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Originally Posted by tubemonkey
I've seen where a Walmart will move in and a nearby grocery store (from a chain) will close down. Why? Low pricing of course. But then, that store overcharged to begin with and is now paying the price for doing so.
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Walmart is cheaper because they buy their wares at lower prices than a local grocery store can. Walmart doesn't buy 20 or 30 of one thing, but tens or hundreds of thousands. Partly, these chains even produce goods, or buy them directly at factories. Walmart also tends to employ people for low, at or close to minimum wages, so that's another area where they save in.
Local, independent stores don't pay the price because they overcharged. They pay the price because customers don't look at the larger picture and only want the cheapest price (which is understandable, of course), regardless of the long term consequences. In the end, it's not cheaper. Either we lose our own jobs eventually, our retirement payments get cut down, healthcare increases in cost, or we pay more taxes. Because those local stores employ local people, relay on other local service providers, etc. That card house is more complex than Walmart's card house.
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This is starting to get political. Suffice it to say that I don't believe in propping up failing business models. I despise subsidies. Businesses that compete in their current model need to find another one or perish.
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The entire topic is political. I disagree with your uncompromising, capitalistic view, and I don't feel it benefits us in the long run, as mentioned above. No local grocery store can possibly compete on an even level with Walmart, just like you could not compete with a sweatshop worker or a programmer in India, because your living costs are much higher.
The point here is that you can't just compare a Chinese or Indian worker to a North American or Western European one and say that it's fine that the latter lose their jobs because they overcharge. They overcharge because they can't rent an apartment for $50 a month. I feel that it is essentially the same for the local grocery store vs. the nation-wide supermarket chain.