Nobody's really thinking about this in the grand scheme. There was something in Fiscal Times recently about how the death of Walmarts was leading to a renaissance of small shops without talking about what to do with the giant dead husk of the Walmart, or the fact that an extant small shop is a lot easier to support than a new small shop is to establish. Meanwhile, Amazon is so hot'n'bothered to get its products to you NOW NOW NOW that they talked the Post Office into delivering on Sundays, but only for them. To the best of my ability to determine, there is no corner of the United States that's immune from Prime 2-day. Amazon's own verbiage includes Puerto Rico and Alaska. I know that when I was in Eatonville, WA, I could get things just as quickly as when I was close enough to LAX to smell the jet fuel. I imagine the expense is substantially greater for bumblefuck USA than it is for LAX... which would be one reason why those Walmarts are dying. But for the average bulk shopper in rural America, Amazon Prime is a great Walmart replacement. And the jobs being lost are the shit ones - no one ever holds up a Walmart associate career as something admirable. Driving for Amazon sucks but I'm not sure it sucks harder than greeting for Walmart. Really, Walmart and Amazon were both locked in a death struggle to eliminate competition by sucking all profit out of retail. Walmart did it by scaling up and slashing margins. Amazon did it by eliminating brick'n'mortar and slashing margins into the negative. Lo and behold: retail is dead. And sure - there are probably lots of former Walmart shoppers that can't afford a Prime subscription. But let's talk about economic viability: We are, after all, talking about a town that would already be dead because its sole source of income was a coal mine that dried up, held in a liminal zombie state by a retailer that had no long-term reason to open a store there. I used to go off-roading in Questa, NM. Questa existed largely because of a molybdenum mine that was usually closed. In other words, most of the time Questa existed off of welfare. I spent the summer building electric cars in Jerome, AZ. Jerome ceased to exist in the '50s because the iron mine dried up. It wasn't until the Hells Angels moved in in the '70s that it became a town again. Towns live. Towns die. Yes, it's shittily ironic that Walmart killed their town centers to be profitable and now they have no viable reason for those centers to return... but if there isn't an organic reason for the town to exist, is it any more Walmart's fault than the mine?Her husband once worked in the coal mines. Now the couple lives on what little they get from Medicare and Social Security, and with precious few other options she made the hour-and-a-half trip from her home back in the “hollers” once a month to stock up.
Amazon structures itself so that it doesn't directly employ drivers. And while driving tends to be what everyone pictures when you think of the logistics industry, that is just the tip of the labor force. The vast majority of people employed in that field are doing warehousing or shipping hub work. I do that work. Based on what I've heard of their working conditions, I would much rather have a job as a Walmart greeter than work for Amazon's logistic operations. Both companies would treat me like shit, but Walmart greeters generally don't end up in the hospital. Warehousing is dangerous. And the jobs being lost are the shit ones - no one ever holds up a Walmart associate career as something admirable. Driving for Amazon sucks but I'm not sure it sucks harder than greeting for Walmart.
Yeah, I've talked to those guys. It's a shitty gig. And I knew some of the original warehouse guys at Amazon - one of 'em had the story of his towed Volvo written up in The Everything Store. I think both jobs are designed to grind you up and spit you out through deception; neither position is one with any long-term prospects and the externalities are carefully masked by Amazon. Somewhere on here there's an article that talks about the mobile home migrants that Amazon employs, like latter-day Tom Joads. I think that's one of the reasons Walmart is diminishing while Amazon is cresting; Walmart started their rape'n'pillage run out in the open and they started it back in the early '90s, while Amazon started their rape'n'pillage run in the dark and they started it in the early '00s. I think Amazon is gonna run out of rope sooner than Walmart did, though. Walmart, despised as it is by the liberal intelligentsia, is the 3rd place of the Rascal set. And Amazon ain't got no greeters.
Isn't this true of most warehousing / factory production / general "first line" jobs, not necessarily just Amazon? Though I am sure they mask things better than most places. I think both jobs are designed to grind you up and spit you out through deception; neither position is one with any long-term prospects and the externalities are carefully masked by Amazon.
Not at all. Typically, warehouse-related jobs are where unionization starts. Not only that but there's long been a tradition that warehouse experience leads up the ladder in any sort of sales/manufacturing enterprise. That's another leg Walmart has over Amazon - they at least tend to promote from within. Amazon, on the other hand, positions itself as a valuable resume builder within the tech world - "work for us, it'll impress everyone after you get sick of us." But that doesn't extend to the people who don't code.
