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Originally Posted by ASU2003
Would they become evil if Wal-Mart (or Home Depot/Lowe's) hired every plumber in America so you had to go to them? Or would we complain about the 20% of the bill that we pay to the Walton family when we have to hire them. They might not be evil or even had the intention of Wal-Mart taking off like it has. But I'd bet that life would be better without Wal-Mart (or K-Mart, JC Penny or Sears before them).
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Anti-Trust laws take care of the first statement, and nothing is stopping you from shopping where you want to. Large corporate stores exsist because people CHOOSE to go there, they vote in favor of them every time they shop.
I've lived in one of the biggest cities in the world, Chicago, and some small BFE towns in southern Illinois. If Wal-Marts and the like went 'poof' in Chicago, life would be about the same. You might have to make another trip or two. If Wal-Mart disappeared from small town areas, life wouldn't be quite as good. Whats ironic is that while people complain that the Wal-Marts are destroying small towns, what they are really doing is offering people a superior choice, with MUCH more variety then they could have hoped to ever get prior. When I lived in a rural town I did all my shopping at the Wal-Mart, it saved me a lot of time and I was able to get what I wanted. Now that I'm back in Chicago, I won't go near one since I have better alternatives
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Large corporations are more efficient, but they also make every part of America the same, with the same big box stores and the same types of jobs. Why would you go to school for 13-14 years to learn how to stock shelves and run a cash register? It also makes an elite upper class made up of the people who run the corporations and everybody else down below (with 1/400th the salary).
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Small stores have people stocking shelves too, did they go to school for 13-14 years? As for the elite-upperclass,who run the stores, this is different then before how? Are people poorer now then before? Do we live in smaller homes? Do we have less health care? I don't think you really know what you are talking about, the standard of living has improved and the gap between the rich and poor in terms of what is available to them is less than it was back in some mythic golden age you seem to be implying existed prior. People have a tendency to glorify the way things were without understanding the way they were at all.
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It's either work for a corporation, get less money and work for a non-profit, or not work at all. Most people will take the job at the corporation over unemployment. Then they will dream of one day becoming a CEO of a oil company.
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Well this sounds like angst here. My guess is you are not established in life yet, and are now looking for something to blame. Most of America is 'corporate' but not giant like Wal-Mart, but small business. I work for a corporation, we have 15 employees, myself included. You are getting into liberal babble when you say 'work for a corporation' without understanding what a corporation is. What you mean to say is 'work for a giant corporation' and thats just not true. While giant corporations may be good at moving goods, and selling them, there is far more to do in life than work retail.
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Many visitors from abroad are surprised to learn that even today, the U.S. economy is by no means dominated by giant corporations. Fully 99 percent of all independent enterprises in the country employ fewer than 500 people. These small enterprises account for 52 percent of all U.S. workers, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Some 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. By contrast, 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.
Small businesses are a continuing source of dynamism for the American economy. They produced three-fourths of the economy's new jobs between 1990 and 1995, an even larger contribution to employment growth than they made in the 1980s. They also represent an entry point into the economy for new groups. Women, for instance, participate heavily in small businesses. The number of female-owned businesses climbed by 89 percent, to an estimated 8.1 million, between 1987 and 1997, and women-owned sole proprietorships were expected to reach 35 percent of all such ventures by the year 2000. Small firms also tend to hire a greater number of older workers and people who prefer to work part-time.
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http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oecon/chap4.htm
Its a few years old, but its the first hit on google, and its early so I'm not going to be digging more.