07-26-2013, 12:20 AM
graylocks wrote:
there's a tendency to romanticize mom + Pop stores. remember, mom and pop may have done okay but they often did not employ hundreds of people, pay much more than minimum wage, or provide health insurance and other benefits.
Not romanticizing them, just saying that a big corporate business came in and shuttered a local company.
Directly.
Sure, they did not employ, hundreds of people (they did not need to, as the place was nowhere near the football sized field store that WM has), but the money stayed in the community, their produce was always fresh and the place was always clean.
Check these facts out:
- This year, everyone in the world will make an average of 1.1 purchases at a Walmart.
- An additional Walmart Supercenter per 100,000 residents increases average BMI by 0.25 units and the obesity rate by 2.4%.
http://www.businessinsider.com/16-walmar...z2a6d3fgbT
The more Walmarts that open, the more US jobs are lost.
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib235/
This was from 2006; I am sure it is not better now.
Ok, so mom + pop stores may not be perfect, yet I would rather be surrounded by locally-owned, locally-ran stores where I live (not saying that you would not).