At a party over weekend a regular reader of BR suggested that EMR needs to go back and make sure that a failure to respond to some of Larry’s “summaries” does not suggest Larry is right or that there is no sound counter argument.
As luck would have it, even though EMR has been very busy, he has copied some of the more important ones and will re-post the comments and respond as time allows.
Here is a recent comment from Larry that was posted on Jim Bacon’s new Blog The Retirement Crisis. Jim is so prolific that if one does not respond right away the comment is buried. This post was the topic of settlement patterns, not Boomers retiring so EMR pulled it over here out of the fast lane.
In the 22 May Malls: the Ticking Time Bomb post on Empty Malls Larry said:
“I dunno EMR.. I strongly suspect when the dust clears – the WalMarts are going to still be around.”
First, what causes you to come to the conclusion that the dust will clear?
But to make sure the issue is clear:
Over the past decade Wal*Mart would not have shown a profit if all the location-variable costs were fairly allocated and Wal*Mart was not subsidized directly and indirectly. We lay this all out in PART THREE – THE PROBLEM WITH CARS – Chapter 10 – Learning from Big Boxes. There is now some good research on the issue.
That is only the start. Wal*Mart is not the cheapest place to buy a lot of items. One member of our Household recently paid 46 percent more per square foot for a product by the same manufacturer (different size package) in Wal*Mart as another member paid on the same day at Sears (nee Kmart). We use a lot of it and both knew we were getting low.
Wal*Mart is cheap on SOME things but they make it up on the items that their research shows customers will ALSO buy when they go to Wal*Mart for an advertised bargain or an item that is frequently price compared. They use package size and other factors to make things appear cheaper than they are.
Wal*Mart did not become the largest Enterprise in the US of A (for a while) by giving anything away.
For a quick confirmation go to Wegmans and check out their comparison shopping posters updated every few days – Wal*Mart, Costco, Giant, Safeway, Wegmans – milk, bread, etc.
Finally Wal*Mart us rolling out small (15,000 sq ft) shops so they can be closer to the customers because some shoppers have started to baulk at driving long distances to their super stores. Did someone say Balanced components of human settlement.
“To me.. they are like king-sized, modern-day versions of the old mom&pop country stores….”
You can only say that because you have not yet come to grips with locational and scale reality.
“We’ll know that we REALLY are in trouble when WalMarts start going belly-up… right?”
One would hope most realize that humans are “in trouble” now even if Wal*Marts are still showing a profit due to subsidy.
EMR