Wal-Mart pulls out of Germany with $1 billion loss

Then that's their problem. Toughski shitski.

Ah, but this is why you should diversify your portfolio, Danny. You can then help to protect yourself from such risk. Also, be careful how you phrase things or people may think you mean ill will toward them. I'm sure that's not the case here.

Well, maybe it's the case here.

[quote name='Keydeck' post='752938' date='Nov 3 2006, 11:34 pm']Genie, quit living on dreams.

Quick nod to Mr. Falco there.

On the topic, I'm a big fan of capitalism. I'm filthy rich and glad of it. If me being rich means others are poor then I really don't give a damn. Personally I'll be sad to see Walmart go. They have pork scratchings and that's a good thing. They're also a good source of relatively decent cheddar. If they exploit their staff then I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. If their way of running a business causes someone a problem then I suggest that person doesn't look for a job at Walmart. Simple really.[/quote]

quote name='Keydeck' date='Nov 3 2006, 11:34 pm' post='752938']
Genie, quit living on dreams.

Quick nod to Mr. Falco there.

On the topic, I'm a big fan of capitalism. I'm filthy rich and glad of it. If me being rich means others are poor then I really don't give a damn. Personally I'll be sad to see Walmart go. They have pork scratchings and that's a good thing. They're also a good source of relatively decent cheddar. If they exploit their staff then I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. If their way of running a business causes someone a problem then I suggest that person doesn't look for a job at Walmart. Simple really.
[/quote]

If you're fan of capitalism then you have to be fan of war also. This is the inevitable consequence of every capitalistic period. History proves it. Look in any history book. And US has already got the taste and probe of the new coming war that will not be anymore between countries but it will be between poor and rich on the whole globe only.

The first probe is terrorism. USA got a taste already. At present, this terrorism is done by religious fools but in future this will not remain restricted to religious motivated people.

No. It's not the case at all. I'm an electrical engineer. I'm earning at least that much money to have an OK life

Learn to use the quote function, that's my first piece of advice to you.

Now, I am no fan of war, I'm just a fan of getting richer. If other people want to have wars then that's their lookout. If I can profit off it then all the better, I will continue to do so.

I have a history book right here. According to the index, "Fan of Capitalism" is referenced in chapters 2, 3 and 5. "Fan of War" doesn't surface until chapter 9. In fact, it says here on page 295: "these are totally unrelated concepts".

Bollocks! There are plenty of alternatives to working at Walmart...

Target, Office Depot, The Home Depot, Costco... Loads of diversity in such jobs as well - you can stack shelves, work the deli counter, work on the tills, collect shopping trolleys, mop the floor... Not many jobs out there offering you the opportunity to learn so many different skills...

Crawlie forgot to mention that in addition to the wide range of tasks a person could perform as an employee in these stores, there's the lovely employee discount you enjoy!

You don't NEED to make much money working for Wal-Mart. You get even better than "everyday low prices." Even better, since these "big box" retailers prefer to employ people part-time, you could work simultaneously at two or three of these places and really rake it in!

No really, DF. It's impressive how much you know about the American economy and how it exploits poor and uneducated people. I think you'd use your energies best by working to prevent such exploitation of the workers in your own neck of the woods. America is already lost.


By the way, is this a direct threat?

It's a direct prediction what world will be faced in very near future.

It's not at all unrelated. Only fools can ignore and deny the direct coherence.

So why're wars going on in the world ? Because rich people want to conquer a new area and its people. This becomes really necessary after sometime because of the interest system that cries for steady economical growth. Earlier this was the time of colonialism and slavery. Today it's become a bit more "noble": Worldwide corrupting important politicians and pressing ahead globalisation while giving a damn on "loser-people".

Greedy governments need to get hold of new countries along with their resources and cheap (educated) workers. Earlier it was done directly by war. Today because borders are all open, it's done by "economy war". Earlier war was carried out only with guns. Today it's done with the wallets.

But where is force also resistance will form. And there will be a time when people start realsing that the
war is not between menmade religions but it is only between poor and rich. Even in Roman/Greek history
once there was the historical exclamation: "Proletarians of all nations, get united" !

