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Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

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Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#71

Post by freeopinion »

notyourday wrote: post #45
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.

There's nothing great about small towns. All of this is waxing of people who don't live in small towns that think it is oh so nice to be able to go to a cute little store on vacation at 11:30am to get a muffin on Saturday. Never mind that the store itself is closed Monday to Friday.

I live in a small town. It's great! There's a Walmart in the next town over.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#72

Post by [deleted] »

scottLobster wrote: post #27
lotsofpulp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if most people under 60 or even 50 know what strolling down “Main Street” means. In my 30+ years, I have never once strolled down a Main Street. I have always gone to big stores and malls (and now online shopping).

Sounds like you don't get out much. I'm 35, grew up in a sterile DC-area bedroom community and even I walked down main streets when I went 10 minutes down the road on shopping trips. Then again there are a lot of cities/towns on the east coast that predate the car, so there's probably an increased concentration of "main streets".

[deleted]

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#73

Post by pessimizer »

mcdonje wrote: post #57
pessimizer wrote: post #47

What's the difference? The point is that when the Walmart closes, the small town becomes a hellhole.

That's because the Walmart opened.

What's because the Walmart opened? If you're saying that Walmart's crush local commerce, then close when it's in their business interest to do so (they'll just have to drive to the next Walmart anyway), then that is also what I was saying.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#74

Post by batch12 »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #28
throwawaysleep wrote: post #6

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…

Except that we should have more long lasting things and should not add to the garbage pile because of cheapness and laziness :( But money sure trumps environmentalist idealism. Different topic: As a foreigner, really every visit to a Wallmart left me with a very strange feeling, because almost every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way, demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly th…

> every employee had a zombie like appearance one or the other way, demotivated, sad or emotionless looking, slurping slowly through the shop.. like employees super abused or completely lost and aimless. Nowhere else, even in cheap fast foods or similar I got that, why?

When I worked there, the job felt pointless. It's a neverending pile of meaningless work that you can never make progress on. You're disrespected by customers, paid little, and know you're really just a cog in the machine. I didn't show up for work for a week before I quit. Nobody noticed I was gone and they were as surprised when I quit as I was that I wasn't fired. Every time I clocked in, I was hit with the feeling of purgatory. The useless drag of another day-- all for the benefit of -- ?

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#75

Post by solarmist »

pessimizer wrote: post #53
solarmist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding Sam Walton was a pretty quality leader, the company went to shit went he died and his kids took over.

Being good at making money with Walmart has nothing to do with whether Walmart destroys small towns. Number of small businesses destroyed is probably a positive metric for Walmart.

What I mean is that he cared about things beyond making money. Early Walmarts were good places to work for and shop at. They were genuinely good for the communities they came to. And they didn't have enough power yet to dictate insane terms to their suppliers either. Back then, they were way better than the alternatives like Kmart and JCPenny's.

I say this as someone who grew up in rural Minnesota (a town of less than 10k), and when Walmart came to my town it mattered a lot to the whole town.

But this stopped being true by the mid-90s (about ten years after he died).

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#76

Post by SoftTalker »

r00fus wrote: post #61
throwawaysleep wrote: post #6

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…

Simply amazing. And I thought I was wasteful. What happens to the old mowers? Does your friend sell or give away his old mower? I almost feel like our way of life (artificially cheap) is going to hit a brick wall once gas stops being cheap (peak oil).

Peak oil was supposed to happen a decade ago (maybe more?). It ain't happening. Adjusted for inflation, gasoline is as cheap as ever.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#77

Post by gtowey »

This article is pure corporate propaganda.

Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back.

They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by other stores. How can local businesses compete? Once they all go out of business and there are no choices left Walmart is free to raise prices and recoup their losses and more.

Then there are the jobs. Low wage, dead end. They create the new working poor where you can't survive even with a job so you go on government assistance as well. Subsidized serfdom.

And to top it all off, if they aren't profitable, they won't hesitate to close up shop and leave a smoking crater in the economy of that same small town that is near impossible to recover from. There are no more small business and it's near impossible to start them again because local employees have been subsisting on starvation wages.

Sure, if you ignore all the horrible realities of the Walmart lifecycle, it sure is nice that they provide a convenient way to buy lots of cheap garbage!

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#78

Post by ssharp »

shortlongterm wrote: post #22
throwawaysleep wrote: post #6

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…

Is this satire? Lawn equipment ain't complicated enough to maintain to justify throwing out every season. This is insane consumerism.

Every season seems beyond insane.

However, let's say you make some common mistake like leaving the engine filled with gas during the winter (assuming you're in such a climate). How would you go about getting it fixed? Assume the carb is gummed up -- it's a $10-20 part, plus labor, plus the hassle of finding a small engine repair service to fix it, dropping off, and picking up. It's this vs. going to the Walmart website, clicking a button, and having the lawn mower show up at your house in a day or two.

I always bias towards maintenance and repair but there are tons of people with no knowledge of how to fix something and no desire to learn to. With services costing more and more, buying new is often a more appealing choice, sadly.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#79

Post by jake_morrison »

batch12 wrote: post #33
throwawaysleep wrote: post #6

It’s price and the ease the price enables. Low price demonstratably rules in everything from plane tickets to groceries to basic services to clothing as it enables a life of abundance and mental ease. A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to mainta…

> A friend loves Walmart as it means he no longer has to maintain his lawnmower. He just throws it away and buys a new one annually at the start of the season. He can still mow his lawn while abandoning the need to maintain mechanical knowledge. It's hard for me to respect this as a valid choice. Waste and consumption concerns aside, the justification of not knowing (or wanting to know) how to perform simple maintena…

When I was a kid I ran a lawn service, and I got all my engines out of the trash.

When the mowers are cheap, it's rational. They get the lawnmower out of the shed the first time in spring and it won't start, it would cost a significant amount to get it fixed, and they have to waste your time and wrestle a dirty lawnmower in and out of your car. So they buy a cheap new one and throw the old one away.

Paying someone is still more expensive than doing it yourself.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#80

Post by r00fus »

ep103 wrote: post #46
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is more about the systematic destroying of the small town. They open multiple Walmart's, the small town stores go out of business, then they can close some percentage of the Walmart's to consolidate into a few stores in central locations, now all of the small town people have to drive farther to get anything at all. And the small town dies.

Aye, I lived in Ithaca, NY for a while, and they had a local law that the only businesses within the town center could not be franchise stores, and had to be independently owned. Chain stores could open, but had to do so down the highway about ~2 miles away. It is _incredible_ the difference it makes on town culture, and _how much better it was_

Ithaca is a special case as it's essentially the main town outside of Cornell University.

Not all small towns have a major research university or other dependable benefactor around - most of the small town representatives can easily be bought/bribed by a major chain.

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