This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Stores like Walmart and Dollar stores opened up, and consumer made the choice to shop there rather than at local grocery stores.
Sounds like they are getting exactly what they wanted?
Reminds me of folks in SF who bemoan the loss of a local butcher store. Sure, they may like buying organic cuts of meat at $15/lb, but it's obviously most people don't, that's why those stores went out of business.
Exactly this. The article somehow skips from "the grocery store closed" to "we need to open a new one" with almost no attention to what would be different the second time around. (If I may be cynical, the extensive focus on co-ops and community markets makes me think the reporter assumed the old grocery stores just weren't sufficiently profitable, and didn't ask whether they were even solvent.) It has one line which invalidates almost all of the other commentary: "In town after town, people said their greatest challenge was enticing their neighbors away from dollar stores or the Walmart four towns over."
There are lots of things worth talking about here. The way low incomes push people towards unhealthy diets to save money. The tradeoff between lower prices at chains, and more money leaving the community. The loss of indirect social benefits which don't show up on a balance sheet. Even the physical and mental effects of more time spent driving.
But reducing the discussion to "the town needs a grocery store to open" misses all of the most interesting questions.
An effective way of stopping people from driving an hour to save 5% off their grocery bill is making driving more expensive. Raise gas taxes to European levels and people will think twice before burning 10$ worth of gas to save 10$ on food.
If we're talking about Walmart vs a non-chain supermarket, 5% is going to be about the best possible case. Things like bulk goods or cheap cuts of meat can pretty easily be 30% cheaper. Even looking at a pickup truck and the higher European prices, I don't think a 30 mile drive would rise by more than ~$6? That might still persuade people to make fewer trips and buy more food at a time, though. Which doesn't save local grocery stores, is still a pretty good outcome - cheap grocery bills with less gas burned, and decisions that are closer to reflecting the overall cost of driving.
There's a reason people who live "10 miles from anything" absolutely hate rising gas prices, though. If you commute 20 miles a day for $25k/year, an extra $3/gallon would eat about a week's pay just getting to and from work.
Choice is an interesting word. Our purchasing decisions are constrained by income, which is limited by education and experience.
If someone grows up with poor education in an economically stagnant area, their likely minimum-wage severely limits the freedom to choose. Surplus unskilled labor translates to downward pressure on wages which implies the same for goods on the market - it's a nasty feedback loop that undercuts the local economy.
Huh? At some point in time these people had $X. They decided that it was better for them to shop at Walmart versus their local grocer. Is this surprising? No. Walmart offers better selection and prices. Economy of scale plays a big part in that.
They had every choice to keep spending their dollars at their local grocer. And they decided not to.
Nobody killed the local grocer except for consumers.
Consumers killed the middle class. Sometime, somewhere, someone walked into a store and saw a Philco radio made in Pennsylvania by unionized middle-class manufacturing workers and a cheap Japanese/Tawianese copy of the radio and bought the cheap radio.
Sometime, somewhere, someone saw a mailer from Walmart and saw that they had eggs for 98 cents a dozen instead of the 99 cents a dozen at the local grocer, where the employees were unionized and fairly paid, and they went to Walmart instead.
The same thing happened with air travel. People complain about poor service but the vast majority only ever sort by price and click on the "race to the bottom" fare that shows up first. And then they complain about being nickel-and-dimed.
Now the malls are dying and people are blaming Amazon for physical retail centers turning into ghost towns and eyesores. No shit Sherlock, when you buy everything on Amazon you go to the mall less often and the stores start turning into physical manifestations of the stuff you can get on aliexpress, or they close the doors completely.
If people spent 1% of the time they spend complaining about Walmart into shopping conscientiously, there would be a butcher closer than one hour away from my house and I could support a small local business, paying more in exchange for ensuring a higher quality of life for me and my neighbors.
But I can't because sometime, somewhere, in the past, someone went to Walmart and saw floor-scraping ground beef for 95% the price of the butcher and started getting meat at Walmart, so the butcher locked his doors.
