Won’t Wal-Mart (Big Box) KILL the Stimulus Effect ?

[bvar22]

Is Obama solving the wrong problem ?


Injecting money at the consumer/employee level certainly seems like the most effective way to get money circulating again. This approach had a positive effect during the last depression. But America has changed since then, especially small town America.

During the last depression, most businesses were locally owned, and much of the money injected into the economy at this level circulated in the neighborhoods. It was spent a the local hardware, whose owner spent it at the local grocery, whose owner spent it at the local restaurant, who paid his mortgage at the local bank…..

There are very few locally owned businesses anymore, and those that survive are sharing a shrinking piece of the pie. WalMart and the other Big Boxes have been successful at exterminating them. A dollar from an Extended Unemployment Benefit that is spent at WalMart does NOT circulate in the local economies. It is sucked right back to Corporate HQ and Wall Street one quick step.

It is somewhat comforting to hear the Obama and the Democrats stress getting dollars to the people who will spend them, but are they overlooking the REAL problem?

I fear that unless the WalMarts (Big Box/Big Banks) are broken up and regulated out of existence, and the Gordian Knot of huge Corporations owning other Huge Corporations is untied, the US Economy will increasingly benefit only the privileged few.

A bank that is “too big to fail” is too big to remain protected by the taxpayers and coddled by our politicians.
National Policy that shelters and favors Giant Corporations at the expense of locally owned businesses needs to be rewritten.

Does America need a Teddy Roosevelt (Trust Buster) before a Franklin Roosevelt can be effective?

I would love to hear Obama/Democrats begin to talk about THIS problem.

(I’m using “WalMart” generically to represent the all of the Big Box/Big Banks that now dominate our nation's economy).


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[nichomachus]

1. The breakup of these behemoths might be in the offing

But we'll probably have to spiral downward a little more before people catch on.

Actually, the A&P, the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, was the Walmart of an earlier time, engaging in many of the same practices. A lot of our anti-trust regulations came out of the A&P situation. We may see the same thing happen here, but I think a lot of people are going to have to connect the dots of how spending money at Walmart is one of the causes of the economic mess. People have spent a couple of decades now "saving" themselves into the unemployment line. But they don't see how that worked.

[SoCalDem]

3. Agree 100%

It starts somewhere, BUT these behemoths need a LOT of stimulation to keep their "profit-motive" going, and once they see less gain, they start to cinch up their own belts, and close stores.. as the big boxes start to empty out, it leaves a vacuum, that locals once again may start to fill..

we've seen it here in 30 years..

when we moved here, there were 2 grocery stores..both local-owned....then we got SEVERAL chain stores, and one-by-one, most of them have closed up and moved on, and in their place, we now have locally owned, small-chain stores.. It sucks though, because we still have BIG empty buildings all over the place.

The Walton family is a greedy family (now that Sam's dead & gone), and they will not tolerate stores that lose money, or don't make enough (whatever that is)..

and suppliers are going belly-up in China too..

[arikara]

6. What we have around here is

big empty holes with partially erected behemoth buildings. They got carried away with construction then the "boom" busted. The only one that is still under construction is a massive ugly walmart. I hope they go down in flames.

[SoCalDem]

7. I have a $75 gift card for walmart, that we got at Christmas

I guess I will have to go there to spend it, but I still have not gone yet :)

[Cassandra]

2. I actually asked this of Paul Krugman in January.

He said it's a concern (for some economists a large concern) but that he didn't think it was as big a problem as others thought. And with that I said thanks and he went back to his book signing.

[dkofos]

4. They certainly won't help.

It's still a safe bet to buy food beer and hookers
if you want the money to stay here.

[leftstreet]

5. Not seeing many indications that the 'privileged few' aren't still in control

There are many areas that need to be in question.

Look at usury, er I mean credit interest rates. Not a word.

Yet the goal seems to be to get the consumer units to borrow more money.

:shrug: