I've always said that Dell is the Walmart of computers... and now they are! Well kinda

This is a good way for Dell to get rural America where the working poor live. They seem to be settling to be the kings of the low end. Not sure that is a growth market however outside of the developing so called third world markets. Oh Dell how thee have fallen.

The bouncing happy face ball can roll back prices on the Dell's any further. They're already bottom of the barrel, I mean rock bottom prices.

'Oh, Dell. How thou hast fallen,' guest. But yes. I laughed out loud when I read the headline, though that's probably exactly the market they should be going after.

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Tiger wrote:
The bouncing happy face ball can roll back prices on the Dell's any further. They're already bottom of the barrel, I mean rock bottom prices.

Yeah, Dell provides inexpensive computers. But I don't think the WalMart move was about lowering prices, it's about putting Dell's into a brick & mortar.

The Manhattan Apple Store is pretty cool, but I just hate that name, Genius Bar. It feels like those hipster faux-intellectual coffee haus types of places.

It's probably going to be like shopping at Fry's. If you have to ask a question about the product you might as well ask a blank wall because no one there will no anything. I would imagine already a very poor experience for anyone shopping for a computer unless they know exactly what they want and what features Dell already has installed.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/

This movie will show you how towns lost their mom and pop stores, how millions of uninsured people work for Walmart, how Walmart cracked down on Unions, and how Walmart exploited child labor in the third world like no other company. There is a high cost to their low price. It is the cost in people.

WOW! Walmart.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when they P/E for Walmarts next quarter and see the genius get fired for putting dell in walmarts.

I use to have respect for dell as be the Macs of the PC world with a quality product. Like the Dodge Viper of PCs but this move is just plan stupid.

Have you been in a walmart? Sheeze, no offense to all you walmarters but, you don't need to have anything but change to buy in there. Hey I for a bargin but, $#!%, the stores are awful. They're like an Apple store on minimum wage and, the gneius bar is a NUT bar.

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gopher wrote:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473107/

This movie will show you how towns lost their mom and pop stores, how millions of uninsured people work for Walmart, how Walmart cracked down on Unions, and how Walmart exploited child labor in the third world like no other company. There is a high cost to their low price. It is the cost in people.

And for the other side to that coin...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KrjQqIXHdU

http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/prevepisodes.do?episodeid=s5/walmart

Oh for the love of Pete! Unions...good. Big corporations...BAD! I could go on ad nauseum about how wrong headed this is, but I won't. Of all people, Penn and Teller do the BEST pont-by-point refutation of the "evils" of Wal-Mart I have ever seen. The links above just give snippets of the whole episode, but I'm sure it's out there in the interwebs.

Now, I see this as nothing but a headache for Wal-Mart. Why? Most of the appliances they sell at Wal-Mart are nowhere near as complex or fraught with potential support needs as a computer. When a customer buys a Dell from Wal-Mart, they are going to expect (though wrongly so) that they can get service and support from the store. While this has the potential to get millions of computers in front of millions of people who might not have gone to a computer store to buy one, I think the repercussions of the coming customer service NIGHTMARE far outweigh the benefit in sales. You think the Dell brand has been damaged before...just wait.

Yes, I usually go to Penn and Teller for my information source. When they are not busy doing their comedic magic act I am sure they are spending hours studying the issue, and even working at Walmart to gain an insider's persepctive.

Fact of the matter is this: the United States up until about fifteen years ago used to tax imports to 1) raise money, and 2) protect Americans jobs. In the height of the biggest economic boom ever, greedy corporations lobbied Congress to create free trade zones so that they could utilize slave labor in countries like China, and import the products tax free back to the United States. Moroever, they receive tax breaks for moving the companies over seas, and money earned there.


Companies wanting to build here cannot compete with slave labor and unfavorable tax breaks, and as such, all the jobs are going over seas where companies do not have to worry about human rights violations. China has three classes of workers 1) military, 2) prisoners, and 3) regular folks who cannot vote (but who are employed by the Chinese Communists who own the companies). Category 1) and 2) are in fact a free source of labor. Often political prisoners (you know those who speak bad about their government) are in category two. Category three are very low paid workers who live in a country where they cannot voice any opposition to try and improve what any Amerian would find to be appauling working conditions.

When you buy a product made in China you are 1) supporting a repressive communist regime that owns all the companies, and 2) are doing so at the expense of your fellow country men and women.

That is beyond debate: you've sold out americans to save a few bucks.

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acdc1174 wrote:
Oh for the love of Pete! Unions...good. Big corporations...BAD! I could go on ad nauseum about how wrong headed this is, but I won't. Of all people, Penn and Teller do the BEST pont-by-point refutation of the "evils" of Wal-Mart I have ever seen. The links above just give snippets of the whole episode, but I'm sure it's out there in the interwebs.

Are you basing that on actual experience, or on what you think you know from what you've read? Have you actually established manufacturing relationships in China? If not, then you don't really know what you are talking about, do you?

(My brother's company HAS established manufacturing relationships with China. You have no idea what you are talking about).

Ah, so you can confidently assert that workers' rights in China are on par with that of any democratic country?

I guess not. So what's your apology this time?

How amazingly arrogant of you to think that every country desires to be just like the US. China has never been a democracy in the thousands of years of its existence. They seem to have survived just fine.

You need to get out and experience more of the world. Then maybe you'll realize that there is not one system that works for everybody, as much as we might like to think that there is.

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Anonymous wrote:
Yes, I usually go to Penn and Teller for my information source. When they are not busy doing their comedic magic act I am sure they are spending hours studying the issue, and even working at Walmart to gain an insider's persepctive.

I never said I go to Penn and Teller for my information. I said that OF ALL PEOPLE, Penn and Teller give a good point-by-point refutation. If you weren't so quick to judge, you might have caught that.

