Oboy, you can move to Fairfield county, CT. No Walmart here in Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, New Canaan, Westport, Weston, Wilton or Fairfield. No Lmart either. Never even been to one, never even wanted to.

There was a piece on one of the new magazine shows a few years ago regarding this. In one town, a Wal-Mart opened, putting all the "main street" businesses out of business. As the bicycle shop owner said, "I can't buy stock wholesale for the prices Wal-Mart has on the same items". Other companies lost long-term employees who went work for Wal-Mart for another 50 cents or dollar an hour. More astonishing, Wal-Mart CLOSED that "location" after a while, because it was at the bottom of their list of profitable stores. Wal-Mart virtually ruined the economy, and the lives of many residents is that community. HOWEVER, so long as folks flock to Wal-Mart to work or save a few bucks, there you go...

I must reply to xx1 and Shane, and thank them for some of the most unintentionally (I suspect) hilarious economic commentary I've read in ages!

It seems xx1 lives in the world's most unusual town, a town that's peopled by The Enlightened Who Reject Walmart, but which, by a gross accident of history and geography, never the less finds itself plonked down smack in the midst of some horrendous backward region infested with mindless proles who can't stay away from Big Sam. Better get those roadblocks up!

And Shane: don't have any kids, if you think they're already doomed! Gosh, that *would* be irresponsible. I'll bet it's only the Prozac Walmart slips into its emplyees' water bowls that keeps those pathetic minions who toil in Sam's retail salt mines from offing themselves this very minute!

That out of my system, I have to say this *is* an interesting and relevant US travel thread. If any of you have read Bill Bryson's Lost Continent, a book I highly recommend, one of his biggest gripes upon returning to the States for a long road trip is finding that just about every town of any size he comes to is choked off by strips of mindlessly repetitive commercial sprawl, for which Walmart surely carries the torch. I agree completely: I've lived overseas for over a decade, and when I come back to visit my family in Iowa, it breaks my heart to see Walmarts crushing the towns in my home area.

I now live in Hong Kong, which is still incredibly lassez faire economically, even compared to the States, and yet there are small shops and street hawkers and little restaurants and fresh food markets everywhere. They're not government subsidized, they're not protected by zoning ordinances that keep away bigger merchants -- and they're (as a class, not necessarily individually, of course) in no danger of being pushed out of business. Why not? Because people here buy things from them.

So as Les has said, who, really, is to blame for Walmart's relentless advances? In the end, a society gets what it pays for!

No, I don't live in the world's most unusual town. I live in Vancouver, WA. Walmart bullied its way into the aastside of Vancouver threatening such huge lawsuits that the city gave in despite the strong anti-Walmart views of the residents in the neighborhood affected. Many of the locals DON'T shop at the Walmarts, but because of its proximity to I-205, it draws people from communities from as far as 50 miles away. The intersection by the Walmarts has skyrocketed to one of the busiest and most clogged in the entire STATE. Did Walmart pay for road widening or improved ramping or much of anything else? Nope. Of course not. We are stuck with a Walmart's that was shoved down our throat. And now more Big Boxes are opening up everywhere.
I'm glad Shane posted this thread. Unless more towns enact zoning to prevent the Big Box invasion, someday (soon) we'll all have to fly to Europe to see what thriving small towns look like. I'm grateful that some communities like Port Townsend in WA State are actively working to keep Big Boxes and big chains out.
By the way, I have lived in Hong Kong too (mid levels) and there's absolutely no comparison.
And Walmart's "made in America"? Give me a break. Those clothes aren't made by skilled workers making a living wage in the good ole US of A. They're usually made by grossly underpaid workers in places like the Marianas. Technically "American" but apple pie and baseball it ain't.

Walmart is an evil and cancerous corporation, that is a fact but folks we must remember that they hire folks with very little skills and education. Therefore keeping the welfare numbers down which as a taxpayer makes me happy!!! If you don't like walmart don't shop there, I personally think they are dirty stores with crappy stuff. But as an american I will not support legislation that takes away someones else's right to buy that crap. How come no one complains when they build a Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus store?

Now I understand where you live, xx1. As you say, it's not the "locals" who shop at WalMart, it's people who live "up to fifty miles away."

So your community is filled with people who, like you, are so culturally superior to "them" that they not only don't shop at WalMart but have the authority to prevent others from doing so. The problem is that, within a space of fifty miles, there are too many people inferior to you.

I guess, to you, someone who lives within fifty miles of you isn't a "local." Or maybe you think anyone who is inferior to you is an outsider.

Or maybe you're just unwilling to admit that it really IS the local buying public that is supporting the WalMart, destroying your thesis that you live amongst people as superior to others as yourself.

Didn't know so many libertarians took a look at this board. I've read the pantheon of libertarian heroes- von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard and I agree that, if only utility was important, extreme laissez-faire might be correct. But I am more a conservative than a libertarian and when extreme laissez-faire works out to wreck small-town communities, I'll be for conserving those communities every time. Furthermore, does anyone acknowledge aesthetics. Walmart, Home Depot and Best Buy are ugly boxes run by ugly people. Small town businesses are much more likely to be of the human scale, more aesthetically pleasing, and be run by our neighbors.

