WalMart Nation

Although the town in which I live is small and relatively rural, there are 11 WalMarts located within 20 miles from my house, according to the company's website. This is not counting Sam's Club, which is owned by WalMart.

The proliferation of WalMarts is what I consider to be one of the fundamental problems with America - a megacorporation that, although it provides jobs, the jobs it provides are low-paying positions that famously do not always feature affordable health care benefits. True, store prices are low, but this of course is due to the massive inventories in each store and the ease with which each store sells its products. Why? Because everything is cheap.

It is also at the expense of better, customer-friendly, locally owned stores that once existed along the main streets of America, places where someone could find home and garden goods, clothes, or electronic products and you could actually get an accurate answer about the product from an employee. Sadly, this is rarely the case at WalMart, where, unfortunately, many people who work there are doing so to survive. If you check the website featured on the link above, it shows that many WalMart employees collect welfare.

A story in the New York Times today echoed WalMart's influence on our country. Those who responded to a poll said that WalMart is the "best corporate symbol of America."

This is a sad statement about our country. Although some planning and zoning boards get downright giddy to approve a WalMart in their town, mostly for the sake of collecting property taxes, it's unfortunate that communities cannot create better ways for owners of smaller, local businesses, which would sell the same things as WalMart, to open and thrive.

At least there is this hope to hold on to: At one point, Caldor's, Bradlees, KMarts, Zayre's and Ames were department stores that dominated the landscape. WalMarts, too, one day will crash and die, like the rest.