Are they though? Walmart has a negative impact on local small businesses but is it made up for by making goods available at prices they would otherwise not be leading to increased purchasing power?
As someone who grew up somewhere that local authorities were able to exert control over who did and didn't do business I am all for the "race to the bottom" that high volume, low margin big box stores represent.
I'm not going to let you assert this without challenge.
First, durable goods are probably more expensive. For example, old lawnmowers lasted forever--WalMart ones die in a couple seasons.
Second, if a big box store wipes out local jobs that pay better, how much do prices have to be reduced to make up for that? People at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder spend and have a very high economic multiplier for how much their money drives other money. You don't have to lose many decent jobs in a 50,000 person town if most of them are 2x to 3x multipliers to really cripple the economy.
Third, is WalMart actually cheaper? Big box stores are really good at optimizing prices such that you get one great deal, but lose just a little on everything else. Normally, people put up with it because WalMart is the only choice or is a very convenient single stop.
The local hardware store sells the same or close to the same value engineered Chinese lawnmower using a B&S clone engine and a steel deck. Walmart sells it for $119 when it's in season and more than that the rest of the time (I wanna say $140ish but I'm not sure). The hardware store can't touch the sale price. I bought a lawnmower last summer so I'm very aware of what durable they cost at the various outlets. Old lawnmowers lasted forever because all the ones that are left are high end aluminum deck models that never got ridden hard and put away wet (which is why I got one of them for free on Craigslist instead of buying one). You see a similiar pattern with other durable goods. The model of big box stores is low margin, high volume. They sell some stuff that's value engineered to within an inch of it's life (a lot of the stuff at Harbor Freight comes to mind) but they don't generally engage in bait and switch. If they sold goods that always failed to live up to what people were expecting they wouldn't still be in business.
>Second.
Walmart by itself is not going to wipe out your town. If Walmart and the other big box stores wipe out the town it's because there was no real economic activity going on there and everyone else was just rent seeking to sap the money from the few parties engaged in actual economic activity (like a plumber that jacks up his rates when working on rental income properties in a tourist town). Nothing of value is lost in that case. Complaining that Walmart kills a town is like complaining that more automation kills a factory town, sure it might be technically true but if increased efficiency is a threat to your economic survival then you were already dead and just didn't know it.
>Third, is WalMart actually cheaper?
It's very, very rare that I find that they're not. On groceries their selection seems to be pretty poor but you can get staples pretty damn cheap. I grew up in a shithole where you always had to watch what you were paying or you could get screwed hard so I tend to really watch trends. Big box stores tend to have the cheapest prices broadly. Small businesses will occasionally have great prices on a few things but prices in general will be higher. The value add of small businesses is flexibility and service that is only workable at their scale, not pricing.
These types of goods are still around today and priced the same when adjusting for inflation. Commercial and industrial buyers are their main market.
The best washing machines and vacuum cleaners aren't made by your brands you find in basic stores, they're at the specialty shops or catalogs. The Internet enables you to find out what they are and where to get them. They're just REALLY expensive compared to the cheap, Chinese-made alternatives today. But they're still around and the same real price as before. It's just that people race to the bottom and prioritize price first.
> is WalMart actually cheaper
This is pretty indisputable. I've done a lot of shopping there when I was poor and the differences are enormous, especially on boxed and cheap food staples.
It's very clear that Walmart drives down wages among suppliers. Workers clearly don't earn a ton of money. But do shoppers benefit? And are employees worse off relative to their alternatives? I would be surprised to find out that the first was the case, and curious-how-but-not-quite-surprised about the second.
> predatory capitalist system
They don't like hearing this, either. The concept of hard work getting them ahead is one of the few things blue collar workers hold on to. (It is also not necessarily true as you state.)
When you balance representation against population, the gulf is vast and only growing. This is a compromise that made sense in the 18th century, not the 21st. Ignore it at your peril.
Exactly!
People act like our[0] Constitution is some inviolable, sacrosanct tome with words that must be revered and held close, unchanging and unchanged forever. Yet they seem to skip that we've modified the thing TWENTY EIGHT TIMES and that every Much Revered Framer(tm) anticipated that we'd not only change it as often as needed, we would very likely scrap the whole thing and do it again every few generations.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that mandates that the compromises, adjustments, and tweaks our nation's founders made must persist beyond tomorrow, except our own collective will to not bother with or to actively resist change. It's why I very much enjoy hearing at least one of the major parties actively talk about modification of the Electoral College or the makeup of the Supreme Court or how the legislative bodies of our nation operate. Maybe their ideas are good ones, maybe they're not, but the one thing we MUST NOT DO is shy away from a willingness to keep our country's governance current.
0 - By "our," I mean the collection of people who are citizens of the United States of America. Other nations can and do amend their nations' basic laws as they see fit.