It's ironic that this comment and the article blame Walmart so much, because Walmarts are often serving the most local produce because they have focused on the supply chain (local fresh food lasts longer than shipped fresh food and costs less to ship)
It's also ironic because we blame Walmart for killing the local grocery store (Ingles, PigglyWiggly, Winn Dixie) -- but ignore that they first took down the corner produce store, butcher, etc.
Competition only works for similarly sized players in a fair market.
As soon as any portion of the above is invalidated it's time to have a strongly regulated market, rather than just a lightly regulated one (the fair part).
Importing goods from countries that have no environmental regulations, literal slave labor, little-to-no tariffs is what drove the local stores out of business.
You can't have such a lopsided system and expect it to survive.
If we're talking about food stores and food producers, same thing. The large corporations receive the subsidies from the government to produce the crops, and the large retailers control the market for those crops.
agreed. But there is also a more aggressive and hostile side of capitalism that is not necessarily consumer driven. As an example, Where I live (in Boston) 7-Eleven bought out and converted or simply closed pretty much all white hen pantry locations that they were competing with. 7-Eleven's quality, products, pricing and selection was far inferior and instead of competing, they simply threw money at the competition to dissapear. Nothing illegal or immoral with that, just that we are now stuck with a dirty 7-eleven in my neighborhood with no deli nor bakery. But plenty of lotto tickets and cigarettes.
The decision of how $X is spent is just part of the bigger picture... what is $X, why do people accept those wages, what options are actually available to them, and how does the presence of conglomerate importers influence the local economy in the long run? That's what I was alluding to.
This is how I feel. A major point that is missed is that Walmart has brought many more products to a small market that otherwise would not have been there.
You can cry that Walmart killed the town square, but when pushes comes to shoves consumers value lower prices and greater variety.
Even on the employment side I'm not sure that local small businesses are better. I (unsuccessfully) ran my own small retail business for a few years. I could barely afford to pay minimum wage. Never mind offering any sort of pay bumps over time or medical benefits. I didn't blame my teen workers for moving on to employment with big chain stores as soon as they could. The pay and benefits from chains might be "terrible" from the perspective of someone with a good salaried job, but they're better than what a really small retailer can offer.
Being employed by a small business owner you know face to face probably has some social benefits over being indirectly employed and controlled by some fabulously wealthy out-of-state people you've never met. I'm not sure it's good for the material prosperity of the employees.
I think that stories about "big chain retailers devastating small towns" often confuse weakened community feeling with economic unfairness. Sam the local grocer was not economically great for his employees or customers. He never had the economies of scale to offer high wages or low prices. But Sam was part of the community in a way that the Walmart board and CEO can't be.
Another possible advantage of the chain stores is that I suspect they're an opportunity for a young employee to learn the processes and systems big businesses often have in place. My children are still young, but I plan to encourage them to do a teenage stint with a big brand just to see how it's done. I didn't and my business operations are fairly ad hoc.
A smaller business, as you said, has social advantages, but they're likely to be flakier, limited recourse if there's an HR issue, etc.
Walmart came in and drastically slashed prices on groceries because they had the size, money and infrastructure to cheaply move goods around. This was intentional behavior to kill local grocery stores and it worked, because consumers in these areas tend to be poorer and will shop at places that save them the most money. This is intentional behavior abused by Walmart to intentionally push out competition.
Local grocery stores can't compete because they literally cannot drop prices without going bankrupt. So they end up dying, leaving Walmart as the de-facto local Monopoly.
And then when Walmart decided to pack its bags, the town is devastated because they relied on it for everything [1]. At the very least educate yourself a bit on the way Walmart operates.
Once the local competition got pushed out, did Walmart raise prices or did they keep them low? Because if they kept low prices, I'm not sure I see the problem here.
How do these towns even exist if there are no jobs? One guy talks about a collection of 100+ guns(from my understanding guns are worth quite a chunk of money if well maintained)
This story makes no sense to me, just sounds like a town where people don't want to leave and have no incentive to stay.
The only sane person is the one who started sustenance farming - that's the way to go if you want to live in the middle of nowhere.
