When Wal-Mart leaves small towns behind
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Channel: PBS NewsHour
Views: 2,474,787
Rating: 4.6309357 out of 5
Keywords: walmart, small towns, winnsboro, winnsboro south carolina, retail, business, economy, jobs
Id: JgJt4sArUHI
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)
Published: Sat Feb 20 2016
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.
...and now they will drive 25 minutes to the other Walmart
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Winnsboro,+SC/Walmart+Supercenter,+321+Killian+Rd,+Columbia,+SC+29203/@34.2724551,-81.1676044,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x88561747f015debb:0xb152eb1c56c1a438!2m2!1d-81.0864776!2d34.3807012!1m5!1m1!1s0x88f8a8609de61a37:0x6b30f8ff56e1bdc!2m2!1d-80.9663359!2d34.1380584!3e0
Hm. I take it not many people on reddit have experience with more rural towns in the US? The reality of a lot of those towns that you see passing you by on the off-ramps of highways is that they may only have a couple stores in their town. A big gas station like a sheetz, maybe one or two fast food places, and a big box store like a Walmart, Ollie's, etc. These types of places are usually called "Anytown USA" because they're all so interchangeable you wouldn't be able to tell one from another 'cause they all have the same layout and the same issues. If you've ever driven across a few states and had to pull off for gas, you probably pulled into one.
Drive through some of the back parts of PA, KY, WV, OH, NC/SC, Maine, basically any of the states that are mostly drive-through-and-ignore outside of a couple of cities.
When Walmart became the corporate behemoth it's now famous for being, they intentionally went into these smaller cities and demolished what were likely very small businesses that helped support the town. People-owned businesses can't survive against a conglomerate that can afford to have rock-bottom prices in a podunk town because they make up in profit elsewhere. And, at the same time, Walmart flourished in these areas because they are largely low income. When you're feeding a family of 4 for a week on $30, you are going to come to depend on the Walmart. So, eventually, Walmart drove those tiny places out of business and became THE one-stop shop in town. It was carefully planned forced dependence.
So now Walmart is pulling out of certain towns for whatever reasons - they say 'restructuring' but they've closed down several stores to spite workers who were trying to Unionize. This is their way of 'punishing' the towns for having uppity workers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-over-labor-activism/
So now this lifeblood of the town disappears and you are left with a lot of lower income people in a small, mostly isolated area that are now living in a food desert.
https://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/index.html
And, to top that off, a few hundred people have lost their jobs with there not being any real replacements nearby. You see that a little in this video. Yeah, the hardware store is going to hire more people, but 5 vs. the 500 that lost their jobs at the Wally-world...not quite enough.
"Well surely people will see the benefit of investing and re-opening small businesses with higher prices since people won't have a choice but to shop there!"
Yea, no. If that were a thing, food deserts wouldn't exist at all. But they are a reality. Nobody is going to invest in a store in these lower income areas because you canNOT charge higher prices and expect to stay in business. These people don't have the MONEY to pay the higher prices. Partly because they don't have the jobs to get the money.
So this is a lose/lose situation for everyone. This town may recover, small businesses may come back, but the likelihood that the town will be able to support itself is probably gone. Most people will commute out of the area to other walmarts in other towns and eventually the smart ones will move away entirely and you have the death of another small town in the US. Is that what needs to happen for progress? I don't know. The people losing the homes their family have lived in for decades would probably disagree.
This was intentionally and coldly calculated by the executives and logistics teams at Walmart. This was, in essence, what they wanted to happen. They intentionally went in and broke up the shopping infrastructure of small towns to cause dependence, and now after destroying the area they are free to move out because they've created that dependence. It's disgusting. That is the reality of corporations like Walmart. If you go to smaller towns in the US you'll hear a lot, A LOT of people who express regret that they have to keep pumping money into the Walmart machine - but they literally do not have any choice between that, driving 50 miles to the nearest city weekly for groceries - or going hungry.
So yeah. If you've never been to a more rural, small town, I encourage you to pull off the highway one day in a random spot and drive down the main road that probably has the bulk of the town's economy in that small area. (Fast food/shopping strip and that's it.) And realize that there are people LIVING there. That's how the US is. It's easy for people in bigger cities, or places like CA to chuckle and laugh at these poor, misguided podunk people who refuse to leave these smaller areas. But think about it. If everyone from Anytown Ohio decided they wanted to up and move to California, the state already has a rent crisis in some areas. Where are they going to live? Or, if they can afford to put more towards the rent, where are YOU going to live?
Just like any job - it's not a family - have recently just learned that first hand. The people who kept saying "but we're like a family" were the ones hardest hit when it became obvious we were going down
"They thought it was going to be great news like increase in wage."
Did these people know they were working for WalMart?
Around here in rural Kansas, Walmart had these new small town stores that opened up. They bought land, built new buildings, hired employees and opened shop. Gas, groceries, pharmacy and a mix of standard Walmart items...just on a smaller scale.
Fast forward 3 months later, they closed every store. Some small towns they build them at had local grocery stores close down because they could not compete. After Walmart closed, now people are spent driving to the next city over.
Did not happen here, we still drive 30 minutes to the nearest city with stores and things. We do have a small grocery store with high prices and a Dollar General available for things needed immediately. I think the stores they opened was all just a way to spend/lose money for tax purposes. :P
It's so odd seeing candy at a pharmacy... o.O
Black Frank Langella at 7:45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJt4sArUHI&t=7m45s
Nobody else thinks it’s funny the manager at a hardware store is named Mr. Broom?
Bitch when they open......bitch when they close.