Would you or wouldn't you? The Anti-WalMart movement

[Mr. Bloom]

Interesting idea (I've not heard of it before). Do you think this is a good idea or not?

Two neighborhoods in Milwaukee are considering printing their own currency, which could be bought with U.S. dollars, but would be only accepted at local businesses, in order to encourage people to shop at home instead of Walmart.

It's not a new concept — the Chicago Tribune says that lots of towns and neighborhoods relied on their own local currency during the Great Depression. It's also perfectly legal.

So what's the advantage for shoppers? Well, the currency could offer incentives — trading $100 US for $110 in the local currency would give shoppers a 10% bonus, for example.

What do you think? Would you use a local currency in order to support your community? Or are you going to shop at Walmart until they pry the cart from your cold dead hands?

[jobob]

It's already being done in Berkshire County in Western Mass.

http://www.berkshares.org/localcurrency.htm

[Flybye]

Honestly, it is so much cheaper to shop at Wal-Mart than local stores that I can't justify 10%.

If I lived in a bigger community, there might be more to intrigue me.

For clothes we have two thrift stores that receive donations of clothes that are generally worn to death before they hit the thrift store. We have a CAL-Ranch, but I don't wear Wranglers or western style clothes, and Wal-Mart. While I don't love their clothes, they come in handy when I don't want to drive 30 miles to purchase clothes.

For food, we have a very small independent grocery store with a very small selection of food that is catered more toward the elderly population. We have one other grocery store that is okay, but their prices are about 20-30% more than Wal-Mart.

I don't LOVE Wal-Mart, but for feeding/clothing a family of 5, I am very happy that they offer low prices.

I don't see how buying local bucks when money is tight would be to my benefit.

[Zen]

How many times can we go down this road? It's not as simple as "anti-Wal-Mart"

[Eden]

If you want to see what a Wal-mart can do to a small community watch the documentary Wal-mart: The High Price of Low Cost sometime http://www.walmartmovie.com/ It is very interesting.

Somehow Seattle has managed to shut Wal-mart out. We have none within the city limits. I'm not sure why though I suspect its because the city won't give them the tax breaks they demand....

[smilingcat]

didn't vote.

My stance is no to local currency. And no I have yet to spend a penny at Wal-Mart.

In a long run, Wal-mart hurts the community by draining the money out of local community. And there is the argument of cost shifting where due to the low wages and not allowing full time employees, many who do work at Wal-mart on a part time basis require welfare support and free health care from the community.

Yes on a short term, I'm stupid for not shopping at Wal-Mart. but they do not carry what I like. I am decidedly not part of their targetted demographic.

Smilingcat

[Bruno28]

How many times can we go down this road?

+1 from me

[Mr. Bloom]

Although I've not made it clear, I'm not trying to make WalMart the issue. What I see is:

• an orchestrated effort presumably targeted at a single retailer - in this case walmart...but it could just as easily be the socially sensitive and more popular TraderJoes competing against the local grocery coop.
• a bias to giving a 10% discount...why don't the stores simply lower their prices 10%? Frankly, because they don't have the margin...so they're cutting off their nose to spite their face

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door". This just seems inherently wrong and short sighted to me...

[sfa]

A couple of blocks from my front door is a Main Street that is beginning to thrive again. Since we moved in there have been numerous restaurants and small shops (generally specialized and boutique-y things) that have opened, and we patronize them whenever possible, but also go to larger stores further away for things that our Main Street doesn't have, including to Wal Mart. I would buy local currency as a way of supporting my Main Street and encouraging people who don't live a block from it to do the same, but not as an anti-Wal-Mart statement.

OTOH, the people on my street are working hard to keep another development from happening. Right now my street ends at a state owned hospital center. A developer has bought up land adjacent to the hospital and wants the state to release some of its unused property for him to buy so that he can build one of these huge promenade-type districts anchored by a Target store and including a hotel, movie theater, shops and restaurants. To do this, the county/state would agree to build a new exit from the beltway that would go OVER the houses down the street and dump off into this proposed development, then to avoid having traffic backed up down at my end they'd make my end of the street (the end that turns onto our Main Street) a dead end. So the only access to my currently small little quiet street would be through a beltway exit or through a horrible shopping center, my neighbors would be living underneath a beltway exit ramp, and our thriving Main Street would be dealing with another level of competition that it likely couldn't handle.

So I'm not feeling very friendly towards huge chain stores and big box developments at the moment.

