https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/walmart-prices-poverty-economy/681122/
Walmart’s many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there.
Two new research papers challenge that view. Using creative new methods, they find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers.
I am shocked, shocked I tell ya.
Listen if the poors don’t like it, they can start their own supermarket chain. That’s the beauty of the free market, clearly there is simply not a single person on the entire world with a superior entrepreneurial spirit than the founders of fucking Walmart.
Wow economists from 1997 just called and…
It’s weird to see this acknowledged over and over and over again every few years.
The Bentonville, Ark., chain founded by billionaire Sam Walton got its start 28 years ago by opening stores in rural towns like the 5,600-population Hearne. The 1,485-store, 32-state chain is the fastest growing retailer in the USA. K mart is its chief rival.
But it also has a reputation for hurting small-town businesses that can’t match the lower prices the chain can offer due to volume buying.
The Wal-Mart effect has been so huge it’s spawned the formation of consulting firms that specialize in advising small-town businesses on handling the arrival of a Wal-Mart.
—Julie Morris, “Store shuts doors on Texas town,” USA Today, October 11, 1990
The town I went to high school in resisted getting a walmart for many years but ultimately succumbed and it drove out so many local businesses just as everyone feared.
A season later after this, Hank and everyone else have become completely indifferent to shopping at the Megalow Mart, most likely due to local business being driven out or becoming complacent treat hogs due to the low prices.
A show truly ahead of its time for noticing the obvious patterns of the time. This mirrors my shitty small southern US town’s experience of having Walmart come to town. A surprising amount of resistance (mostly from local business owners), then a complacency and even appreciation for the beast that devoured the local economy, because of the SAVINGS.
New research
It’s not new you dipshit
So using the full weight of Wall Street and their infinite debt derivative mechanisms to systematically gut the ever living fuck out of local communities at a loss isn’t sustainable? Well…no shit.
Amazon is next. They ran the same racket. Sure the debt schemes can make a single family…shareholder very obscenely wealthy, but screwing with the fundementals of the market by grossly rewarding something that makes no profit is unsustainable.
Before Walmart we had a healthy competition between stores in my town. The profits were also there in spades. It was an ample supply of jobs.we had people not only bag your groceries, but take them to your car and load them in the car too. Lots of high school kids got their start that way. Then they would spend that money going out to eat, going to the movies, saving for school, buying their 1st cars.
Now well only Meijer and Family Fare/ Spartan remain with Walmart and you have to bag your own damned groceries and have an A.I. camera publicly accuse you of theft if your hand moves the wrong way.
