Posted on 06/07/2010 10:15:21 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
The folks who don't want any more Wal-Marts in Chicago like to paint the superstore as the root of all evil.
Recently, they've latched on to a new study of Chicago's first Wal-Mart, in Austin, as further evidence of the unique kind of pain Wal-Mart inflicts on Americans.
There's just one problem.
The study's anti-Wal-Mart conclusions don't add up.
On Thursday, the City Council Zoning Committee, short on votes, once again deferred a vote on a massive development on the Far South Side that would include Chicago's second Wal-Mart, giving Chicagoans more time to analyze this study, as well as all things Wal-Mart.
First, let's take a careful look -- and quickly dismiss -- this flawed study by researchers at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Though pegged as the first urban analysis of Wal-Mart's impact on local businesses and jobs, the study turns out to be little more than a cheap shot at Wal-Mart.
The underlying data are weak, even if the researchers' forceful conclusions are not.
In other words, their conclusions are no conclusions at all.
The researchers found that the Austin Wal-Mart basically has been a "wash" in terms of job creation. The jobs created by Wal-Mart, they concluded, were erased by the loss of an equal number of jobs at nearby businesses that closed after Wal-Mart opened in September 2006.
Too bad the researchers didn't count the jobs at the new businesses that opened after Wal-Mart's arrival on the West Side. There are roughly 22, according to the local alderman, Emma Mitts, including Menards, Food 4 Less, Aldi, two bank branches, CVS and Burlington Coat Factory. That information wasn't available, the researchers say.
Too bad they also didn't factor in other reasons, unrelated to Wal-Mart, nearby businesses closed. Nor did they compare West Side business closure rates with rates in other similar communities. Again, that information wasn't available.
Without this key data, this research is only a starting point -- and nothing close to a definite statement about Wal-Mart's economic impact.
We don't doubt that when a Wal-Mart opens other stores nearby are forced out of business. That has been documented elsewhere in the U.S, and the Chicago researchers found the businesses closest to the Austin Wal-Mart were at the greatest risk of closure.
It's worth noting, though, that those lost jobs paid low wages, an average of $9.02 an hour in 2008, according to the UIC/Loyola study. That compares with Wal-Mart's reported full-time average wage of $11.77 in Austin in 2010.
The verdict is still out on Wal-Mart's impact on job creation in Chicago, with this study offering little insight. But it does help clarify one point:
Wal-Mart alone cannot transform a community, despite what Wal-Mart boosters like to say. Rather, it can be a catalyst for further economic development, the single best reason we strongly support more Wal-Marts in Chicago, particularly in underserved neighborhoods.
The two South Side sites -- in Pullman and Chatham -- under consideration for a Wal-Mart cannot attract other retailers without an anchor such as Wal-Mart. In fact, no other anchor store has even expressed interested.
And Wal-Mart stores at both locations would bring groceries, merchandise and decent-paying -- not great, but decent -- jobs to neighborhoods that need and want them. This is especially true at Pullman Park, the development the City Council put off on Thursday. That project would transform a barren former industrial site with retail, 800 new homes, a hotel and a recreation center.
There is little risk of displacing existing businesses because there are almost none there -- almost no retail, no restaurants, no grocers.
Wal-Mart is neither evil nor the Messiah. But there's little doubt that struggling Chicago neighborhoods would be better off with one than without one.
The same Chinese crap that Sears, K-Mart, Target, Costco, Kohls, et al. sells. But that’s not the point.
Would you rather have Wal-Mart at 83rd & Stewart or the pile of rubble that’s sitting there now? If you’re with the liberals, you want the rubble.
Without Wal-Mart, I would not be able to afford to buy most of the food and household items we need. Thank God for Wal-Mart.
GAYsachusetts!
WalMart’s pricing is very good on many items. But it isn’t ALWAYS the best. I tend to buy about 1/4 of my regular household/grocery items there, but I get a lot more at the two major area grocers - Publix and Bi-Lo. We have a Food Lion nearby as well, but I don’t like that particular store so I seldom shop there.