Oh, well, that's what I get for using a history book I bought at Wal-Mart then.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't tell me when the closing-down sale starts, does it?

has any one actually noticed any difference since the sale/take over

@ Small Town Boy:
"That's all well and good, but it doesn't tell me when the closing-down sale starts, does it?"

Small Town Boy, you're waiting now for big bargaining party or what

I think I have to disappoint you here. I can imagine that it will go like this that only the name will change. Just the company shield at the entrance door will be changed to Metro. That's it! Why shall Wal Mart or Metro gift you anything ?!? May be you can snatch some baloons that will be distributed to the kids if you like such things.

They're businessmen. Why shalll they give you any single cent without any need ?!? They want to take out last cent. And I don't think they intend to sell out all the existing products only to fill the shelves with exactly the same products in the next week again

Daniel,
Like too many Germans, you're living in a fantasy world. Money makes the world go round. Always has and always will. You get money in one of 3 ways: it drops in your lap (lotto or inheritance), you work your arse off for it or you steal it.
Most Germans expect it to drop in their lap... this is the laziest option... typified by VW workers these days.

To Adi:

Well, I am very pleased that you also realised the 3 ways how to get money .

Where I did not get you at all however is: What do you want to tell me by that ? Most Germans ? Do you suffer from some serious loss of sense for reality ? Fact is that these 3 ways have come more and more in inbalance during the last years. Most money is not! earned by work any more. This is not a German phenomenon. It is straight typical for the US. It applies to all western "economic power countries" ! Most of money nowadays is earned by "dropping in laps" - means: capital investment- means: letting other people do the work. The problem: Money gets more and more concentrated in the hands of rich but uneducated and often enough also less gifted rich guys who merely inherited their wealth. These guys are enjoying the lion's share of all profits without any own efforts, apart from corrupting politicians sometimes. One further problem: These uneducated guys decide about human resources for management. One can see it daily in news what kind of loser-manager come into light and earn millions even in case of total failure. Rich guys more and more transform into a hollow "Party-society".

Even high qualified mental work (engineers, scientists,..) gets more and more devaluated (due to an onslaught of highly motivated Chinese and Indians who directly get the western Know-How implanted by multinational companies). Work is faced a very strong inflation. But on the other hand: Never ever so much money was earned by capital investment and managers. There are 3 classical factors of production: Work, capital and ground. Well, thanks to globalisation and crazy subsidies and exploitation the capital is the only one which became the only dominating and crucial.

Have a look at the universities in Western countries: Who the hell wants to study engineering ? Meanwhile every second fool is studying "MBA". If you can't become popstar, model or advertisement-icon study MBA !

DF, my husband is an engineer, and I still would not advise anyone not currently living in, or who wants to be living in, China or India to start studying engineering now. New MBA's are also having a tough time making their expensive further education pay off at the moment.

I am fascinated by you, DF. Really. It's as if you just stepped off a space ship and started watching Michael Moore films and reading Noam Chomsky, to the exclusion of anything else. You're like me, 6 months after I moved from small-town, small-university Midwest to the Big Time in Madison, Wisconsin. I was 22, and I thought nobody had ever discovered the Evil That Is The Capitalist Power Structure before me.

My god. It's like someone is holding up a mirror to my past self and is showing me what a dreadful bore I must have been to my friends and family then. I think I'll have a drink.

Dear Daniel,
I shan't be joining you in the Stone-Age but I'm sure you'll be happy hammering away at stones and earning your next meal in an environmentally and ethically hard-working way.

By the way, you're not a bitter and twisted ex-employee of Siemens/BenQ by any chance?

No. I'm not one of them. But I have the strong opinion that all technicians, engineers and scientists who are doing the real work and put their energies and efforts, are too much underpaid.

Without us engineers these businessmen are only nobodies. Managers're overpaid for doing nearly nothing. For producing Hot Air and wrong decisions, gossipping and shaking hands they earn unbelievable amounts.

We have stumbled off the topic of Wal-Mart.

