Muscatine

New research from Global Insight released today by Wal-Mart shows the retailer now saves American families $2,500 each year, up 7.3% from $2,329 in 2004. The company is also rolling out today new brand advertising showcasing the many ways it saves customers money so they can live better. As part of the new advertising, the retailer is unveiling its new tagline: ''Save Money. Live Better.''

In 2005, Global Insight, a leader in economic and financial analysis, analyzed Wal-Mart's national and local impacts in terms of jobs, wages, prices, consumer buying power and GDP. Global Insight recently updated the analysis. The conclusion of this update is that the continued reduction in prices due to the presence of Wal-Mart and the growth in consumer expenditures over the 2004 to 2006 period translates directly into savings for consumers amounting to $287 billion in 2006. This corresponds to savings of $957 per person or $2,500 per household. (The state-by-state analysis will be available later this month.) These savings illustrate the everyday benefits of the retailer's presence -- allowing consumers to keep more of their money in their own pockets.

''From the family vacation, to a daughter's wedding, the savings American families realize at Wal-Mart bring the good things in life a good deal closer,'' said Stephen Quinn, Wal-Mart's chief marketing officer. ''The new advertising tells the same story we've told since day one, how we're working hard to save people money so they can live better.''

The retailer will literally track the amount of savings so far this year by installing a ''savings ticker'' outside of Wal-Mart's home office in Bentonville, Ark., allowing employees and customers to see how much money American families save as a result of Wal-Mart's impact on communities.

Wal-Mart's ongoing commitment to providing value can be seen in its stores everyday:


-- Price Leadership -- By continuously rolling back prices on thousands of products, Wal-Mart is helping millions of Americans manage high gas prices and rising interest rates, with 20% more rollbacks than last year. -- $4 Prescription Drugs -- Wal-Mart lowered the price of more than 100 generic prescriptions to $4. By providing access to drugs for 90% of all therapeutic categories, the company has saved customers $350 million since it launched the program. -- Money Centers -- With Wal-Mart's every day low pricing on money services including check cashing, money orders, bill payment and money transfers, customers can save 25 to 50 percent or more over what other leading money service providers charge and end up saving $450 each year or almost $45 per month.

Whatcha pay for....

Ya get whatcha pay for.....

In a report released today Wal-Mart claimed that it saves families $2,500 a year. Citing generic drugs and in-store banking centers, the new report sings the ?“low prices?” gospel, but it fails to take into account the hidden costs of having a Wal-Mart in town: higher taxes, lower average wages, and fewer local businesses.

In June of 2006, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report attacking the flawed methodology Global Insight used to calculate customers?’ supposed savings.

It is the very same methodology Global Insight used again in this year?’s study. The ?“research?” glosses over a whole host of problems the company creates, not to mention the fact that Global Insight - far from independent - was comissioned by Wal-Mart to conduct this study. Legitimate, independent reports not commissioned by Wal-Mart show that when the company comes to town, poverty levels go up, wages go down and small businesses go away.

From the report:


A widely quoted figure from a study by the consulting firm Global Insight (GI) indicates that Wal-Mart?’s expansion has resulted in $263 billion in savings to U.S. consumers. We find this to be implausible. The statistical analysis generating this highly influential result fails the most rudimentary sensitivity checks.

A robust set of research findings shows that Wal-Mart?’s entry into local labor markets reduces the pay of workers in competing stores. This effect is greatest in the South, where Wal-Mart expansion has been greatest.
The current campaign to pressure Wal-Mart into raising its labor compensation practices does not have to impinge on the benefits accruing to consumers through price declines: sizable compensation increases could be fully paid for out of Wal-Mart?’s profits without aff ecting prices if the company either accepted the same profit margins that it obtained in the recent past, or accepted the lower profit margins that some of its competitors do.

Further, even if Wal-Mart passed all compensation increases through to higher consumer prices, this would result in less than a 4% increase in its prices. If the retailer?’s price advantage is even in the neighborhood of what its defenders claim, this would still leave it with a privileged competitive position.

