Hello, Geof asked me to post this, it was orginally an email sent to him in responce to his post.

You know I got to thinking about Wal-Mart last night. (Just to let you know I’ve always been following Wal-Mart and their impact on the American Economy)I recently saw a movie on how Wal-Mart is affecting America. Recently I've traved on the highways and through the towns that they spoke of in the movie. They stated that Wal Mart drives out small business, provides low wage jobs with no bennifits and basically feeds off of the bad parts of capitalism.

They convince cities that they bring in jobs and taxes, so they get tax breaks. They charge lower prices so they can drive out the Mom and Pop stores, that are in the area…..now I didn’t hear about how they raise prices once they have driven the people out ….but some people have gotten to that conclusion.


OK…..it made me think. I see these places on the side of the highway, where there is a huge conglomerate of stores, Wal-Mart, Home Depot (or Osh) , and other such huge chain stores and restaurants. Now I’ve been told to drive into the towns and see the empty cities where the mom and pop stores used to be….haven't done that yet, so I’ll take the assumption they are there.


In the video they talked about a Mom and Pop hardware store and how Wal-Mart drove it out of business…..but it made me think. Wal-Mart has a horrible hardware department they have light bulbs, paint and extension cords…but nothing that you would need to do any major project. If that’s true how did they drive the hardware store out of business? I mean people in the area don’t do major projects? Then I realized that most likely a major hardware store opened up nearby and that closed the store…but the people who made the video said it was Wal-mart.



So…the mom and pop stores aren’t being driven out by Wal-Mart alone they are being driven out by ALL of those new large stores. Wal-Mart, Target, Osh, Home-Depot, Best Buy, Toys R Us,Circut City, Pet Co, Petsmart, ..etc…etc. It’s just the same thing that happened years ago when the supermarkets drove out the mom and pop corner market. All of these stores basically pay minimum wage , keep their prices low, and drive out the mom and pop stores….HOWEVER, people target Wal-Mart because it’s so large…..and because it’s gotten the face of bad capitalism, whilie it's true that Wal-Mart has done those things mentioned, many of other stores share similar aspects. It's just a new wave of economic captialism we are moving into.

Jarrod

What it comes down to is when you hear one