on Amazon is getting terrible... too many choices (bad ones) to sort through. Try shopping for a kid's bed on Amazon... let's say one that won't break in 12 months. Good luck, it will take you weeks just to go through the 10,000 choices of junk.
Granted, a portion of the blame here also resides with PayPal, but still extremely frustrating. I burned up almost all the minutes on my then pre-paid flip phone with Walmart and Paypal trying to resolve it.
Side note, it is hard as fuck. But even with a decade in prison, and a felony record, I now have a great job, a side business, bought a new car 2 years ago and now own a home. All in a bit over 5 years. It took a lot of luck, good friends, and a pile of hard work. So if you are unemplyed, have strikes against you etc, don't give up.
Silence is a state of mime.
"And so in October 2002, with a colleague, Wier kept an appointment with a merchandise vice president for Wal-Mart’s outdoor-product category. ... The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did."
https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
Dollar General, for when you don't quite need the quality of Walmart
Not really. It is called learning to live within your means, sacrifice and savings.
I know...old fashioned concepts but they still are valid.
I'm not poor (I've been the broke student starting out tho)....and I'm not wealthy, but I do upper middle income ok.
But even in my pooer days, as even today...I quite often have some things, some necessary like tools, other are plain outright toys...but in many if not most cases, they are of higher quality and build than what most of my peers have.
How?
Well, I tend to have a clear image of what is important to me. If I want "X"....I generally spend a LOT of time researching the shit out of it...I find what I consider to be the best in class. I see how much I have to save to get it, and decide on what things I currently spend money on, that I can do without for awhile so I can save at a more rapid timeline.
I buy what I want and I am happy, no buyers remorse....and hey, the best isn't always the most $$, but when it is, I don't cheap out.
Yes, some people come by and go "OOOooh you must have a lot of $$". Well, no that's not the case. I just drank a little less, didn't go out as much, and cut corners where I could to SAVE money....and also be patient to wait on a good deal when it pops up.
I try to have a little savings in a "toy" savings at all times. I put at least a tiny bit away...for that semi-impulse buy when a great deal pops up for a very limited opportunity time.
For the most part, I try to have cash on hand to buy most any of these things. Even then, I will often keep that cash standing by....and use a interest free payment on these things (mostly with Amazon store card 6-12 months). That way I pay things out and can keep that cash on hand in savings earning at least a tiny bit of interest.
But living within ones means, sacrifice....if you can exercise at least a modicum of self control...life can still be good.
I've been doing this since I was a young teen...doing neighborhood jobs saving for a year to get what at the end was a HIGH end skate board. I've been building my stereo since I was about 12yrs. What I have now blows away what others have....many of them have Dr. money which I certainly do not...yet, they are amazed at how my stereo sound. I've been building it for years by saving, swapping out parts as deals came along, etc.
It isn't hard and geez, I am NOT the most disciplined person around, but fiscally I do try to exercise a little common sense.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I discovered this with a Black and Decker vaccuum. "Same" product, perhaps half the price at Walmart. Hmmm... turns out the only difference on the package was an added letter to the model number and some suspicious electrical rating difference that I can't recall. Buy both, take apart, and the motors are different (lower power)! Return Walmart version. The only thing I buy there now are Christmas lights, which for some reason are stupid cheap. Oh, and their solar garden lights beat the Dollar Tree price by 3 cents and you don't need to swap the harsh LED for a soft white.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
is what you're referring to, and it's mostly B.S. Papa John's could give every employee usable health insurance for .25 cents a pizza + the cost of their yearly Super Bowl free pizza promo. Giving farm workers a livable wage ($15/hr) would add .06 cents to a pound of potatoes.
All that automation means labor isn't as big a part of the equation anymore. It also means we produce more than enough. There's enough food on earth to feed everyone. We don't have a food problem, we have a distribution problem.
My point is: The race to the bottom is real, but it's not because we're so damn efficient or Walmart's prices are too low. It's because we allow it. We abandoned a large percentage of our populace. Largely because it irks us to pay taxes to raise them up and because we're afraid of losing freedom to the large organizations needed to do the raising (e.g. gov't). The ironic thing is we lose more than those taxes as the ruling class bite into our incomes and we lose more freedom as they clamp down to keep us under control.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
From your linked article: "Nine percent of those earning $100,000 or more each year felt they usually or always live paycheck-to-paycheck, while 23 percent of those making between $50,000 and $99,999 also described living paycheck-to-paycheck, and 51 percent of those earning less than $50,000 met the description."
I have sympathy for low earners, and I understand why a lot of them live from one paycheck to the next. Been there, done that. But 1 out of 10 earning $100K or more? That sounds like a combination of poor money management skills combined with low impulse control. Even in high-cost areas, $100K+ should be enough to accumulate an adequate cushion (again, been there and done that) unless you're saddled with student loan debt and you're wearing out your credit cards.
Isn't the whole line of AmazonBasics their branded products? https://www.amazon.com/b/?node...
I take it you've never experienced real poverty? $300 over 5 years ($60 a year) might seem minuscule to you, and honestly it doesn't seem like much to me either, but to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck and has to constantly choose between, say, buying groceries this week or paying the water bill so that it doesn't get cut off again, saving money can be virtually impossible.
I know it's popular these days to brush off those in poverty and accuse them of either making bad choices, or squandering their money, or being lazy, but some of the poorest people I know are also some of the most disciplined. It takes more discipline than I have to live off of white bread and sliced cheese for three days so that you can pay an electric bill, or to stay home on a Friday night because the $4 that you'd spend on bus fare or gasoline to visit a friend across town is needed for the laundromat, but those are the types of choices that people in poverty have to face every day!
To someone in the middle class, $60 a year on shoes doesn't seem like much. What about clothes? A winter coat? Furniture? Blankets for your bed? And god forbid you want some luxury item like a vacuum cleaner or you have an unexpected medical expense.
There are a few companies that refuse to sell to Walmart simply because Walmart's demand for lower prices never ends, and reputation is worth more than selling more.
https://www.fastcompany.com/54...
But then again, eventually everyone does
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sna...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Am I the only person confused as to why we're discussing mop buckets on slashdot in such detail?
I suppose there is no suitable car analogy?
Wal-Mart and Firestone both sell the same brand of tires and Wal-Mart is cheaper. However, if you read the fine print, the Wal-Mart version is not as puncture resistant nor rated for as many miles as the Firestone version. Some people say that's fine because everybody knows they get what they pay for. Others are saying that the Wal-Mart version falls below industry standard to the point that they are effectively scamming people by even offering it.
I bought a pair of New Balance brand trail sneakers and found the quality I got at Amazon to be disappointing, so I returned and went to a brick and mortar store instead. This being New Balance every shoe has its own number so I knew I didn't want that same version of the shoe. I went back to Amazon with the numbers that I thought were well made shoes and not one was available on Amazon.
my boots cost me $60 (Hi-Tek). the last pair i literally put over 1000 miles on them. the dude wants $80 to resole them so i just paid $60 for a new pair. its sad, but its the way it is.
And sadly, Snapper eventually ended up in Walmart, years after that article was written.
Depending on the area, $100k can be tight for a family with 2 kids.
Cheap storage VM.
My favorite article on the subject is now almost 15 years old. December, 2003: https://www.fastcompany.com/47...
Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.
Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.
I'd love to see an updated story with new numbers, and that covers Amazon.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.