The stores in small towns and rural areas across America have been devastated by the arrival of Walmarts, whose low prices and foreign imports drive the small stores out of business. Main streets across the nation are marked by empty stores.
This is a story of a near century-old store in Moundsville, West Virginia, that managed to survive. The story explains how Ruttenberg’s has withstood the competition.
It is a reminder that competition can make you stronger, or, if the competition is a mega-giant, it can kill you and wipe out your town’s Main Street.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The High Cost of Low Price – a video produced many years ago, showing the tremendous harm WALMART inflicts on smaller towns. I just checked and this video apparently still available on YouTube.
and in many small rural towns you can drive to the outskirts and see empty big box store after empty big box store until you finally get to a huge Walmart
Just going by my gut feeling…I have boycotted Walmart from day one.
Sounds like a really nice place. Although I do wonder how many people it employed and what the wages and benefits are like.
I can remember visiting a general type store in a small town in Colorado. In addition to every day items, it had a small cafe where the locals met and discussed events of the day. It was a very homey vibe, and it was a family business. Small businesses can compete on the basis of quality goods and personal service, neither of which Walmart offers.
I once was looking for a child’s sleeping bag, and Walmart was the only place that had it. Never again! Everything in the huge store came from China. The sleeping bag was badly made. My grandson wouldn’t sleep in it. I gave it to the local thrift shop.I’ll never set foot in Walmart again.
Notice the article could not help regurgitating Walmart’s claim to invest in buy American. It would be nice it reporters did some homework.
https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/press-release/fact-sheet-walmarts-made-in-america-pledge/
Wow, Joel!!!
The Walmart corporation is not at all interested in the welfare of a community nor the people living in that community. Mrs. Walton and her kids are only interested the profit and loss statement of the corporation. And, Mrs. Walton is one of the one-percenters in this country that is trying to destroy public education.
When Walmart opens in a small town, it harms small businesses within at least a 25-mile radius by undercutting prices. Main streets die. If the Walmart Corporation doesn’t make enough profit, they will close the store, leaving dead Main streets behind and nowhere to shop.
When Walmart opens a store small businesses end up closing. These building can and in many case remain empty for years or are never used again. This creates urban blight, vandalism, increased areas of crime, etc., etc. etc.
When Walmart pulls out the building they left behind is so large there is a good chance that it will remain empty for years because of it size.
BTW, HGTV is running a show called “Home Town Kickstart.” HGTV sends outs one of its designers to help revive communities in small towns suffering from a loss of manufacturing or a shift in the interstate hwy. They help local businesses spruce up and better market their goods or services. They also fix up the home of one the community members. It’s a “feel good” show that is needed now.
No question, Walmart is too big and too powerful. Truth be told, the smaller shops sell goods from China, Japan, etc. just as much as Walmart.
I came across this comment from an anonymous very pro union guy and former union organizer: QUOTE – In 20 years of work experience, where I’m not sure how many different employers I’ve had but think it’s around 20-25, and most of those years spent in the service sector; the absolute worst places I’ve worked have been “mom and pop” shops.
There’s a lot of pablum about buying local and supporting small business. Whatever. The reason, I think, the small businesses I worked for were such dreadful experiences is because they were often places where the power differential between employee and boss was directly felt on a day to day basis. The independent shop owner can explode in anger, regularly compel you to go to the airport to pick up their relatives as a “personal favor,” and create a small scale sycophantic fiefdom around themselves where coworkers go around describing the owner “as a second mom.” I’ve also had a small business owner start passing bad checks to employees due to his drug habits, and you quickly find out how easy it is to work for two months without pay and no recourse through small courts claims (I mean, how many people can seriously afford the year or more long process to get a few paychecks in backpay?)
None of this exonerates larger companies and their exploitative practices, but there is something on a daily level that is advantageous, or at least easier to deal with, when a layer of bureaucratic distance exists between you and “the boss.” END QUOTE
I frequented a mom and pop hardware store because it was close at hand but the owner was really obnoxious and the goods were made in China or other foreign countries and not particularly cheap. Trying to return items could be a real hassle if not impossible. In the end, I just stopped shopping there because of the bad vibes from the owner in spite of the adjacentness/proximity advantage. On the other hand, the local bike shop was/is very good and the owners are very helpful (though most of the bikes and accessories are made overseas). I would never buy a bike from Walmart because the salespeople are not bike experts.
The concluding paragraph had me smiling. A feel good story. I’ve never read anything “feel good” about Walmart and the putrid family that started it.
In other news, bless our young people! Watch out Pugs, they are coming for you!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/video-iowa-middle-schoolers-walk-out-in-protest-of-supreme-court-draft-on-abortion/ar-AAX0VYc?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=4e9872d72a6b4602b7cf0b8933e461a2
Here’s a video of the middle-school walkout:
https://www.mynbc5.com/article/middle-schoolers-walk-out-protest-supreme-court-abortion/39932934#
In still other news, the body count for the dead women and children and elderly who sheltered in the beautiful theatre in Mariupol that the Russians bombed is now 600. And yesterday, the Russians bombed a school in Luhansk, spilling the rubble of the school onto the 90 people sheltering in its basement and killing at least 60 of them.
I saw a news report saying that Putin might have cancer. But, of course, Putin IS a cancer.