Publix is nice because they don’t require an intrusive ID card in order to get the discount price. So, my privacy is preserved there.
I should go ahead and tell you what a butcher once told me. Don’t buy beef from Wal-Mart. They apparently sell a lower grade of meat or something.
Processed foods, potato chips, milk and all that is fine but apparently beef should not be purchased from Wal-Mart. (
My closest one is very clean also. The next-closest one is not quite as clean, but it isn't bad either.
It seems to me that the cleanliness of stores is inversely proportionate to the number of illegal aliens that live in a given area. I was in a Kohl's in Clermont, Florida one time - the store was a sloppy mess. Nothing neatly stacked on the shelves and racks, cloths on the floor, shirts thrown on top of the hangar racks instead of neatly hung. I noticed also that a proportionately large number of customers around me were NOT speaking English.
I don’t buy a lot at Wal-Mart but am happy to see that perhaps even the liberals are starting to think about getting some jobs into Chicago.
But it's "old-growth" rubble!
Go past the back of a Goodwill store on a weekend. It looks like a zombie movie.
I’ve said a zillion time here that Walmart is a mixed bag. Not all good, not all bad.
“Would you rather have Wal-Mart at 83rd & Stewart or the pile of rubble that’s sitting there now? If you’re with the liberals, you want the rubble.”
I would rather have rubble than a Wal-Mart that was built on private property taken by eminent domain. The truth is that if the property so taken was “blighted,” the owners would be glad to get rid of it for any reasonable offer while ridding themselves of the need to pay property taxes, insurance, and so on. http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/independent_business/walmart_eminent_domain.html for more.
In this case, the extreme Left has some good ideas. There are leftist organizations that find legal ways to shake down developers by throwing environmental impact and similar obstacles in their way. This should be done to any developer or big box retailer that uses eminent domain to take private property—make their project so expensive that they will wish they had gone elsewhere, or actually go elsewhere thus leaving the municipality in question with NO property tax base on the land so taken.
I laughed my head off when this happened to New London, the home of the Kelo decision. They used eminent domain to throw out the property owners who were paying property taxes, and then the development project fell through. I called the city of New London and told them I was glad it worked out that way.
Not the case here although that’s a lot bigger problem than Wal-Mart.
Duh? Have you ever looked at the beef at WalMart? It’s awful. I spend a lot of time in the store, but will not buy beef there. The rest of the dead animal stuff is alright.
And one must also note the company’s obsession with “sustainibility” and its support of cap and tax.
On Thursday, the City Council Zoning Committee, short on votes, once again deferred a vote on a massive development on the Far South Side that would include Chicago's second Wal-Mart, giving Chicagoans more time to analyze this study, as well as all things Wal-Mart... the researchers didn't count the jobs at the new businesses that opened after Wal-Mart's arrival on the West Side. There are roughly 22, according to the local alderman, Emma Mitts, including Menards, Food 4 Less, Aldi, two bank branches, CVS and Burlington Coat Factory. That information wasn't available, the researchers say. Too bad they also didn't factor in other reasons, unrelated to Wal-Mart, nearby businesses closed. Nor did they compare West Side business closure rates with rates in other similar communities. Again, that information wasn't available.I'm sure WalMart helped frame Blago, too.
None of the things you listed, including the above, are conservative business values, except as they may improve the bottome line.
The values you listed are Liberal in nature, and as such are generally anti-business.
Went to our local Walmart Super Store today and the greeter was seated with a walker beside her. Who else would hire as many handicapped and elderly, remain non-union, maintain fairly low prices and still make a profit? tho, I did hear they will have to raise prices due to Obamacare. It is one of the biggest employers in the rural community I live in and has been a godsend to those that needed employment.
We also have a grocery store called Ramey’s that is non-union and makes a profit.
You mix values with nationalism I hope you know.
And if you really want to defend the Waltons and Wal-Mart just know they they have the money to turn Arkansas into a Republican state if they wanted but have seemed to have settled into a state of contentment with continued one party Dem rule in the state.
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