I grew up in rural Illinois and I remember when the first Wal-mart arrived in the middle 70's. It was something of a cultural event. A Saturday night out included a trip to Wal-mart.
But I've never liked the place. Unlike Target which is clean, well lit, has wide isles and inexpensive and attractive merchandise, Wal-mart is crowded and often dirty with jumbled shelves. It feels like a trip to the State fair.
Down and Out in Discount America: "Al Zack, who until his retirement in 2004 was the United Food and Commercial Workers' vice president for strategic programs, observes that appealing to the poor was 'Sam Walton's real genius. He figured out how to make money off of poverty. He located his first stores in poor rural areas and discovered a real market. The only problem with the business model is that it really needs to create more poverty to grow.' That problem is cleverly solved by creating more bad jobs worldwide."
One has to spend a few years in corporate America to learn that there can be good companies, but there can also be truly bad ones, ones with evil intent. In a past job I had touches with both corporate operations at Enron and Wal-mart. Both, it was clear even 10 years ago, had bad intent. They were not a good partners for anyone. Both planned their business to drive all of the positive benefits to themselves and gloried in crushing other businesses. One has reaped the whirlwind. The other is still going to and fro in the world.
The community where I live has fought them off, but it was a protracted legal battle. The only thing that can stop their downward crush on the minimum wage worker is to unionize their workforce. Make them compete on a level playing ground.