What your company needs, DF, is a good ol' pep rally every morning before you start work. Rah rah, siss boom bah! Gooooooo, WAL-MART!! You seem to be losing sight of the team mentality.

Admit you wouldn't turn down a promotion to become one of those useless managers.

Cinzia, I have the strong feeling you're busy somewhere in management only. Isnt it ?!?

Dear Daniel & Christian

It's an easy complaint to make. Stupid managers, stupid decisions. If you ever become managers one day you'll be amazed at how many stupid engineers you have to deal with every day.

@ cw: Household management, yes. The pay sucks.

The bennies aren't bad, though!

Companies get a lot of subsides from government. Tax payers's money. They're getting millions millions millions. Then they're cheating workers by throwing them. Closing down and shifting to abroad where they get cheaper workers. And again cheaper engineers.

Big managers are pocketing millions, buying one more jet and one more yacht meanwhile engineers have to live on Harz IV and workers on road. If this is not capitalism what is it then...

But stupid engineers may be they earn four thousand upto seven thousand Euros maximum in a month while looser stupid manager gets 1 million in a month. If engineer or worker does some mistakes he gets kick in ass but if manager does the mistake and company's ruined as a result he gets 50 million Euros / Dollars extra payment

This is the small but fine difference

Yeah, you'd never ever see members of the Soviet apparatchik or Chinese government pocketing all the wealth at the expense of the workers. Must be capitalism. You've hit the nail on the head there.

Yes. I know this. In Russia and China, the people're exploited only. There're no human rights. If you open your mouth, you can be killed same day only. These're "extra capitalistic" mafia governments. Mafia people're now businessmen and politicians. Earlier they were only killers and usual criminals. Now they've converted to businessmen wearing suits and ties and shaking hands with western politicians. Isn't it a good idea if Wal Mart tries its business idea in Russia or China. There're a lot of human resources in these countries. It must be paradise for them. A lot of people who Can Be exploited. They will always find one person who does the work for less money than the other

"Extra capitalistic mafia governments"? For a moment there I was afraid it was just human nature. Good to know it was the capitalistic nature of communism instead. I'll sleep much better tonight.

They call themselves communist. It's a lie. It's not communism. They're just criminal mafia politicians doing capitalism. They're the dons and people who are part of this mafia club they're the billionaires.

Back on topic:

When does Walmart pull out?

I'd have expected them to be long gone by now but just today drove by a very alive <<super center>>

Anybody know?

That is soooooo cool, I know a few Walmart Managers, so, I am so excited to see what they are buying me for christmas, since they earn millions.

Some small local Wal Mart business leader you're talking about ?
Guys who decide where the shelves will be put and how many people
have to be employed in local store ?
What a joke. They're also part of exploitation system.
What foolish are you talking ?

Don't pretend to be more stupid than you are actually!
I'm talking about the guys at the top!

It is people like Daniel who keep this country back. They have their silly fear of globalization, they keep their teenage grasp of socialist economics into an old age or position of authority and they are the best example of Richard Lord's "compartmentalized German mindset".

My god, boy wake up! Throw your dialectic materialism together with the Mao-bible out of the window!

"Ground" as a production factor? Come on, do you till your field every morning? Ever heard of knowledge or service industry? Ideas and creativity is what counts in the new competition. Not your antiquated notion of "honest work". And money does indeed make the world go round. It pays, for example, engineers' salaries. What is your suggestion? Go back to an agrarian society?

Another thing: You want to see evil? Skip Walk-Mart. Go to China or North Korea, where dialectic materialism helped to create hell on earth.

I have yet to see any of our German friends here on the forum offer up a solution to the problem of big businesses exploiting their workers and coddling their managers. Anybody can whinge about it.

To Slackerconsultant:

My Goodness !

I always am faced to lots of difficulties when talking to politically and economically uneducated people.
I don't have the time and you it seems don't have the brain that I exlain you the matter successfully.
Pls. refer to maybe some news magazines (why not manager-magazin.de ?) what globalisation is about.

