Posted on 07/11/2017 1:39:50 PM PDT by davikkm
When major employers come to a town, replace the local businesses, suck up the people they have made unemployed and then leave a few years later, there is very little hope of recovery. It is destroying towns and families. And what’s worse, it makes the victims complicit in their own demise.
Ten years ago in McDowell County, West Virginia, a new Walmart came to town. It was warmly embraced as an employer because the coal industry was in decline; but an unexpected side effect (to the local population, not Walmart) was to shut down many of the smaller businesses that employed many of the other townsfolk. And now Walmart have closed down and moved on, leaving the people without work, without the local business infrastructure that existed before, and sadly, without hope of rebuilding.
On 15 January 2016, Walmart announced that it was closing down 154 superstores in the US alone. Many of these are in town like McDowell, that have become reliant on the stores for employment and goods. It is easy to sneer and say that they should have thought about supporting local businesses while they had the chance, but the real villain in the whole episode is the Corporate/Globalist outlook that does not regard people as people, but as a block consumer base to which they have no responsibility.
(Excerpt) Read more at investmentwatchblog.com ...
Seems to me the Walmarts drove out the local business, and now Amazon are driving out the Walmarts. I knew I should have invested in delivery company stocks years ago.
Walmart definitely does take customers from local businesses and cause them to close down. But I don’t think it’s Walmart thats destroying small towns in the US. Very few Walmarts fail and close down. It’s globalization in general and the movement of manufacturing plants to cheap labor nations that’s removing the economic and job base of many towns that then begin to lose their populations.
It is easy to forget that all those small businesses that were driven out by Walmart first drove out other small businesses in order to establish themselves.
I witnessed this long years ago in rural Wisconsin. Main Street was dying and the explanation was that a Wal-Mart had opened sixty miles away.
I like having goods delivered to my door and ordering online
Why doesn’t the author also complain about the decline of the blacksmith and the cobbler?
” It is easy to sneer and say that they should have thought about supporting local businesses while they had the chance, “
If they have no money to spend at Walmart, then they would have had no money to spend supporting local businesses.
“Main Street was dying and the explanation was that a Wal-Mart had opened sixty miles away.”
Sixty miles away? I don’t think that was why ‘Main Street’ was dying ...
The premise of the article seems absurd to me. Retail business is not the economic base of small towns, but more support services that are reliant on the manufacturing, or agricultural, or mining, or fishing, or tourism, or whatever the real economic base(s) of a town is.
Capitalism favors efficiency. Globalism is more efficient than local dependency. WalMart was more efficient than mom & pop. Amazon is more efficient than WalMart. Rail against the wind all you want, the wind ain’t changing.
Hey Corporatist Globalist guy. Sure some small businesses got pushed out by the small businesses Walmart pushed out.
BUT, Globalist guy! The first wave, small against small was healthier capitalism, free enterprise at work.
The second wave was a Goliath like Walmart pushing out a David small business. Trust busting would have been in order back then.
But hey Corportist Globalist guy maybe a new day dawning. Hopefully your days of being able to snarkily defend your assumptions are going to meet with opposition. And Bezos’too.
MAGA.
I don’t think a Wal-Mart can provide sufficient employment to support a town.
Having goods delivered to your door in Los Angeles is 50% of not getting it the scum bags follow delivery trucks around free stuff to them.
I’ve been reading this same story for years.
You have to find WalMart’s weak spots (yes, they do have some) and compete there.
CapitalismFree market favors efficiency. Globalism is more efficient than local dependency. WalMart was more efficient than mom & pop. Amazon is more efficient than WalMart. Rail against the wind all you want, the wind ain’t changing.
I still notice it in small Wisconsin towns and elsewhere especially during tourist season. It comes down to competition. The ma’s and pa’s had been price gouging for decades then along came competition. May the best man win...that’s the american way.
Mark Angelides needs to look at history as this is a recurring cycle over time. It will
continue to change as new innovations are developed to replace outdated methods or equipment.
No, capitalism. Private ownership of industry for profit will always seek efficiency because that maximized profits. now the competition aspect of free enterprise means the less efficient company tends to go out of business. But even without competition (like utility companies) efficiency is profitable and more efficiency is more profitable.
“I witnessed this long years ago in rural Wisconsin. Main Street was dying and the explanation was that a Wal-Mart had opened sixty miles away.”
Yeh, good observation. I grew up around small towns and being a avid hunter spend a good amount of time in and near them. There’s no doubt that the center of the US is hallowing out. Stores, businesses, schools, churches are closing. When I drive around these small towns these days I feel like I’m living a Toby Keith song. But, the reason these towns are dying isn’t because of the Walmarts and such. It’s because the culture HS changed, Internet, social media, mobility, opportunity in the urban areas. Example; what young person wants to sit a Dairy Queen in the middle of the Big Empty when he/she could be in Big D making good money, meeting new people, heck- having fun.
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