Sarah

[Zen]

Holy schneikeys. Where is this? (I know it's not Frederick)

[Crankin]

We already have a strong "indie" movement in Concord. The town government is making a concerted effort to get people to shop locally in our 3 shopping districts (for the holidays). While it's true that these stores don't meet all of my regular shopping needs, I don't go to any big box stores. Heck, I don't even go to big department stores anymore; small national brand stores, yes.
My husband, who does tons of work around the house, tries to patronize our 2 local Ace Hardware stores. The one in Concord rarely has what he needs, but the one in the next town where we used to live does. But, he does have to go to Home Depot for many items.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

This is a good thread about a very interesting local movement that is being very successfully used in small communities these days.
Unfortunately, Mr. Silver, you put "The Anti-Walmart movement" right in the thread title, which pretty much guarantees a whole 'nother heated Walmart argument thread, and sadly pulls the thread attention away from a genuinely interesting and thought provoking idea that communities have been putting into successful use.
It is not that different from buying shares in your local food co-op...an idea that has been successfully promoting local food producers for many years now.

I suggest that before everyone starts arguing about Walmart again , they read the links that Mr. Silver posted in his first post, and discuss the actual thread subject.

[sfa]

Holy schneikeys. Where is this? (I know it's not Frederick)

Catonsville, in the southwest area of Baltimore County.

And now with that information, anyone here can find me! There's only one road in Catonsville that leads down to the state hospital center. Just look for the house with the tangle of bikes on the front porch.

Sarah

[OakLeaf]

Yup. It's really only tangentially about Wal-Mart. Grocery stores are the same thing. Even though Kroger's is union and I feel MUCH better about shopping there than I do about shopping at XXX, I try to do as much of my grocery shopping as possible at farmer's markets and locally owned stores. Yes, even though there may be many things I can only get at Kroger's, and even though the price of staples and local dairy products may be higher than mass-distributed staples and factory-farmed dairy.

On the average, spending money in a locally owned store even for non-locally produced goods returns 30% more to the local economy. So for my 10% extra expenditure, I get better JOBS (which if I were working, might benefit me directly), better roads (and have to spend that much less on shock absorbers and tires), better funded schools (so parents have to spend less out of pocket for books, supplies, and extracurriculars), more police, EMT and fire protection (decreasing losses in those areas), etc. Well worth the investment IMVHO. Shopping at any non-locally owned store for price reasons alone is a deeply false economy.

Yes, there are times that I do it for convenience reasons. So having already purchased "local bucks" would be an incentive for me to take my wallet to the local store first even though it might mean an extra trip to the big-box store if local doesn't carry what I need. Then there are people who are so impoverished that that extra 10% makes a huge difference in their ability to afford their basic necessities. "Local bucks" would help them avoid sucking even more money out of the local economy, ultimately helping themselves earn higher wages and avoiding placing more of their neighbors into their own position.

So I vote yes.


PS.... since Mr. S used the old cliche about the "better mousetrap," I had to add this little story, which is pretty closely on point in a couple of different ways. Somebody DID build a better mousetrap. It's called a "Mice Cube," and even though they're manufactured in China of cheap plastic, they are ingeniously simple, wondrously effective and reusable many, many times. (We have a big problem with mice at our house. ) What happens when somebody literally builds a better mousetrap? Stores stop carrying it, because they can make more money selling mousetraps that don't work as well and break after a few uses (or are intended to be single-use). When we broke a couple of our 5-year-old Mice Cubes this year and tried to find new ones, we wound up having to order them online. At least they're still available, but somehow I doubt it will be for long. If I were a little more enterprising I'm sure they'd be very easy to make out of a sheet of thin Plexi-Glas.

[eclectic]

Organizations and people here participate in the Scrip program

http://www.scrip.com/about.html

It is a win/win situation

2 cents about Walmart
interestingly enough super walmart opened its doors here a few years ago. I talked to managers of local grocery stores and they said their business dropped the first quarter but it has been better than ever since.
Why? Walmart has shoddy meat and vegetable products, staff is under trained (I mean who stacks an entire palette of peaches on top of each other?)
Wait line averages 20 min to 1/2 hour per till and the shelves are never stocked.
Many blame the oil boom we are having (move to ND BTW if you need a good job w/ good wages) But then why do all the other grocery stores still have average wait times and their shelves are always stocked?

BTW Kmart and Target started doing better once Super walmart moved in.