I don't have a Walmart near me, I live in city where there isn't one, I actually don't know much about the Walmart experience. So its not really such an obvious question is it?
>"I'm wondering if there aren't quite a few on HN that don't even know what a pre-Walmart world was like, especially in smaller cities/towns."
Not only am I old enough to remember pre-Walmart but I'm also old enough to remember Pre-Internet.
Your comments are both presumptuous and arrogant.
You were lucky if they had your size in everything you wanted to buy. Meant going to several different stores.
I was around for the opening of a new store in the late '60s early '70s: K-Mart. It has everything. So Meijer's had to compete and lower prices.
This apparel example happened across all items Walmart stocked. The local store had to compete on price.
We pay less now In absolute $$ on clothing than we did 30 years ago.
Carter's for children and infants is actually cheaper in the Carter's store than the Carter's sold at Walmart.
Competition lowers prices and makes stores and manufactures find new ways to make things cheaper. All to the benefit of consumers.
I look at my phone Bill to realize how ridiculous the pricing is. Pay $100 for two phones. Twenty five years ago a $40 phone bill would call for a family meeting.
So as Walmart and others helped bring down lower prices other areas suck up the savings
In the clothing industry this was mostly achieved by shipping manufacturing to Asia or Central America, and paying slave wages. It hasn't been great for the environment either.
There's no need to take this sort of tone. Asking how is a valid question, and the most generous reading of it assumes that the user wants a real answer, not that they are asking a rhetorical question.
I apologize if I over reacted to the parent. At the same time while I understand some of the negativity towards Walmart there were a lot of positives that came out of it's growth also.
The only confrontational word in that question was "exactly."
It's a fair question because of many people who do remember the pre-Walmart times (their big expansion was in the late 90s-early 2000s). The going narrative at the time was that local businesses were destroyed and this was a tragedy. Additionally, Walmart was one of the first retailers to primarily buy products from Chinese manufacturers instead of sourcing American-made products (after the death of Sam Walton). There were frequent news stories about how a factory closed and all the laid-off workers got jobs at minimum wage at Walmart, selling the very goods they previously made. Several municipalities enacted "no-Walmart" legislation and zoning regulations. Even South Park made an episode about the phenomenon.
Looking back, it might have been unfair to demonize Walmart for what was likely the rational decision to make in a competitive environment. But taken in context for the times, Walmart's growth in the late 1990s/early 2000s was controversial and frequently challenged.
There were many advantages of Walmart at the time. Perception of lower prices, much more convenient hours (many local shops closed at 5-6), better product selection with frequently updated stock, etc...
I'm wondering if there aren't quite a few on HN that don't even know what a pre-Walmart world was like, especially in smaller cities/towns.