[Vision2020] Wal-Mart

[Joan Opyr]

I'd respond to your entire email, James, citing facts and figures and 
economic impact studies, but to be honest, I'm stuck on just the one 
line:

"If someone wants to believe that Moscow has a small-town atmosphere 
that is fine but really it is only small because it is not large."

I am five foot six only because I am not six foot nine.
I eat food only because I don't eat cardboard.
I have a border collie only because I don't have a pony.
I love Steve McQueen only because . . . well, just because.

I managed to work my way through NC State University from 1984 until 
1991 -- through first a BA and then an MA -- without having to work for 
Wal-Mart.  Perhaps I was just lucky.  I had friends who worked for 
Wal-Mart, but I worked at a gas station, at Raleigh's local newspaper, 
as an English tutor, driving a School Book Fairs truck and trailer, 
cleaning carpets, teaching, and technical writing.  Many of these jobs 
I worked simultaneously.  Not easy, but then, I didn't mind.  I would 
have shoveled pig manure in order to get my degrees; school was 
important to me.  In fact, I did shovel pig manure, but I didn't get 
paid; it was to help out my Uncle Rich, who ran a pig farm.  A smelly 
business, but he loved it, God rest his soul.

(Oh, and did I mention that I know how to plumb?  Not so hard, really 
-- the three essential principles of plumbing are hot on the left, cold 
on the right, and shit flows downhill.)

No, Moscow must not stagnate.  Neither, however, should we sell 
ourselves short.  Study after study after study (studies not paid for 
by Wal-Mart or its subsidiaries) have shown that the net economic 
effect of a Wal-Mart is negative.  Wal-Mart doesn't bring money into a 
community; it sucks it out.  I don't think this is comparable to the 
decline in logging, the ongoing disappearance of the small family farm, 
or the slow, painful death of extractive industry.  We cannot "aw, 
shucks" our way through this one.  We as a nation are going to Wal-Mart 
our way into Third World status.  The question is does Moscow -- one 
little town that is not big -- want to go down without a fight?

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com

PS: I see that Ford Motor Company is following GM's lead.  Today, they 
announced a massive series of factory closures.  Good-bye, 
manufacturing jobs; hello low-wage, low-benefit service industry work.  
But for how long?  I have yet to speak to a customer call center in the 
past 18 months that was located inside the United States.  I find this 
frustrating, annoying, and sad.  Most of us are only one decent, 
benefits-paying job away from living a second-class life.  If you have 
health care, picture yourself without it.  If you've got retirement 
benefits, kiss those good-bye.  Now, take your living wage job and 
imagine that you work 40 hours per week at minimum wage.  Where can you 
afford to live in Moscow?  Can you pay your rent?  Your mortgage?  Your 
car payment?  Your gas, heat, electric and phone?  It takes only one 
Boeing lay-off to knock and upwardly mobile engineer on his ass.  Or, 
to bring this closer to home, a few more cuts at the University of 
Idaho . . .

PPS: I don't know of any business in Moscow that just sells socks.  I 
do know of several optometrists, though.  What effect would a Wal-Mart 
Supercenter with an optometry office within have on all of these 
particular small businesses?  What effect would a Wal-Mart Tire Center 
have on Bruneel and Les Schwab?  How would Wal-Mart oil changes compete 
with the locally-owned Jiffy Lube franchise?  Think, for God's sake!  
Think!

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