Travel question, Mr. Rabe and to whomever is interested in national parks-v- suburban sprawl. One of the best preserved Civil War battlefields is the Antietam-Sharpsburg site in western Maryland. However, sububrban sprawl with its Walmarts and Home Depots is coming Antietam's way. In the spirit of utility, should the government sell the battlefield park to a few big-box stores?

No Wal Mart in Key West, but there is a big, ugly Home Depot in Marathon.

To Jack above-Gettysburg is also being threatened by developers, as is a Civil War Prison here in Ohio and a battlefield from the War of 1812 near Toledo. It really is a shame that our History can't be perserved and has to be bulldozed for strip centers...

It's not just WalMart, but the whole suburban sprawl gone out of control. Jack and Chuck are correct, Civil War Battlefields and Cemeteries are disappearing at an alarming rate as are historic buildings, farms, and wet lands to make way for big box stores and strip shopping centers. Something needs to be done before this country is one huge parking lot full of them.

Well, Paul, I'll be sure to let Sam know you'd be delighted to have a Walmart two blocks from your house. And all the traffic. The locals--and you're right about ONE thing, I don't consider people who live 50 miles away as locals--avoid shopping there. In fact, they formed citizens committees against Walmart.
Before Walmart came to the neighborhood, I had to wait about 5 minutes at most at the traffic light near the location. Now it's more like 20 minutes--if I'm lucky. Those ain't the locals, Paulie. The same people who drive 45 minutes to Walmart's may be happy to have saved a few bucks on cheap merchandise, but you can bet they are just as happy it's not sitting in their yard. We live in a cul de sac not too far from the Walmarts but these non-locals think our street is a back entrance to the store. They come tearing down the street (doing 50 in a 25 mph zone) only to find themselves at the end of the cul de sac, then go tearing back out. We've already had two injury causing accidents from these yahoos. Ahh, the joy of Walmarts.
Fortunately, some other communities are learning from our dismal experience and are rezoning to make sure the Big Boxes don't infect their towns as well.
And Paul, if you could drop your sneering contempt for one minute, it's not about cultural superiority. It's about protecting family businesses. It's about keeping communities diverse and viable. It's about preserving community feeling instead of anonymous Big Boxes. It's about not keeping our towns attractive and on a human-scale. If you feel strip malls and anonymous Big Boxes make a community beautiful, then go ahead, lobby for more in your town.

In Northern Virginia, real estate development tycoon "Til" Hazel has led the movement to pave over the whole area. Problem is, congestion is a nightmare here. So old Til wants to raise taxes to pay for more roads which will create more sprawl and which will inevitably cause for more developers bellowing for more taxes for roads. An unending cycle, like Bill Murray's Ground Hog Day. Til Hazel not only wants to pave over the Civil War battlefields that dot northern Virginia, he just recently elected a governor who sees things Hazel's way. Til Hazel is the Sam Walton of his part of the world- a devouring monster. Evil.

I'm curious - what version of small town America are we busy defending?
What if you wanted to buy groceries before there were Super Wal-Marts? Maybe you would have gone to the grocery store to get them. But, wait a minute. Didn't the grocery store put the corner market and the local butcher out of business? And there was a time when the corner market and the butcher were cutting into the profits of The General Store. Of course I realize this is an exaggeration, but it serves the purpose of showing that over time things change. It might not be pretty and we might not like it, but it's the nature of the beast. It's easy to pick a nostalgic point in time and wish we were still there. But, this is the present and - rest assured - the future will hold something new and different, so get over it and go shopping.

mmm-In my hometown there were 2 perfectly nice, older shopping centers that had nice grocery stores. Along comes Wal-Mart at the edge of town and the shopping centers go by the wayside. They are sitting empty now. And, in the larger city near where I live, they are building a huge Super Kroger Store right down the road from an existing Super Kroger store. No town needs that many grocery stores that close. It's not just Wal-Marts, it's all the big box stores. They built a brand new Lowe's 3years ago, closed it and openned up a new one across the street. Does that make sense???

And the big boxes are putting a lot of the Mom and Pop stores out of business. This country needs small business to create and keep jobs.

Okay, xx1 -- why is there no comparison between HK and the US? Both are relatively free-wheeling capitalist societies with (again relatively) affluent populations. Granted, space concerns in HK work against the development of sprawl per se, but there's no lack of attempts here to build 'megastores'. Why don't they take over and drive the small business out? They can certainly undercut them in terms of price.