Only your ignorant comment that you don't realise how important "Ground" is makes me feel
stopping any discussion with you. Ground first of all means infrastructure financed by common people's tax,
you can add billions of subsidies also. Certainly ground means also an area for building industry complexes that is stolen for instance from poor farmers by "BRIC"-nations-governments (expropiation without proper compensation) and passed on nearly free of cost to multinational companies.

The thing is not being against globalisation in general - it is being against how it is being carried out by corrupt politicians and criminal greedy powerful rich guys. Globalisation - if corretly done could have been an enrichment for all people but if not it will lead us to terrorism and civil wars.

Germany is thrown back but even here you don't know anything. Germany is to collapse because
of jungle of corruption, incompetence of politicians, mismanagement and red-tape. Please keep on reading your mickey mouse magazines and keep out when adults are posting!

I could supply you hundreds of links for your education but I am not to give you private lessons now.

And communism was a good idea on paper, too. And it failed for the same reason globalization is a problem now: it's not in human nature to share freely with one's fellow humans. I, for one, am not surprised about this.


There, there, steady on, now. Germany is not going to collapse.


Ho hum. And once again, this has nothing at all to do with Wal-Mart. Why don't you start a new thread and educate us all, DF? As I hinted before, more ideas about solutions and fewer glum predictions about the sky falling would be far more interesting.

Potential Presidential candidate Barack Obama is now wading into the Wal-Mart debate:
Can Barack Wake Up Wal-Mart?

Crosslinks:
Senator Barack Obama
City of Chicago orders WalMart to pay $10 min wage

Both Wallmarts in Munich close tomorrow, 21.03.07 (or should that be 3/21?). In theory they will open a week later on 29.03.07 as Real, but for the one on Euro-Industry Park I find that difficult to believe at there is already one, recently totally renovated, just 500m down the road. See here for more details.

They'll prob turn it Munich's largest Getrankmarkt

The advertising boards on Heidemannstrasse, just round the corner, are also talking about WalMart reopening next week as Real (after appropriate renovation). So maybe it will be 2 Reals within a few hundred metres?

I was the Euro industry park Wal-Mart yesterday and there are signs up saying it will re-open on the 29th as Real, so I guess there will definitely be 2 within 500m or so of each other, which does seem a bit bit strange to me (although what I know about Supermarket business and economics you could write on the back of a cigarette packet).

Why dont all of you have your clothes and groceries or whatever your basic needs are delivered ot your house? This is the easiest way and the only way I know to shop unless something is tailor made. German stores are too hot anyway. They are like saunas.

What? And take all the fun out of shopping on Saturday mornings with all the old bitties who can't possibly find the time to do it during the week while THE REST OF US ARE WORKING!!!??

What kind of weirdo wants to get clothes delivered?? Do you shop with Kays or Freemans or something... sad!

Also, are you some sort of spaz that you don't know how to go to a store??

You don't need to look at a user's profile to spot the Americans. Home delivery? In Germany? Stores like saunas? Are you unwell?

But if you use Saturday morning for sleeping off Friday night, and then go shopping Saturday afternoon, most of the old biddies have been and gone.

Its a matter of convenience. Why should I stand in line behind some old fool who is struggling to put snow tires and eggs in the same bag. Stores and store owners who are worth their salt will send you a nice selection in your size to choose from and you send the rejects back.
Groceries are so dreary. I mean apples are apples. No sense in wasting time pawing over them and besides why should I struggle with carrying the things to the car or in my house? Let the merchants do it .
I actually love to shop, antique shops , art galleries, jewelry stores.It is a lot of fun. Museums get to be tiring because nothing is for sale although if you know that they are a little short of funds you can always make an offer, sometimes it works. I've done that at the Brooklyn Museum and a few other places to get back some family things.

Walmart...Hummmm
No doubt they closed because they were dumb enough to employ union members. If a store owner or the owner of any firm employs union members then he does not really own his own firm. I would never knowingly hire a union member. The idea reeks of communism.
Of course I do choose my own employees but I do not hire them . That way I am at a distance .
But I do enjoy my employees. They are all such fun. We laugh all day long .

Actually 3, if you also take into account METRO, the parent company of real,-

But of course not all can shop at METRO, unlike real,-

Just ignore him/her.