On a day when another family announces their departure from our once fair city I continue to be amazed at the tortured arguments a few list members make for living and attempting to shop here. BTW, the exodus from Minneapolis continues unabated- the 3 houses on my block are still empty and for sale,
Dyna continues to ignore easily obtained and widely known facts to state as "fact" her personal ax-grinding. Three homes still empty in her neighborhood, and there must be a mass exodus! In reality, the opposite is true. Minneapolis' population actually grew between 1990 and 2000, the first time it has grown in decades -- a fact easily verifiable by looking at widely available census data, and trumpeted in headlines in the Minneapolis Star Tribune when the 2000 census data became available. Last Tuesday, a home in my neighborhood went up for sale. Yesterday, it was already sold. Hundreds of new housing units are being built in Minneapolis. Developers are not stupid -- they know they will sell. Where do you suppose those people are coming from?
As for the "few list members" -- well, there are only a couple dozen active writers on this list, anyway, so 3 or 4 people is a significant percentage. There may well be others who like me have tired of reading and responding to Dyna's blindered, factually-wrong arguments. Lack of obvious opposition to one's ideas does not make one right. Anyway, from where I sit, it appears the majority, not a few, are in favor of living and shopping in Minneapolis.
Strange- I find the highest percentage of american made stuff at a big box- Fleet Farm. BTW, you may not have noticed that we don't make much here anymore.
That's right, America's manufacturing capability is greatly diminished and most everything we buy is made off-shore. That's the result of your much-lauded economies of scale and large corporations. Small mom-and-pop businesses, even bigger businesses, cannot afford the huge investment it takes to move operations off shore. Only mega-big corporations can really do that effectively. Once again, your short-sighted support for BIG has resulted in shooting yourself in the foot. Hundreds of thousands of good paying union jobs have ceased to exist because they were moved off shore.
And my purchasing power is not about to change a big corporations behavior one iota. Boycotts often only work when a very big customer (like a city) becomes involved in them.
And your one single vote for state and federal government likewise has no effect, right? What a defeatist attitude. If enough individual people boycott something, things change. It's happened over and over. How many products has Wal-Mart pulled from their shelves because some small group of close-minded religious zealots complained that they were morally opposed to them? Several in the past 3 years that I can recall.
Small businesses also tend to pay less and offer fewer opportunities for advancement for minorities, etc..
Prove it. Give some evidence, any evidence. You are making the statement, therefore, it is incumbent on you to support it.
The big company has economies of scale in administration as well as other areas and can spend a lower percentage of revenue on administration. BTW, your small business will probably need a computer/web geek, HR person, etc. too.
Once again, where's the evidence? Do you even have a clue? In my experience, big corporations are far less efficient, and have far more administrative over-head. When I worked at Control Data Corporation in the late 70's and 80's, they literally had one-third (33.3%) of the employees as administrative. Control Data was number 70 on the Fortune 100 list, so they were one of the largest companies in the world. I've also worked at 2 of the largest health care companies in the world -- lots and lots of administrative overhead.
I've also worked at several small companies -- usually zero or one person did all of the "HR" work. Where I work now, that one person also does the payroll, where as at other companies, we contracted it out to local payroll companies. Hiring out services provides more opportunities for other companies to exist and provide employment. Contracted services are often cheaper than doing in-house, because the service company can specialize in what they do, and horrors, actually gain some economies by doing the same thing for multiple customers.
Sears at Chicago and Lake was not big box, regardless of many square feet the store may have been. Likewise with any other historical stores Dyna has mentioned. The term big box came into use recently to describe NOT just the size of a store, but a method of retailing using a large, cheaply constructed building.
That method included minimal interior decoration (one did not see the "rafters" in a Sears store); at least a certain square footage that typically was larger than most, but not all, stores; was NOT departmental like Sears but instead focused primarily on one or several lines of products; sold only the top selling items in each category; provided few advancement opportunities for the vast majority of the low-paid floor sales staff; leveraged large buying power to make manufacturers and distributors cut their prices and even build customized lines of products for the retailer (try finding the exact same highly-advertised and pushed Model XYZ TV you found at Best Buy anywhere else); and a variety of other techniques. Stamp them out like clones across America. Control the heating, air-conditioning and lighting from a central location via remote control. Merchandise the stores from a central location. Remove all but the minimal control over the operation of the store from local management and do it centrally.
That's what big box is all about. That is exactly what Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Comp-USA, Office Depot, Office Max, Home Depot, etc. are all about. Lack of local control, lack of local opportunity, lack of local responsibility and lack of local investment. Fewer jobs. And lots of corporate welfare, because when you're that big, cities, counties and states foolishly give it to you.
All of which is why I remain opposed to Minneapolis giving one more dime in public subsidy to any large developer of retail business, and remain skeptical of any such subsidy to any other type of business or residentail development.
Chris Johnson Fulton
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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