As you can tell from my previous comments and my chosen moniker here, I'm not exactly a Walmart fan, and you have my sympathies for having one in your back yard. But anytime you say 'We'll legislate to keep them out', then you're saying in essence you'll legislate to reduce someone else's freedom to choose how they want to live, even if it means restricting their right to engage in what are clearly 'law-abiding', if tasteless, activities. I'm no libertarian, but this sort of thing is pretty fundamental to a free society. If you can't choose, at a very basic level, what kinds of business you want to conduct, then that's a serious infringement. If your community is prostituting itself by offering tax subsidies to try to lure Big Sam into town, that's one thing, but if he's coming in and competing in the free market, do you really want to start down the path of saying some people 'know best' what should be allowed in, and others simply must accede to that?

SamHater, there is nothing sinister or anti-American about creating zoning regs to keep out the Big Boxes. Every community, with a few exceptions (mostly in Texas) has zoning laws. Parts of towns are zoned residential, parts mixed use, parts professional use, and so on. And even residential zoning is regulated--most areas have minimum lot sizes, for example, or density regulations. There is nothing wrong about communities deciding to "zone out" Big Boxes when it's the wish of the majority in that community.
As for the US and HK differences, oh come on. You know perfectly well there are many. For one thing, WalMart counts mostly on people driving to its stores, from miles away in many cases. Yeah, I could just see HK giving up 10-20 acres to a Big Box that sells cheap merchandise and needs hundreds of parking spaces. Let me know when that happens.
By the way, when Sam comes to town, he does it with planeloads of lawyers who say, so what, you don't want us here, we're coming anyway or we'll tie you up in so many lawsuits it will cost you a fortune. They took advantage of a zoning loophole to bully their way into Vancouver. Which is why zoning changes to keep Sam out BEFORE he sets his sights on your community are important. As I said, other communities have learned from our unfortunate experience and ARE re-zoning to keep out Sam and the rest of his family (Lowe's, Home Depot, etc). Port Townsend is a great example of a community standing up for small businesses despite the wishes of Big Boxes Inc.

Small towns also drool over the supposed tax revenues from the Wal-Marts and other big box boys.

About 16 years ago, I worked for a company by the name of Schultz Brothers. While not a Mom & Pop store, it was a family owned merchandising business that had about 40 stores in smaller towns in Wisconsin, Illinois & Indiana. There were located in small towns like Shawano, Sturgeon Bay, & Stoughton in Wisconsin & Harvard in Illinois. At that time, Wal-Mart was ony in the big markets - Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiannapolis. That didn't affect business. But then Walmart moved into mid-size markets like Madison, Green Bay, Rockford - & that did cut into business. After working for Schultz for 4 years, Wal Mart had moved into the small markets also & Schultz Bros. went out out of business my 5th year there. Maybe Wal-Mart gives jobs, but it also takes away. Wal-Mart did not hire any of the checkers,stockers, office workers, warehouse workers, & truckers that lost jobs when it went out Schultz went out of business. A few thousand people lost there jobs in just this one instance. How many others were in simular situations. I saw family members of the owners who had worked 50 or so years to build up their business, & build up respect in those communities, just lose it all within a year. It is not just the small neighboorhood places that are going out of business, but also some of the regional business. They just can't compete with marketing strategy of some national chains. Even Jewel/Osco food & drug stores, which is a large regional business, had to be bought out by American Stores, nationally, to survive.

As someone who once worked at the district level of one of these big box chains (and got out fast), allow me to comment on the welfare statement.

Our Big Box employer comes into town full of promises about full time employment, benefits to the community, etc...etc... Reduction of welfare rolls is common persuasive tactic that they use, particularly in the "urban renewal" areas. After the initial store opening however, the few full time employees that were hired are either terminated or have their hours reduced and their benefits eliminated. The store uses hundreds of part time employees instead. Those employees, most of whom were on welfare prior to employment, just never got around to telling the government that they were employed, so the human resources director has 400 cases of welfare fraud and abuse waiting on his/her desk, in ONE store alone. And guess what, by the time it's all researched and documented, those welfare recipients have been terminated anyway, so they just double dipped the entire time. No one is going to make them give anything back. And if you think that you as a taxpayer are not picking up the costs for corporations which refuse to provide benefits, think again. All of those employees continue to receive their government medical care before, during and after their employment.

The one thing that scares these Big Box employers more than anything is unionization. They hire teams of lawyers to combat it, they distribute literature among the managers about how to spot and diffuse potential pro-union employees and situations, they meet with local church and community officials and promise the world if they can help persuade workers to refuse unions. Big Boxes put huge resources into fighting organized labor, covertly, of course.

If you want to combat Big Boxes in your community, contact some labor unions and ask for help in forming unions, negotiating labor contracts and picketing corporations which refuse to recognize them. Organized labor is their greatest fear, because all that cheap, taxpayer subsidized labor they were counting on to run their stores just disappeared.

Why are Walmarts so filty inside? I go there about once a year (out of extreme necessity) and the floors, shelves, everything is crusty/dusty/dirty.

I patronize my local Target at least once a week. True, it's another big store, but they give a lot back to the community. And it's clean.

Notice how Walmart pastes up their competitors ads -- saying they'll match prices? Too cheap to advertise! No thanks.