Editor:
As a long time Humboldt county resident from 1950-71 (Crannell, Samoa, Arcata, Eureka) I’d like to add my 0.02 cents worth on the Walmart issue (“Walmart, Jesus and Books without Borders,” July 21). I now live in Lebanon, Ore., and their store here has done nothing but harm to this struggling community. They had their normal sized store in town but were not satisfied when they saw all the business the local Roth’s IGA and Safeway stores pulled in. They purchased land across the street where the local drive-in theater had operated for years. This was also a historical site marking a portion of the old Santiam Trail over the Cascades.
They destroyed the landmark trail and put up a small plaque in its place, then built their super store. Not only do they have a full grocery department selling “organic” (?) produce from China, they enlarged the hardware and nursery departments with cheap imported merchandise further depleting the customers at the local Mom & Pop businesses. Hardware, nursery and clothing stores have since folded, along with the home town atmosphere. True, the parking lot is generally full, but those of us who prefer quality over knock offs now do our shopping in Albany on a less frequent basis than if we lived there. Add to the problem low, part-time wages. Women are particularly targeted for three- to four-hour shifts that barely pay the cost of childcare. Most of them average less than 30 hours a week, with no further benefits.
Is this the benefit Eureka is looking for to boost the local economy? It won’t work, and it would be wise for those in favor to do their homework and investigate how cities and towns providing tax free encouragement to Walmart are now regretting their decisions to allow a corporate entity like this into their community. It certainly was wrong here, looking around at all the vacant businesses that had prospered for so long, now dark and empty. Please tell me you’ll reconsider.
Don Anderson, Lebanon, Or
This article appears in Vulnerable.
Thanks Don!
No other business I know of has as much literature, documentaries, and economic research proving Walmart’s harm to rural economies.
However, research, facts, and the sad reality, is trumped by a profound stretch of the word “freedom”.
The same poor folks who benefit from “low prices” are seeing fundamental public services collapse under increasing demand from part-time, low-wage big boxes that manufacture more poverty.
As long as we’re “free” to dig our economic hole deeper, there will always be ideologues willing to shovel.
And you too can choose not to shop there. If everyone was on the same page with eachother than wal-mart would be the one struggeling, but the fact is that rite-aid/safeway/all others wont do what wal-mart does. Which is opperate with a %40 markup margin rather than their %50 to %65 margins. They dont look at the broader picture which is less profit per item but much more items. My half a cent. Thanks, Bub
Bub, you might want to look at the broader picture, as you say, yourself. ?How does a busines like walmart come to open shop in the first place? Billions of invested dollars from the wealthiest of the wealthy…the people who can guarantee things like over 90% of their inventory coming from sweatshops in china…people who can fund multi-million dollar studies PER STORE to crunch numbers tracing exactly how much money WILL be siphoned from specific existing businesses and for how long. The same deal as the Starbucks formula…command, conquer, scale back and own the majority.
…or do you not look at the big picture yourself enough to know that businesses like Walmart, Home Depot, etc. ALL operate on at LEAST a 15 year business plan shrouded in secrecy through contracts stamped with non-wavering confidentiality clauses? Safeway might as well be a big-box supermarket too, in all these regards.
The irony of your comments, bub, is that YOU are being taken for a chump just the same, moreso by defending the likes of Big Boxes and their billionaire backers.
Thanks Bub, but I think that most of us understand that WalMart is cheap.
I decided NOT to move to Humboldt because there wasn’t a WalMart… If you don’t appreciate a free market society… Go move to the Middle East… I’m sure there’s plenty of room for you there…
And we can see that we’ve missed so much with your absence, “Realist.”
LOL!! That’s awesome… I like that comment… 🙂
I apologize for the previous comment, it definitely comes off wrong…
What I want to say is that this is a free market society and Walmart has been successful for good reason. The more stores you have, the more products you can get at bulk prices… Which you can then offer to your customers at a lower rate than competitors… It’s pretty basic…
All of this hype behind hating Walmart and “Big Box” retailers is just silly… I’m sorry that “Mom & Pop” stores can’t compete… But that is going to happen… It’s hard to compete with something that is more efficient… It’s sad, but they have to find a new line of business…
Very few business owners wouldn’t want to open two locations as opposed to one… Why? Because increased revenue increases your abilities to provide…
So what if there is someone who makes billions off of a good idea & business model??? They should be an example of success… Not someone to abhor…
And as for quality of products… No one goes to Walmart to buy something that will last 20 years… But if I need a can opener, I’m going to Walmart to get one for $1.97 not some place trying to charge me $3.65…
Realist, I would invite you to re-explore the economic history of the United States. We are most certainly not a free market society, and never have been. The closest thing to it was the Gilded Age, marked by profound corruption, Laissez-Faire economic policy, massive wealth disparity between the rich and poor, and crushing exploitation of the working class.
There is a significant body of research (Robert Putnam’s work is a good starting point) indicating that a high degree of wealth disparity is tied to social breakdown. No one, including the ultra-rich, win if social cohesion fails. In my estimation, our communities are served better by local businesses that generate goods and jobs than by transnational corporations, run by multi-billionaires, who siphon wealth from our communities and concentrate it in off-shore accounts while enjoying tax breaks at our expense.
