[Write14u]

Originally Posted by JAGG

Now the mom and pop crisis. I'm sure many will hang me by my eyelashes for my opinion on this but, it's the truth as I see it. My opinion.
If you go into a store and they want 65 dollars for a blanket, you can get somewhere else for 18 dollars, which one do you choose. If you can't change and grow and be flexible, and offer the public something different, something better and your prices are too high you're are going to go out of business. That is a fact. That's bad business practices. Mom and pop shops didn't want to lower prices didn't want to offer a different service didn't want to do anything different, so they failed to compete. Blame it on walmart?

Gotta disagree with you on this one JAGG. It wasn't a matter of not wanting to lower prices for mom and pop businesses.
When Wal-Mart exploded in the 80s and ---yes, put mom and pop places out of business --- it did it because it had the power of money. I know this first hand and witnessed it with my father's television shop. When he ordered a Magnavox, etc., TV for his store, he couldn't even get the same rate as Wal-Mart was SELLING TVs for. Because Wal-Mart bought in such bulk from the manufacturers, it was able to sell TVs for lower than my dad, as a dealer, could buy them. You can say it's not Wal-Mart's fault that it had the money to buy so much at such a low price, and that would be accurate. However, it's not accurate to blame it on smaller businesses who were unable to match those prices without taking steep losses.
And yes, Wal-Mart knocked my dad out of business. He adapted and found other things to sell/do. But in no way, shape or fashion, did he have the money required to compete with Wal-Mart. The only small mom and pop stores remaining open are niche shops.