Anyone living actually out in the country has already been driving 30-60min each way a couple times a month for "major shopping" including groceries, and maybe gardening or raising some livestock to supplement that if they're so inclined. The folks in these marginal towns are just getting introduced to that way of life, I guess, and that's the story here? If they don't like it... well, sorry, but it costs a lot more to get groceries at small volumes out to little, remote towns, so unless your town grows a bunch (unlikely) people are gonna keep driving farther away for better prices, killing new stores that try to start up, just as TFA describes. Start living like a real Country Person or move to where the grocery stores (that everyone actually wants to shop at, apparently) are.
Exactly. Small town grocery stores have significantly higher prices and lower selection than in bigger places. So it turns out that the people with cars only use the local grocery store for perishables/emergency shopping trips and do their grocery stock-up trips in bigger places.
These towns exist because they used to have jobs. Then those jobs dried up due to manufacturing leaving, companies dying and so forth.
These people can't up and leave because their homes are worth very little and they don't have the money or skills to pivot to anything new. So what else is there for them to do but nothing?
That's the reality of many small towns in America.
It's starkly obvious in New England outside the orbit of Boston. In the 90s, there were still many, many shoe shops, textile mills, clothing manufacturers, furniture shops and lumber and paper mills. And around those businesses were a whole constellation of other support industries. When the mills got outsourced to China, or Bangladesh or Mexico, everything else went down like dominos, and there's nothing left; in my hometown, people are struggling to hold on, with the school district, a small local university, the regional hospital, a ski resort, and yes, the Walmart, as the only large employers left. Nobody who gets an education ever comes back, so what's left is a shrinking, greying population.
Going back further in time, agriculture was once tenable, but refrigeration and processed foods largely killed the regional market, and trying to farm rocks in New England is much less efficient than doing so in the Central Valley or the Midwest.
There are jobs, but only so many. The farmers need mechanics to work on their tractors; salesmen for seed, fertilizer, and equipment; teachers for their kids; and all the other things that you need in life. However they only need so many. Farmers have discovered that with bigger equipment they don't need as many people to get the job done, and so there is a surplus of people who don't have a job in rural areas and can't get one.
However if you - you personally - have a useful skill that is needed you can get a well paying job in any of those towns and buy a nice house for under $100k - next door to someone who isn't stupid but has no job or opportunity to get a job because he doesn't have the skills needed or the "drive" to get those skills. If they all did some would have to leave town anyway because there are more people than jobs.
There is a lot of money in small towns - thus the 100 gun collection. However it belongs those who earned (or inherited) it long ago. Perhaps they sold the family farm for a few million. Perhaps they sold their small factory to a big company that closed it down. Maybe they still have a small factory and earn a nice income from it while paying 10 employees a nice for the area wage.
With Walmart, it seems like they lowered prices because people prefer lower prices. Is there evidence they did it to brute force local markets, or is that your interpretation of the facts?
You're saying that we shouldn't stop Walmart monopolies because it would stifle competition?
The proof is in the fact that Walmart has came to many smaller towns and wiped out local competition due to size and economy of scale. The only companies that can compete is ones at similar scale while local businesses go bankrupt and money is drained out of the community.
When did free market economics turn into support for massive monopolies and allowing single corporations to control entire markets?
Is Walmart really the kind of one-size-fits-all solution you want, though? Can't you see the value in having specialized, higher quality stores compared to a giant store that may sell you anything, but only garbage?
I find that to be a sad perspective. You're literally placing the fate of entire towns in the hands of a single company with a de-facto monopoly. Free markets right, but how is that good? How much does the lower price Walmart offers you help to live a good and sustainable life?
What "higher quality" stores? Have you ever been to little mom-n-pop shops in the days before Walmart? They were generally pretty terrible: the prices were high, the service wasn't very good (they didn't have liberal return policies), they might even be rude to you, and the selection was absolutely terrible. How is that "higher quality"?
You seem to have some naive idea image of quaint little small towns in the "old days" where everything was great until big, bad Walmart showed up. It wasn't like that at all. Go read about "company towns" and "company stores", where there was only one store in the town, that was the only place where the local workers could shop because they got paid in "scrip" instead of real money, and where the prices were terribly high, effectively making them all indentured servants.
>You're literally placing the fate of entire towns in the hands of a single company with a de-facto monopoly.
These little towns generally had monopolies anyway. They weren't big enough to support multiple stores of the same type.