That's flowery language to disguise what was essentially a pact between wealthy industrialists and slavers.
It's long past time to dismantle that "compromise."
It's been effective. If presidential elections were just driven by popular vote candidates would only campaign in the top population centers. Entire regions of the country would be ignored.
This is definitely 100% false; this goes against the mathematical population distribution of the United States. The top 100 biggest cities in the United States combined only make up less than 20% of the population.
But even if it were true, it's not any different than the current status quo where candidates simply only campaign in "swing states," ignoring the vast majority of the rest of the Unites States. In fact, it would be better, because more Americans live in population centers than they do swing states.
https://youtu.be/7wC42HgLA4k?t=108
The other problems:
Many people who live in solidly blue or solidly red states don't even bother voting for president - they know their vote doesn't matter. I know this because I've literally heard people say it.
This it not even considering electoral college also entirely ignores 4 million Americans because they live in territories, not states.
There is an effect going the other direction that benefits California, and in fact is why there is a fight going on at the Supreme Court. Voters in those rural states are underrepresented due to non-citizens being counted to apportion the representatives. California has something like a couple dozen extra representatives from that.
The political system makes it pretty easy to ignore the liberal coastal areas. Republicans benefit enormously from the unevenness of the Senate, House seat allocations, and the Electoral College. And then in the states they control, they put their finger on the scale via gerrymandering. Democrats can ignore the coasts too because who else are they going to vote for?
Though the greatest irony of all is that those rural and poor voters in the flyover states are also ignored in terms of their real needs. Their party tosses them cultural red meat regularly, but defunds the things they need: schools, roads, and various safety net programs which are often the only thing keeping the rural poor afloat.
As long as Republican voters care more about abortion and gay marriage (and I guess transpeople using the bathroom now), they will not find economic solutions.
These are really fundamental differences, particularly in the area of taxes (and that’s true not just for Sweden and Spain, but most European countries). In Europe, there is an expansive welfare state with lots of benefits for the middle class, but the middle class are also the ones that pay for it, through high payroll and sales taxes. In the US, replacing sales taxes with a 20% VAT (the OECD average) would raise an extra $700 billion according to CBO estimates. Enough to pay for socialized health care and education. But nobody on the left is proposing that. Every proposal focuses on raising taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for middle class benefits.
The people here aren't stupid. Brownback's approval was in the mid 20's by the time he left. His policies are deeply unpopular. But, they keep voting for the party that originally pushed such disastrous policies, and is now trying to push them through again, despite popular opposition. I honestly don't understand it.
Perhaps they really do think guns are more important than the health of their community. Though even that makes no sense because state level Democrats are as pro-gun as the Republicans, and national level Democrats are zero threat.
I have no idea why you bundle up schools, roads, and social programs into "liberal sentiment". Guns may be loved, but they're not going to educate their children. And for many of the people in my rural district, what's putting food on the tables is the subsidized food programs and other aid offered. No arms manufacturing jobs and few resource extraction jobs here.
From an electoral perspective it's counterfactual: my family in the midwest have roughly 1.5x the electoral power I do. Historically speaking this has led two democrats in my lifetime to win the popular vote but lose the presidential election. So I don't think there's an issue with those voices being unheard in elections-- quite the opposite in fact.
On the other hand, I see where you're coming from. The loci of money and power in the United States speak loudly and listen poorly to the half of us that see stars at night. I think this has been to conservatives' advantage, although that seems to have more to do with preexisting cultural affinity than shared policy goals.
In fact, states aren't even required to put the presidential on the ballot at all. States are allowed to choose their electors by any method the state legislature decides on.
I'm not sure that the average voter really considers the electoral college today. Voter comprehension of it has historically been very low, at least. But you're right that many non-swing-state voters stay home after (correctly) figuring out that their votes are meaningless.
It's why Walmart is beloved in many of the small southern towns where I grew up. Sure it relentlessly exploited poor people elsewhere, but when you're poor yourself you can't help but be grateful for its low prices. And the belief that finally, finally someone is giving you the good end of that deal is terribly reassuring-- like maybe, for once, someone has your back.
This, of course, quickly assumes a political dimension. At the time conservatives (many of whom now back Trumpian protections, how times change) railed against the so-called "latte liberals" who supposedly fought Walmart from the comfort of their Mercedes-- not that anyone knew one of them personally, of course. And we, the rank and file, ate it up: we needed our cheap shoes, our cheap food, etc.
Now, as a liberal, when I hear people advocating for the breakup of Amazon or Google, I can't help but think back to how I would have felt about that when I was poorer, and when I didn't have the option of simply paying more for a better cause. I think I would have fought quite hard to keep my costs low, possibly to the point of voting against many of my other interests or beliefs. And especially in this era of polarization and high-stakes politics, I'm not sure it's a good idea to bet on people in general viewing that differently.