re: Bernie going after Wal-Mart

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Dollar General is cutting into their profit margin and so is Amazon.

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Yep, had it not been Walmart, there would be another 'horrible' beast to take it's spot.

And many huge corps screw with small businesses, it's definitely not just major retailers that cause a problem in small towns.

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Destroying a business who cannot provide a service to their fellow Americans for a rate those fellow Americans consider competitive isn't really a bad thing.

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Correct.

I mean, it's not like "mom and pop" were paying clerks huge wages before Walmart arrived. Walmart just figured out how to be more efficient.

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22 mil would be a drop in the bucket compared to what a $15 minimum wage would cost the company.

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And, let's talk about what happens when your CEO fails.

In 1990, K-Mart had more sales and revenue than Walmart.

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That's because they already put 5,000 of their stores nationwide according to the model.

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Not all 5000 were in small towns. Nowhere close.

And, they ended up having to shut down most of those small town stores.

Hence, they stopped doing it. And they stopped like 20 years ago. It was certainly something to be mad about.........but frick.........it's been twenty years!!

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It's true actually. My dad is from Little Rock and the family knows people in Bentonville. My grandpa told me back in the 80s when I was a kid that Wal-Mart had a "takeover" division. Even back then they would meet regularly and look at maps and data to find the most strategic place to put a Wal-mart to put as many Mom & Pops out of business as possible in a square mile radius, therefore hurting small towns and driving business out, therefore driving people out of those towns. And this was before they got into food and grocery products.

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And?

Were "mom and pop" stores employing lots of local workers? Were they paying "living wages" with benefits? Were they selling goods to people at a low cost?

I don't understand why mom and pop places are romanticized so much.

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Bernie came to a strike here at a hotel in SD that lasted for about 40 days or so. After plenty of negotiations, they settled and now the housekeepers and janitors start out at $21/hr and all of the workers, even the lowest positions, get a pension along with that hourly increase. It's fricking insane.

I said that, just to say frick Bernie. He went there, spit his socialist bullshite for about 30 mins and rolled out. Anyone who thinks hotel housekeepers and janitors deserve $21/hr AND a pension, has lost their fricking mind.

These type of jobs aren't meant to be made into careers, like Bernie and co. thinks they should be

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Did the hotel raise their rates for now having to artificially overpay unskilled labor? How is their business doing?

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My dad is from Little Rock and the family knows people in Bentonville. My grandpa told me back in the 80s when I was a kid that Wal-Mart had a "takeover" division. Even back then they would meet regularly and look at maps and data to find the most strategic place to put a Wal-mart to put as many Mom & Pops out of business as possible in a square mile radius, therefore hurting small towns and driving business out, therefore driving people out of those towns. And this was before they got into food and grocery products.

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Hmm, quite the boogeyman story there.

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If you are the Cashier at the local Mom and Pop............yeah. You need other plans. Oh, and Mom and Pop almost certainly had worse benefits if any. And, for all the complaining, Mom and Pop paid you less too!

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And for the consumer -- you got pretty much ONLY what Mom and Pop thought you might want.

Yea, it's fricking insane man. I don't know what they were making before, but I imagine they got at least a $5-6/hr raise, however, what was really shocking to me was the fricking pension. That's just insane to me to pay those positions that much and give them pensions.

When I get a sec, I'll try to find a link that has the info in it. I heard this from a female who's a manager at the hotel. Even she was in shock. She dislikes most of those employees now because they treated her like shite since she didn't want to participate in the strike and stand there and yell "scabs!" at the replacement workers they brought in during the strike.

The videos of the strikers just shows how much they are really filth. Yelling shitty things and the replacement workers and harassing guest staying at the hotel during the strike and driving many of them to leave and stay at different hotels.

22,000,000 / 8416 (number of stores) = 2,614 per store. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me at all.