The bottom line is that these towns just aren't economically viable any more. They need to just shut down, and the people in them need to be relocated.
No, they were always like this, because they could be. Take off the rose-tinted glasses; everything wasn't quaint and wonderful in "the old days". Those were the days when those wonderful mom-n-pop shops would refuse service to black people, for instance.
Yes and no. Walmart often is not going to have food as fresh as a Farmers market or community store. But farmers may feel the need to shop there anyway due to prices.
Perhaps they still wanted fresh produce too, but because they weren't buying enough, the result was that couldn't buy any.
People are not good at predicting long term effects of their purchasing decisions. This had been a trend for the last 20 years: Walmart comes in, local businesses close down. But no one said the people are happy. The issue is the people need to coordinate their purchases to get what they actually want.
> Walmart often is not going to have food as fresh as a Farmers market or community store
Supposedly, Walmart fresh produce and meat is more locally sourced than the chain grocery stores. Because Walmart focuses on supply chain costs and order in larger quantities, they order more food from the region than anybody else.
Definitely true, but this article feels a bit like saying "heroin addiction is unhealthy, so we need to offer addicts jogging paths and art galleries because those are healthier".
Excluding brief mentions of business consolidation and state tax credits, there's almost no engagement with why the problem got started or what will be different the second time around. If we want to look at why the heroin addict got started, that would probably involve aging rural populations, rural young adults leaving for cities, lower rural labor force participation, and higher marginal costs in remote areas. Community markets don't reverse any of those patterns except maybe young adults moving away, and co-op ownership doesn't escape the fundamental question of whether rural grocery stories can cover costs at competitive prices. Reopening a grocery store is an early step towards renewal, but it's framed like the main challenge.
Exactly, those towns were going to die anyways and the Walmarts came in coz they got tax subsidies - which they got because they would keep the towns alive a little longer.
If there's nothing in an area to give you income besides a single unknowable unexciting corporate employer, people will move away.
Wow! So shopping at Walmart is the same as heroin addiction?
Your attitude is just the old paternalistic "You're too stupid to know what's best for you, so I'm going to force you to make the right decision for you."
Thank god we don't live in a country where that's broadly supported.
The point that I am making is that platitudes about 'The people asked for it, now they got it, therefore we have optimized overall good' are poor arguments. Satisfying wants don't always result in locally, or globally optimal outcomes.
This is kind of a trite example, but I'm trying to illustrate how a simplistic application of the concept of "freedom" can lead to situations where most people are actually less free in the end.
Take the Walmart pushing small local grocers out of business as a case study. Suppose there's a valley consisting of about 3 or 4 small towns spread out about 10 miles apart in a big chain. The locals for each town each go to the local grocery store to buy food. When a Walmart opens in town 3 of 4, many locals from towns 1, 2, and 4 also start going to town 3 to shop for groceries because they can buy in bulk. But it's a relatively expensive trip for many people in towns 1 and 2. And the lack of custom from the more wealthy citizens in those towns means the local grocery stores go out of business in all the towns in the valley, and Walmart becomes the only game in the entire valley allowing them to set prices however they choose.
Do you think it's a good idea to make poorer people in towns 1, 2, and 4 drive an additional 10 miles out of their way to buy groceries, when many of them couldn't afford to drive to town 3 regularly in the first place? Isn't that a kind of impingement on their freedom to buy groceries as they choose? What kind of lifestyle changes might that cause if buying groceries becomes more of a hardship than it used to be?
Most people aren't affected by ocean acidification so that must mean the activities that cause it are okay? Sometimes the invisible hand is invisible because it's not there.
These stores have massive invisible subsidies in the form of tax breaks and infrastructure built to support them. That's a huge factor in how they're able to undercut local shops. The city is really footing the bill.
A local butcher shop takes up a tiny amount of area, and therefore a tiny amount of infrastructure. It pays way more in taxes than Wal-Mart, compared to the amount it costs the city to support.
Sounds like they are getting exactly what they wanted?
Reminds me of folks in SF who bemoan the loss of a local butcher store. Sure, they may like buying organic cuts of meat at $15/lb, but it's obviously most people don't, that's why those stores went out of business.