Interesting Reason piece on Wal-Mart and LA

After being out in LA a couple weeks ago and hearing the locals expound about how much they hate Wal-Mart this article opened my eyes about the Wal-Mart plight. Personally I'm not a big fan of shopping at Wal-mart, but none the less they shouldn't be able to ban the company from opening stores and offering cheap prices.

This isn't exactly a problem for Wal-Mart opponents, many of whom live in parts of L.A. where the shopping choices are myriad. While driving around the Palms area of West L.A. (home to reasons headquarters), one can run into four different supermarkets, a Smart & Final warehouse store, the Macy's and Robinsons-May department stores (located at the Westside Pavilion shopping mall with a Gap and other shops) and a Sav-on drug store.

For anti-big box types, a Wal-Mart is something they could live without. Much of the opposition likely comes from the image of Wal-Mart shoppers as hicks without enough style or taste to shop at a hipper spot such as Target. But for the poor with limited shopping options and even more limited incomes, Wal-Mart represents something else altogether.

When Wal-Mart opened its store last year, it didn't exactly devastate the neighborhood. Instead it filled the very space Macy's abandoned and brought cheaper-priced items to the area. It also brought 450 jobs; the average pay is more than $9.50 according to Kanelos, just above the $8.71 average wages earned by unionized workers in a typical Vons or Safeway. For an area with unemployment rates in the double-digits, Wal-Mart seems to many a godsend.