A Wal-Mart is opening right in the middle of downtown Louisa, WCAV reports, and Mayor Jim Artz couldn’t be happier. He describes it as being “like Santa Claus…coming to town.” Just one person interviewed seems to have any sense, the grandmother of James Grooms, who points out that Wal-Mart will put out of business every local establishment still hanging on. The mayor says, simply, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Wal-Mart’s business strategy is, famously, to move into economically hurting areas like Louisa, make their prices so low that they shut down the mom-and-pop businesses, and then they raise their prices again when they don’t have any competition. In exchange, locals get minimum wage jobs. I’m mostly blogging about this so that I’ll be able to link to my “I told you so” when the mayor gets run out of town on a rail in a few years.
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