> “You rascals!” Tharp remembers telling the executive who called to deliver the news. “You come to these small towns, and you build these stores, and you cause all the mom and pops to close down, and now you’re the only ones left standing, and you want to go home? Why would you do that to our community?”
"Rascals." I'm not sure I'd be so polite, if I were mayor. The cycle that Bob describes is practically rote tradition by this point, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating or audaciously malicious.
He was that polite because all the shops closed down before Walmart got there. The article glosses over the timeline (since it doesn't fit the narrative), but that's how it seemed to me reading between the lines.
The heyday of this place was 100 years ago, by 1962 there was only 1 store left - it has not gotten better since then.
As best as I can tell the Walmart opened at the location of the closed "Decatur Discount", they did not cause it (or the other stores) to close.
I'm not sure where you're getting your information from, but the town has seen linear(albeit slow) consistent growth from 1900 to today, and has seen most of it's growth within the last 30 years.
TFA itself refers to the fact that like every other agricultural community in the central and mountain timezones, the portion of the community outside city limits (i.e. most of it) has been shrinking since 1900. Don't imagine that finding town populations on wiki is some sort of revelation.
I didn't understand why he said that at all- from the article "For the first time in a decade, the 1,788 residents could buy groceries in town." So it sounds like there weren't any mom and pop shops for Walmart to "cause" to close down.
Sure and they all pay even lower wages than Walmart and employ few people.
I grew up in one of these types of locations. There was absolutely nothing glorious about the Mom & Pop stores that employed few people, paid crap wages and offered zero benefits at all (because they all made little money, couldn't afford to purchase in volume (margins), and were always drifting on the edge of going out of business).
Since Walmart showed up there, wages are up over 50% in ~20 years. Walmart absorbed all the perpetual under-employment in the low skill pool, along with teenagers and retired elderly. It helped set a base income for the entire population by altering the local economy.
malicious: characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm
I worked in the WMT home office for 12 years.
I can assure you that it's not malice. It's much worse.
During the glory days of growth in the early 2000s, where we were opening a new store (minimum 150,000 square feet, usually much later), on average, every day, the feeling was nothing more or nothing less than complete apathy toward the dollar stores.
WalMart, back then, cared as much about dollar stores as most people care about some ants running across their sidewalk.
Though, as we now see, that was a short-sighted perspective, since WMT, while still enormous, is seeing its growth slowing rapidly.
"Rascals." I'm not sure I'd be so polite, if I were mayor. The cycle that Bob describes is practically rote tradition by this point, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating or audaciously malicious.