[nmrm]

> Value for who?

Well they sure as hell aren't passing it on to their employees; meanwhile, their stock is doing quite well...

> Wal-Mart delivers value for shareholders because they attract customers because they're cheaper and more efficient.

> (And the grocery market in general is anything but low-competition.)

Okay, so you've double turned yourself. Walmart faces lots of competition from local chains, which prevents it from screwing consumers on prices. Competition is good.

I'd argue they compensate by leveraging their market position to place pressure on their increasingly de facto vertical supply chain and by poorly compensating their employees.

> by spending more money on manufacturing and transportation costs and on people working at cash registers.

Of course, this ignores that many of those poor are the ones in the factories, warehouses, trucks and behind the cash registers.

[fennecfoxen]

> Okay, so you've double turned yourself... Competition is good.

What? This isn't a double-turn at all. I'm not defending uncompetitive environments and monopolistic exploitation, I'm asserting Wal-Mart as example uncompetitive environment is, in the general case, nuts.

> Of course, this ignores that many of those poor are the ones in the factories, warehouses, trucks and behind the cash registers.

Not ignoring that fact, NOTWITHSTANDING THAT FACT. No one is better off if one person working minimum wage pay extra money to have another person working minimum wage drive a truck further (and burn more fuel for that matter). Recognize a simple truism: no group gets better off by engaging in waste. (You could make a case that someone-else making substantially more than minimum wage paying extra for that would increase overall well being by paying more for these services, because of diminishing marginal utility of that richer person's wealth, but making groceries cost more is a freakishly regressive sort of way to attempt to redistribute wealth... and wealthy people aren't shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, they're all at Target or Whole Foods...)

[nmrm]

> I'm not defending uncompetitive environments and monopolistic exploitation

Okay. Well that's what the article is attacking. So I guess I don't understand your point w.r.t. the thesis of the original article. Do you agree with the article but disagree that Wal-Mart is an example? Or what? Could you clarify?

> I'm asserting Wal-Mart as example uncompetitive environment is, in the general case, nuts.

To repeat myself, there's more than one way for companies to behave anti-competitively.

Wal-mart cannot afford to screw consumers, so they find other ways to leverage their status as a mega-corp -- squeezing local government via tifs (this corn field/park/10 year old walmart is "blighted", so give us 15 year tax break to build a new one), paying poorly compared to other players in the market, abusing or undercutting supply chain partners, etc..

> but making groceries cost more is a freakishly regressive sort of way to attempt to redistribute wealth

Well, we could one-up Wal-Mart and make all the groceries completely free by enslaving all those involved in food production. So this is clearly an over-simplification.

It's also a false choice. Wal-Mart could instead decrease its profits and play nicer with everyone (like many of its local chain competitors do, arguably because they don't have the huge legal/PR/marketing team and cash reserves which can buy F-U leverage against local governments and labor groups -- this coercive power that comes with being so big is at the heart of the article's thesis).

Also, the price difference vs. wage difference between Walmart and its competitors also puts the lie to this claim -- even an extra 1.00+ an hour way more than offsets an extra .10 cents on the dollar for groceries.