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Anonymous wrote:
Fact of the matter is this: the United States up until about fifteen years ago used to tax imports to 1) raise money, and 2) protect Americans jobs.

This is absolutely true.

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Anonymous wrote:
In the height of the biggest economic boom ever, greedy corporations lobbied Congress to create free trade zones so that they could utilize slave labor in countries like China, and import the products tax free back to the United States. Moroever, they receive tax breaks for moving the companies over seas, and money earned there.

This is somewhat true. Yes, SOME corporations lobbied for these free trade zones. Others were vehemently opposed, fearing an inability to compete with the cheap labor abroad. It is however not a tax BREAK that these companies are receiving. It is that the corporations are taxed at significantly lower rates in other countries. This is an unintended consequence of American tax system and symptomatic of the punitive nature of the system. When you punish those entities for their success, those successful entities will go be successful someplace else. Money is like water. It will flow to places where there is the least amount of resistance.

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Anonymous wrote:
Companies wanting to build here cannot compete with slave labor and unfavorable tax breaks, and as such, all the jobs are going over seas where companies do not have to worry about human rights violations.

And whose fault is this? The American tax code by comparison to those of other countries is oppressive. Labor laws in many states requiring benefits for certain workers are ridiculous to the point of being nothing more than state-mandated welfare at the corporation's expense. As for wages...thank the unions for that one. While we have a pretty low (but I think fair) minimum wage here in the US, the vast majority of "jobs lost" to outsourcing have NOT been minimum wage jobs. My burgers aren't getting flipped by some slave-laborer in China. Manufacturing in the US has been hardest hit and that is 100% the fault of the unions pricing their labor out of the market and negotiating unsustainable and uncompetitive benefits and retirement packages. Look to the hard lesson that General Motors is now learning.

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Anonymous wrote:
China has three classes of workers 1) military, 2) prisoners, and 3) regular folks who cannot vote (but who are employed by the Chinese Communists who own the companies). Category 1) and 2) are in fact a free source of labor. Often political prisoners (you know those who speak bad about their government) are in category two. Category three are very low paid workers who live in a country where they cannot voice any opposition to try and improve what any Amerian would find to be appauling working conditions.

No argument here. That sucks for them. When enough people in China have had enough, they will change it. In the meantime, unless we are talking about armed intervention, or brinksmanship politics, the best we can do in the West is hope to infiltrate China with our ideas, culture, and commerce. these things, over time can have a dramatic impact. Japan post-WWII, the USSR in the late 1980's, and India in the 1990's are all great examples of this.

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Anonymous wrote:
When you buy a product made in China you are 1) supporting a repressive communist regime that owns all the companies, and 2) are doing so at the expense of your fellow country men and women.

Partially true. Yes, I am supporting the Communist regime in China, but they hardly "own all the companies." I also support workers in Mexico, Taiwan, and yes, the good 'ole USA. And as for my puchases being "at the expense of my fellow countrymen and women" I say hogwash. Economics doesn't happen in a vaccuum. While some jobs are lost, others are created through entrepreneurship, hard work, and ingenuity. If American manufacturing wants to compete, it needs to do things "better, cheaper, faster." To argue that we must institute laws to protect our industries is an affront to the individual workers and entrepreneurs in this country. It says, "you aen't good enough to compete." It may mean that our ways of doing things must change, and that governmental policies must change, but that is the way of the world- improvise, adapt, and overcome.

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Anonymous wrote:
That is beyond debate: you've sold out americans to save a few bucks.

No...greed, a sense of entitlement, fear of change, and protectionism did this.

For the record, I MAYBE buy from Wal-Mart 1 or 2 times a year. Not for political reasons, but simply because I hate the crowds and I usually don't purchase the brands that they carry. I still think this is a BAD move for Dell and THAT is what this thread is supposed to be about.

Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap

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Guest wrote:
How amazingly arrogant of you to think that every country desires to be just like the US. China has never been a democracy in the thousands of years of its existence. They seem to have survived just fine.

That's not what was said. What was asked was, are workers' rights in China on par with those in democratic nations? Chinese citizens may or may not want democracy, but I think it's even more arrogant and insulting to imply that they're perfectly fine and dandy toiling away for little pay to supply Westerners with cheap goods.

China has a long and rich history, but being the sweatshop for the Westerner world is not part of that history.

Little pay is a relative term. Yes, compared to the US and western companies they make little pay. However, their cost of living is much lower too. Many of the workers in electronics assembly companies, for instance, make far more than the average chinese citizen. But compared to US manufacturers they are making a pittance. However, their housing is provided, as is medical care, and food is very inexpensive for them. They are working in good condititions (confirmed by visits to the facilities). Talking to them you find that they are actually quite happy and don't really understand what all the fuss is about.

Look, I'm not supporting the communist regime, nor the idea of worker abuse. I am just saying that it is foolish to put western concepts and ideals on a culture that very few in the western world understand.

My wife worked there when we first dated. She had many tales to tell of people scraping by in jobs they were miserable in, the company (which isn't scraping by) playing games with the definition "full-time" and "part-time" to avoid paying benefits, people told to work during breaks because the company couldn't afford to hire an extra person.

The place is basically a sweatshop for retail workers. Perfect place for someone like Michael "I'd shut (Apple) down and give the money back to the shareholders" Dell to sell his dreck.

I use Dells every day, and I'm not impressed, nor am I with Wal-Mart.

As for China, they don't have to be like the U.S. by any means, but they can stop executing people for minor crimes for starters. The rulers of China are vicious scum who deserve the bullets they've shot into the backs of tens of thousands of people's heads.

Oh, and they can stop selling those peoples' kidneys, as well.

and Limbaugh just a little too much...