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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Mad Kaiser" data-source="post: 1629630" data-attributes="member: 19999">[counter-rant]There are plenty of reasons to hate Wal-Mart, but this is way off.A bit of blame for empty storefronts rests on Wal-Mart's price competition, but this is ignoring the larger economic issues, such as factory closings that force residents to move and reduce the population of local shoppers. If you live in a large enough city, there is plenty of room for both Boxes and Specialty Shops. We have 5 Wal-Marts, a Target, 4 Walgreens, a mall, 2 Big K's, a Lowes, a Home Depot, Grizzly.com, a Best Buy, a Circuit City, a Pet Smart, BB&B, 2 Hobby Lobbies, Bass Pro Shop Outdoor World and plenty of small shops that compete with them quite well. I personaly avoid Wal-Marts for political reasons, mostly for their dealings from 1992-2000. But the facts is the facts.Wal-Marts often save these failing "ghost-towns" (which aren't that great, really) by buying huge chunks of unfarmed farmland or old factories rotting where they stand. They also give tons of cash to the towns to construct new road intersections and traffic lights, often the first real traffic safety the towns have ever had. They keep young people from moving away, giving them a volume of employment the "little" shops could never bring. You may scoff minimum wage, but minimum wage goes very far when a soda pop is still 35 cents a can and people eat homemade chili and sweet cornbread instead of at resturants every night. To top it all off, most of the people who live in these small towns will drive an hour or more to reach a Wal-Mart to avoid the criminal price gouging of the local monopoly shops. Put money into the community? If it wasn't for Wal-Mart, Arkansas would be the only State owned by the Federal Government (except for Hot Springs) through the welfare, dirt-farming, and forestry programs. What little factory jobs remain there are filled by illegal migrants that are paid FAR below minimum wage, namely employed at Tyson Foods, and live in pitiful slums.If you need a reason to hate Wal-Mart, look at two factors: Labor Unions and Companies that do Business with China, hire Illegal Migrants or Move to Mexico.The Labor Unions made US manufacturing 20 to 37 times more costly than third-world maufacturing or hiring migrants, including import levies and shipping costs. This sent domestic manufacturing companies to pressure the government to relax trade sanctions with China and Mexico. In 1993, Hillary let Bill Clinton sign NAFTA into law, and she extended trade privileges that permits the US to import more than $70 billion of Chinese goods a year while exporting $14.3 billion of US goods to China.**Obvious Political Bias not Withstanding... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Walgreens, etc all get their goods direct from China (and Pakistan, Malaysia, India, etc.)Since the American factories are closing, hiring illegals, or moving to Mexico, and farming is now also a corporate system that employes migrants at below minimum wage, the little towns need a new industry to prop them up. Else the unskilled yokels would need to move to a large city, where the minimum wage suddenly becomes worthless. Enter Wal-Mart. (the entire economy of nearby Boliver was literaly saved by Wal-Mart, a town that once primarily made it's money from speeding tickets.) Since the entire State of Arkansas is a little town, Wal-Mart was practiced with dealing with small communities. They beat every other Mega-Box to the punch.Truth be told, I greatly prefer small business over corporate business, but not for the reasons Hollywood wants me to. I'm not big into selfish class-envy, but my heart does bleed for any people straining under oppressive dictators so Americans can get cheap Nikes and Chicken Nuggets, or Japan can get cheap Digital Cameras and PS/2s, or so that France can get cheap non-OPEC oil for "food".So if you want to hate Wal-Mart, hate them because they do business with a brutal communist empire while undercutting domestic manufacturing, then capatalize on the economic voids they help create. And don't weep for domestic manufacturing either; they got greedy, and it bit them on the butt.[/counter-rant]Also, my LGS favors Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh above everything. Saturdays look like a Silicon Valley day-care center exploded; nerd-whelps everywhere! I only go there because they have a used miniatures case, 50% off everything, and Carl knows a lot about WH40K that I don't.</blockquote>

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