The Walmart Effect
25th December 2024
The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.
New research suggests that the company makes the communities it operates in poorer—even taking into account its famous low prices.
SUGGESTS! THAT PROVES IT!
Two new research papers challenge that view. Using creative new methods, they find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.
‘Creative new methods’. Uh-huh. Somebody needs to remind these ‘researchers’ that correlation doesn’t imply causation.