https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...conomy/681122/What’s going on here? Why would Walmart have such a broadly negative effect on income and wealth? The theory is complex, and goes like this: When Walmart comes to town, it uses its low prices to undercut compe ors and become the dominant player in a given area, forcing local mom-and-pop grocers and regional chains to slash their costs or go out of business altogether. As a result, the local farmers, bakers, and manufacturers that once sold their goods to those now-vanished retailers are gradually replaced by Walmart’s array of national and international suppliers. (By some estimates, the company has historically sourced 60 to 80 percent of its goods from China alone.) As a result, Wiltshire finds, five years after Walmart enters a given county, total employment falls by about 3 percent, with most of the decline concentrated in “goods-producing establishments.”
Once Walmart has become the major employer in town, it ends up with what economists call “monopsony power” over workers. Just as monopoly describes a company that can afford to charge exorbitant prices because it lacks any real compe ion, monopsony describes a company that can afford to pay low wages because workers have so few alternatives. This helps explain why Walmart has consistently paid lower wages than its compe ors, such as Target and Costco, as well as regional grocers such as Safeway. “So much about Walmart contradicts the perfectly compe ive market model we teach in Econ 101,” Wiltshire told me. “It’s hard to think of a clearer example of an employer using its power over workers to suppress wages.”
Walmart’s size also gives it power over the producers who supply it with goods. As Stacy Mitc , a co–executive director of the Ins ute for Local Self-Reliance, recently wrote in The Atlantic, Walmart is well known for squeezing its suppliers, who have little choice but to comply for fear of losing their largest customer. Selling to Walmart at such low prices can force local suppliers to lay off workers and pay lower wages to those who remain. They also naturally try to make up for the shortfall by charging their other customers higher prices, setting off a vicious cycle that allows Walmart to entrench its dominance even further.
The most direct upshot of the new research is that Walmart isn’t the bargain for American communities that it appears to be. (When I reached out to Furman about the new research, he said he wasn’t sure what to make of it and suggested I talk with labor economists.) More broadly, the findings call into question the legal and conceptual shift that allowed Walmart and other behemoths to get so huge in the first place. In the late 1970s, an rust regulators and courts adopted the so-called consumer-welfare standard, which held that the proper benchmark of whether a company had gotten too big or whether a merger would undermine compe ion was if it would raise consumer prices or reduce sellers’ output. In other words, the purpose of compe ion law was redefined as the most stuff possible, as cheaply as possible. But as the new Walmart research suggests, that formula does not always guarantee the maximum welfare for the American consumer.
Monopsony Power and Poverty: The Consequences of Walmart Supercenter Openings
https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...tshire_JMP.pdf
I haven't looked lately but I'm confident that full time walmart employees make a big portion of full time employees on welfare.
I.e. tax payers are subsidizing walmart employee income. Why should Walmart ever increase their minimum wage if they don't have to?
Yay unfiltered capitalism
treating people with basic dignity and fairness is too burdensome to employers, that's an anti-business at ude
let the US taxpayer bear the cost in food stamps and so forth, you plebs should be more grateful for all the cheap goods.
The cheap prices of globalism aren't so cheap huh?
I never said they were, are you talking to somebody in particular?
Imagine ing and moaning over an employer to be "nice". Bro, look for another job if you're so concerned about being treated nicely. You're owed not a damn thing in life and especially not from your employer. Think bigger and become your own employer!
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I bet he completely missed the point as usual. Lol what an idiot.
I bet you saw his post as usual
We can't all be self employed, it isn't about "niceness."
It's about fair wages and working conditions, not personal at udes.
Find an employer that suits your needs or employ yourself instead of constantly whining that others, employers, should be treating you "nice". that baby bull already!
Norma Rae with calf tats.
After seeing the thread le, I naturally assumed this thread was a bump from like 2006 but it's not. Is this really new news?
The corroborating studies are
I already have a job I like with a company I like, thanks for asking.
Maybe other posters don't post exclusively about their own personal hangups like you do, kw.
Kori is okay with using his tax dollar to help pay walmart employees salaries
You know what's funny, the games you play here on ST when replied to as if you can't discern between talking in generalities vs specifically calling you out. You're helplessly ridiculous on all levels.
RENT FREE! Btw, my name isn't Kori you dumb mother er.
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I bet Kori posted completely on topic and not about any other posters in a calm non angry manner
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