I read a comment under this video where a guy was saying “Walmart ruined small towns and small town business“. I understand the sentiment, and it certainly doesn’t matter, but tax policy and shortsighted “main street” businesses could be said to have signed their own death warrant. Tax policy makes it just as advantageous to take a vacant building as a tax loss, as to have a renter. So they charge outrageous rents, then if they don’t get the rent they want, they can take it as a loss on their taxes.

If two people choose not to do business, that’s one thing, but for government to actually incentivize it is another. So potential businesses on main street either end up paying outrageous rents, or there are a lot of vacant buildings. And when Walmart went to Chinese made products, small business owners didn’t have the god given sense to beat them with American made goods and top notch service. They didn’t scramble and fight for it, they took a “you owe me” attitude.

I was working sporting goods at Woolco in 1978 and knew something was screwed up when I had to call twice to get a check cleared (in the old days a check over $100 had to be cleared by a manager). I got chewed out for saying “2nd call for check clearance” on the public address. I wanted to tell the manager, “You moron this man is trying to give us his money and you’re making him wait??” When they closed down 10 years later I was not surprised.

To me all this has a great amount of irony attached to it. We lived about 10 miles from Des Moines, the “Big City”. This was back in the early 60’s. K-Mart came to the east side of Des Moines on Hubbell Avenue. We’d never seen such a thing! Clothing! Hardware! Sporting goods! Home furnishings! Cafeteria! Blue Light Specials! What the hell! My older brother got a job there. They even had an automotive garage where you could get your car fixed! All this in one building!

Back then the tags on all the products said, “Made in Taiwan“. This was about 1966. Little did we know what was coming. The first mall in Des Moines was only 7 years old at this point. The collapse of the American economy hadn’t happened yet. Where we forced industry overseas by bureaucratic edict emanating from the EPA to reduce sulfur emissions. Like China which didn’t give a shit about pollution, was somehow going to do a better job with heavy industry and the environment.

Walmart started up in about 1978. K-Mart and Sears didn’t see that their days were numbered. Kind of like when manufacturing left the U.S. for Mexico. Business said, “Hell we’re still paying these guys a buck or two an hour, if we’re going to go where its cheap, let’s go where its really cheap!” And China became the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. You really can’t outbid the cheapest bidder in a dive for the bottom.

So within about 50 years two “giants” of retail were vanquished. And god knows how many “mom & pops”. Retail never looks any further ahead than the next holiday.