I’m going to come to the conclusion that people are simply uneducated. Simply based on the responses I’ve already gotten.
Let me prop up a very common thing that people love to absolute hate - rich companies. Particularly, Wal-Mart. They say everything and anything to bash the company. While some of the things said is valid, like running small businesses out and maybe corporate doesn’t have all of the answers and the Waltons are particularly greedy.
Yet when I decided to google Wal-Mart’s operating expenses, we’re talking hefty amounts to run all of the stores it has, plus it’s operations overseas. It’s still a lot and I felt a ting in the back of my mind that maybe there is a bit of a reasoning for why a company as big as Wal-Mart has to do things like cut down expenses or lower wages a little.
And people simply don’t understand how that part of business works. They’re not in the shoes of the people operating a big company and they don’t understand how much and what it takes to run a giant franchise. They think it’s as easy as being sat in a position and all of the money the company is withholding is all in some giant vault, that’d be withholding billions that they can distribute or something.
So is all of the hate that something like this gets a little exaggerated because people don’t understand or is it justified?
Maybe the downvotes are not a Reddit thing, but a you thing? You are, after all, the common denominator.
Repeating over and over and “people don’t understand” something does little to help when the balance of your post is incoherent.
deleted by creator
like running small businesses out
Stuff like this, which you dismiss as just a detail, may actually be the root of the problem. This isn’t specific to Walmart, nor are people hating large companies just for being large, nor rich people just for being rich.
The issue is how it affects the rest of the society and businesses. There’s a reason why there are anti-trust laws and such.
bit of a reasoning for why a company as big as Wal-Mart has to do things like cut down expenses or lower wages a little.
So you think it is Ok for a CEO to be paid millions of dollars a year plus stock options with quarterly bonuses in the tens of thousands, while the front line workers are being paid so little that they go to food banks or need second jobs to survive?
People definitely don’t understand, but it might be people people like yourself.
a company as big as Wal-Mart has to do things like cut down expenses or lower wages a little.
Companies as big as Wal-Mart actually benefit from the economies of scale. Essentially, the larger an operation, the lower the expenses per item produced. Wal-Mart’s operating costs are huge, except if you break it down per item produced. If you do that then their operation costs are far less than most businesses. That’s why they’ve been able to push out small businesses. There’s no reason for them to lower wages other than to be greedy.
They think it’s as easy as being sat in a position and all of the money the company is withholding is all in some giant vault, that’d be withholding billions that they can distribute or something.
It literally is. Wal-Mart’s own balance sheet shows they have $10.5 billion dollars cash on hand. That’s literally $10.5 billion sitting in a vault. Companies do this because it’s good for their stock price.
You’re also skipping over the fact that the highest earners are shareholders, who don’t even work for the company. CEO and executives make way too much money but at least they actually work (they don’t work 1000 times harder than a minimum wage employee, but they do deserve some compensation). Shareholders sit at home and make millions from doing literally nothing, and companies cater to them instead of the labourers doing the actual work.
So yeah, the hate is justified. The downvotes are probably because you’ve inadvertently parroted the same talking points that executives use to defend their greed.
Adding onto this that Walmart and similarly large companies use what is effectively a planned economy (that rivals or exceeds the size of some actual nations). There is no need for the executives to be making these last minute decisions on stock placement or layoffs or any of the shit they supposedly do. If Walmart transitioned to be employee owned (not through stocks, but actually employee owned), it could maintain the same centralized planned economy nature (since it’s almost entirely run through computers). It could benefit the workers directly, lift the economies of of the communities it existed within, and be an actual force for good in the world. All whole the actual products it sold would be much cheaper because they wouldn’t be supported an ultrarich parasitical class.
But instead it benefits like 100 people, and the planet gets to burn in response. Yeah, no, it’s not that we don’t understand. It’s that we do. These companies aren’t just bad for their workers, they’re bad for literally everybody.
Guys, hear me out… maybe rich companies aren’t evil because of some top-down direction to be evil, but because the system through which they become large and rich encourages them to be evil. In that light, Wal-Mart has two choices: either they can be large, successful, and evil; or smaller, less successful, and not as evil. Surely I’m not the only one intelligent and worldly enough to realize that these companies have no choice but to keep wages low and muscle out local competition if they want to dominate international retail.
Some real galaxy brain shit there, OP.
If you have the squeeze the life out of your employees to run your business, does your business deserves to exists? Shops, supermarkets and malls existed before Walmart. Capitalism worked just fine before it.
I feel so stupid now. I can’t believe I ever thought a good way to save on costs was to not pay executives millions of pounds in wages and bonuses every quarter. Now I realise it’s better to lower wages/hours for minimum wage staff on zero hour contracts or lay them off.
Nice try Walmart’s PR department! You almost had me in a first half
All the key provisions of the antitrust laws (sherman antitrust etc) have been effectively invalidated due to the incredibly high bar set by court precedents before a large company or (making a monopoly or oligopoly) can be sued effectively.
As such the large companies can dance in an effectively no competition space (well some parts have competition still, but other parts no). Any small business with actual innovation is going to have to pay in competition, and inertia, and harassment by incumbent monopolies to get a hold, and the monopoly is most likely going to copy (Whatsapp to Snapchat) or acquire (Microsoft store to blizzard Activision). So any small business owner will get to look forward to bankruptcy, or lawsuits until someone else eats your lunch.
Write your congressman about the antitrust laws? Start a business and hope you aren’t noticed doing something copyable?
God’s you’re stupid