“What I want to say is that this is a free market society and Walmart has been successful for good reason. The more stores you have, the more products you can get at bulk prices… Which you can then offer to your customers at a lower rate than competitors… It’s pretty basic…”
Another “basic” concept is exploiting Chinese factory workers and paying your own red-blooded American neighbors piss poor wages which force them to have to turn to government programs just to attempt to make ends meet.
http://www.alternet.org/story/151888/how_recession_is_hastening_the_walmartization_of_america
Realist,
You really don’t get it. There is a bigger issue here than being able to buy junk at cheaper prices. Walmarts have destroyed small towns all across America. It has been going on for about 20 years. And people have unwittingly supported it for the exact reason you gave. “I want a cheaper can opener.” , etc. Well there is a bigger price to pay if you do that. It destroys the economic health of your town. Don Anderson’s article is a perfect example of how they do it. You might also do a search on “walmart saturation effect”. Walmart is NOT something to support.
These aren’t new discussions for Humboldt at all. I heard the same arguments when the Bayshore Mall was built. Then again when Costco was built.
These retail establishments did not explicitly harm our economy or eliminate jobs. True, some local Mom & Pop stores closed when competition came to town. But, their own minimum wage employees found work at the mall. Costco, if I recall, pays better than minimum wage.
The harm to our local economy was due, in large part, to the outside attack on our timber industry. The Spotted Owl movement crippled our economy and we haven’t recovered yet. It’s a good thing we had our “Old Growth” K-Mart sign to save a few ourselves.
I owned a Mom & Pop store in Arcata years ago (it ran successfully for nearly 20 years before I sold it). My store survived both the Mall and Costco. I would have failed had I not changed my business model to include the additional competition, restructured my inventory, and changed my sales approach. Small business owners can be (if they choose to be) much more flexible than the large companies.
Speaking of which… Goodbye JCPenny, Montgomery Wards, Mervyns, Gottschalks, and now Borders.
Now, some 20 years later, the blame game and scare tactics start up again. This time the target is Walmart. I guess Target is off the hit list now?
“I guess Target is off the hit list now?”
It’s not off my “hit list.” The only good thing about WalMart is that it’ll hurt Kmart and Target.
…almost all vocal support and expressed indifference toward increasing franchise presence in Humboldt comes from older people, who think our local economy has “survived”? Well, duh…nobody’s dying in the streets…but their eyes are wide closed if they think target, the mall, kmart, etc. did anything but dampen everybody’s spending power. Nobody can deny we all have less spending power now, especially the poor…nobody can deny local employees at local businesses can’t be payed what they used to be payed relative to the larger circulation of local money, because not only has the population of minimum wage slaves increased but so has the amount of disposable junk at sweatshop prices dilluted the market, and so has the amount of minimum wage jobs. Substantially.
…the sad basis of their argument is “competition”. Go fuck yourselves! I should actually say “thank you” for admitting that places like the mall, target, kmart etc. have in fact hurt us. I’m already working more for what amounts to less money as it is! And thanks to even more big boxes and population influx (into overpriced “affordable” (yeah, right) “multi-family units” (apartments), the future isn’t looking any brighter. There’s just NO denying it.
Revolving door jobs that don’t pay enough, revolving door housing “units” that charge too much. Why…WHY…support that over working to establish and solidify our REAL local employee/employer foundation? Let the people who live here become more established.
Big Boxes become foundations with revolving doors, there’s just no denying it. The proof is everywhere in the nation, increasingly so in Humboldt.
I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the truly deluded amongst us will stop at nothing to defend multi-national conglomerates as they continue to destroy the very last notions of The American Dream.
Hat’s off to you! You and your Tea Party numbskulls (bankrolled by the Koch Bros, of course) are true Patriots!
I’m happy that Geezer has read the Federalist Papers, but I’m reasonably sure that no one in the Tea Party is that ambitious.
You gotta love the argument, “we’re already saturated in unsustainable, predatory, poverty-wage big box retailers, stop complaining”.
Joel shouldn’t have an opinion on this subject, he made his money elsewhere, sold out, and moved here.
Those who grew up in a nation that prospered under 90% individual tax rates, 35% corporate tax rates, reasonable tariffs, fully funded free public universities, neighborhood elementary schools, and infrastructure….
Who NOW support the tyranny of multi-national saturation: child-labor, tax havens, and their revolving door to Congress…
Are rightfully called traitors and should be reeducated.
quote Not only do they have a full grocery department selling “organic” (?) produce from China quote
I would just like to point out this is a complete lie. Don has no idea where the produce comes from, or is really just trying to set things off. One thing that nobody covers at all is that Walmart has the largest fleet of hybrid OTR trucks, period. My guess is the Lebenon store is supplied from the Red Bluff DC and the Hermiston DC, making the produce from “China” coming from California, AZ, WA, and OR. I bet some is also grown in ID.
Walmart is well known for buying local produce, which is why Winnemucca Potatoes are sold in the Winnemucca store.
Also enjoy this link: http://unearthlyrealms.com/reports/haunting-reports/712-or-hermiston-wal-mart-dc
Walmart’s success is a testament to the power of freedom.
Given a choice, people will vote for centralized power, one-choice shopping, and the convenience of tyranny every time.