As another poster stated, Walmart and other large companies are already violating federal law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act
>And what happens if walmart closed up shop
Everything explodes and people die in the streets.... No, other businesses move in to fill the economic needs because there is a profit to be made and provide jobs in doing so.
>Because they're sending goon squads to trash
You have a horrifically simplistic world view and can't imagine where goon squads actually are.
There was an article around 2 decades ago on how Walmart manipulates prices at an unimaginable scale via their suppliers. If you supply Walmart they automatically become your biggest customer. Walmart knows this, and has you by the proverbial balls. If you don't meet their demands they drop you in a heartbeat which is a death sentence for any business who's capitalization is not in the 10s of billions. There was a saying in this article I can no longer find but to summarize.
"To compete against Walmart is to invite death. To work with Walmart is to embrace it".
Simply put they are so large they have near monopoly power over a good chunk of manufacturing.
>There was an article around 2 decades ago on how Walmart manipulates prices at an unimaginable scale via their suppliers. If you supply Walmart they automatically become your biggest customer. Walmart knows this, and has you by the proverbial balls. If you don't meet their demands they drop you in a heartbeat which is a death sentence for any business who's capitalization is not in the 10s of billions. There was a saying in this article I can no longer find but to summarize.
So what's the complaint here, that walmart negotiates aggressively, passing those better prices to buyers, and that's... bad? Given we're in a thread complaining about healthcare, should walmart do the opposite, instead using the insurance company strategy of encouraging their suppliers to pad their margins, so they can offer "modest" (in % terms, high in absolute terms) markups?