Emphasis mine. Wouldn't it be seen as a silver lining though, that people are attempting to fill in the gap left behind by companies like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, etc. from leaving? I know I'm personally a huge supporter of small businesses and try to promote mom and pop shops as often as possible. There was something in Fiscal Times recently about how the death of Walmarts was leading to a renaissance of small shops without talking about what to do with the giant dead husk of the Walmart, or the fact that an extant small shop is a lot easier to support than a new small shop is to establish.
I should have been clearer. I'm deeply hopeful for the renaissance of small towns and small shops that feed them. However, none of the articles I've read about the effect of failing Walmarts on the small towns they parasitized has taken an ecosystem-wide view of the problem, and that's my beef with this article. "A vision of bountiful modernity" is not a phrase usually lobbed at a Walmart. And if you look up Kimball, WV, you'll discover that less than 200 people live there. I recommend you look up the Walmart in Kimball, WV, and click "street view" - the place is like an idyllic shangri-la, which is also language never lobbed at Walmart- there's probably more cars in the parking lot than in the surrounding two-mile radius around it. Once you've done that, zoom out until you see... civilization. You might even look for a Walmart in Princeton, WV (population 7,000) and determine that you can get to the Princeton Walmart from the Kimball Walmart in under an hour. Now - I grew up in a small town. If I wanted Little Caesar's it was half an hour away, through two reservations and across the Rio Grande. If I wanted Olive Garden it was two hours away, through 14 reservations and two mountain passes. There wasn't then but there is now a Walmart next to the Little Caesar's. I'm here to tell ya - driving an hour to get to a Walmart is not a hardship when you live in a town of 200 people. It's a fact of life. And that town of 200 people? It's below minimum viable by a fair amount. Walmarts are like an opportunistic infection - they thrive where the host is already weakened. The strain isn't as potent as it used to be, which is part of it. But a rural town with 200 people that happens to be an hour away from another Walmart isn't a place that needed a Walmart at all.Indeed, in a place so diminished, Kimball’s Walmart had risen like a vision of bountiful modernity, stocked with anything one could ever need. And its disappearance is typical of the rest of the stores that Walmart announced it was shedding.
I completely agree. My personal anecdote comes from a town of 2000 people. We had two grocery stores and there was one in the next town down, but it looks like only one is left now. We were the biggest city for twenty miles in any direction. The nearest McDonald's was twenty miles away. I remember when Pizza Hut came in; it was a big deal. Making a trip to buy anything besides hardware and groceries meant making a trip. Like you said, fact of life. But looking at a map of Kimball, WV reminds me of visiting Newcomb, NY in December. I was day hiking and needed dinner each night. There was one restaurant twenty miles away open Thursday-Monday in the off season or another 25 miles the opposite direction. The second advertises on their website "ATT and Verizon service," and eating there was the first time my phone connected to a tower in 36 hours. The closest Walmart or Home Depot or Best Buy is about an hour away. Newcomb is another mountain town. I suspect it mostly survives on tourism and people weekending or retiring up from Albany.driving an hour to get to a Walmart is not a hardship when you live in a town of 200 people. It's a fact of life.
Wow. I didn't know Wal-Marts could be found in towns so small. For towns that size, they really are behemoths. I can see then, how they could be convenient for so many people. I can also see how their presence, or lack of, could have such a big economic impact. Even if they employed only 50 people, that's a huge chunk of the population even when you factor in that they'll probably attract people from neighboring towns. They're also probably a boon for local municipalities and counties as far as taxes are concerned too.
A huge chunk. There's also a federal pen (FCI McDowell, 1600 inmates) and an overflow facility (200 inmates) within 15 minutes drive of it. Prisons are the second "oh my god we're dying" industry of depressed economic areas. If your town is thinking of putting in (A) a Walmart (B) a prison or (C) a casino, you're fucked. That means there's weakness and someone with deep pockets wishes to use the externalities of subsidized construction to funnel what's left of your local economy's money right into their pockets. That's because none of them are actually good for your town - they won't go there unless you subsidize the shit out of their existence. Walmarts will generally demand a tax holiday of 10 years or more and require all public works (water/sewer/gas, roads, electricity, you name it) to their new spot to be provided at taxpayer expense. They're notorious for shutting down in one location and opening another shortly before that tax holiday expires.