Assuming Wal-Mart will not choose to lower its profi t margins to improve the quality of its jobs, there is a clear rationale for mandates such as the recently passed ?“pay-or-play?” health care bill that requires large employers to either provide health coverage or pay into a state plan to do so.

Re-run

September 11, 2007
Huffington post
Robert J. Elisberg: The High Cost of Low Cost

A successful freelancer once explained to me that he regularly tells companies who balk at paying his price, ''If you think I'm expensive, wait until you work with amateurs.'' Lower-quality work will invariably cause big problems and much more money spent correcting them.

But this isn't just a reality for all business. It's the way of all life.

This is far more basic than Economics 101. It's nothing more than a wise saying everyone learned in grade school.

You Get What You Pay For.

Usually, that's said with a shrug and a wistful smile. But then, we generally don't expect the payment to be made with people's lives.

Save money by not doing required repairs on a bridge. It collapses, causing devastation and death. The original price to fix the bridge was $3 million. The financial cost only of replacement and economic upheaval is an estimated $500 million.

Save money by cutting $65 million from required maintenance on levees. They're breached, wiping out a major American city and killing 1,577 people.. The cost of rebuilding the levees is $10 billion. Rebuilding the city is an additional $53 billion.

Save money by having your toys made cheaply overseas. Toxic paint is found in 21 million products for children, in three separate recalls.

Save money by importing on pet food more cheaply from overseas. Contaminated food kills over 17,000 pets.

Save money on toothpaste by importing it more cheaply from overseas. Products with a poisonous chemical is distributed to hotels.

Save money on automobile tires by importing them more cheaply from overseas. Over 450,000 faulty tires that can fall apart were recalled.

These aren't isolated incidents. This is a pattern.

You do get what you pay for. Wal-Mart might love to advertise with that little smiley-face knocking the prices down, but when they had to remove those toys with toxic paint from their shelves, remember: a frown is just a smile upside-down.

The manufacturing problem for all those recalls was caused elsewhere, in China. But someone had to hire them. And someone had to cut government costs for inspecting them.

There are many dirty fingers. When Wal-Mart strong-arms its suppliers to under-price everyone else, those suppliers are forced or choose to go overseas where there is cheap labor and cheaper consumer protection. And other retailers are pressured to follow, or do so happily.

Companies can insist they're just giving the public what it wants, low prices. And that's a wonderful argument until reality kicks in and you stock your stores with toxic toys, toxic pet food, toxic toothpaste and exploding tires. Surveys show that customers tend to not want those things.

Everyone likes low prices. Spending less. Saving money.

But you get what you pay for.

It's not Economics 101. It's Life 101. Here's another basic, wise saying: pennywise and pound foolish. But this is pennywise and pound insane.

If something is important to you, you find the money.

That is, unless you're too cheap and don't mind the risk of flooding a city, killing pets or poisoning the nation's children. Is that a cheap shot to take? Perhaps. But it's less cheap than not minding the risk of flooding a city, killing pets or poisoning the nation's children.

But then, you get what you pay for.

WalMart

is good for America although I'm concerned about the rash of complaints concerning products from China that are contaminated with lead and other harmful substances. Let me be the first to say that WalMart is not the only retailer who relies heavily on the Chinese market for their retail.

The past post of bigbrother as noted by another poster, is nothing more than a quote from what most would consider a liberal website, the Huffington Post. One must wonder why such a die hard conservative such a bigbrother would resort to copy and pasting a liberal blog to prove a point? Maybe the argument lies in the fact that bigbrother has become somewhat disillusioned in how the Bush economic plan, NAFTA and the Kyoto protocols have begun to backfire against the American people as predicted all along.

While fair trade is important to America, it is America's business leaders who chose to outsource American jobs to other countries with cheaper, less costly labor where safety standards are not a consideration. American business is concerned with one thing only, the cost run up on their overseas product.

I have read where bigbrother is employed by a pipeline company here in the United States. I would be interested in knowing whether bigbrother can assure any of us whether the natural gas and oil from this pipeline somehow doesn't end up in the storage tanks at the gas stations and on the shelves in the automotive department at WalMart? What say you bigbrother?

I am the Toast of the Town!