blockbuster-mart

BLOCKBUSTER-MART

What if Wal-Mart were to go the way of Blockbuster Video? I got the idea for this when a minion responded to my battle cry of boycotting Wal-Mart by reminding me he had little choice in the matter, as they were the only cheap source of groceries. Oops! I kind of dropped the ball on that consideration. Which just goes to show you that I don't live in a small enough town. But that is a discussion for another day. It is important to keep in mind that for many of us, holding off poverty is a real consideration.

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May Baby Jesus forgive me, I almost started sounding like Rawles or-ahem-some of my minions. Wealth and poverty is NOT always just a easy Think Yourself And Grow Rich Tony Robbinson Oo-Rah BS plan. Could I have joined the middle class early in life? Sure. If I stayed at a job I hated and wasn't naturally suited in temperament for. The one job I had that was closest in pay and presented achievable advancement in, for a middle class life, yeah, that was the one the Baby Mamma chose the time to divorce me. I wouldn't have made it, but I could have tried for it.

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The job I also could have died in chasing the Big Bucks ( midwest and South C-store chain “QT”. The stores were usually in Fully Diverse neighborhoods and one night the lone manager on duty was beat to death with bats in the walk-in cooler by Disadvantaged Youths. A few of us started carrying concealed on duty-but that was the beginning of the end for me. No job is worth that kind of risk. But, if I had thought differently, if money was the only thing I cared about, that job would have been a keeper ).

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And before anyone says “self-employment”, my only experience was LEO and retail management. I was barely into my writing career and still sucked monkey balls-at least compared to today. You could see my budding greatness, but the edges were rather rough. The last thought I would have had was that I was ready for self-employment. I could have stayed in the military, or been hired by the Los Angeles sheriff's department, but I would have stayed an alcoholic to cope with the stress. No, folks, sometimes earning big bucks simply isn't worth it.

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College? No way was I subjecting myself to four more years of idiot instructors teaching me to be a useless moron. Hell, the military looked GOOD in comparison to college. It still does, and that is not saying a lot. Choosing to make good money is exactly that-a choice. Some of us choose sanity, instead. And when we make that choice, certain repercussions are felt. Such as a narrowing series of options. Like shopping at Yuppie Marts. Now, don't get me wrong. I firmly believe making lots of money is just as constricting and limiting as living on the lower socioeconomic rungs.

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Once you lock into a trophy wife and McMansion and find the area of high cost of living your job is in, you are on a high speed treadmill that is hard to exit. You actually end up with no to worse choices in life. The brother in law is making five times minimum wage, way above the national average, and is a sad sack prior to every payday. He is trapped and age is whittling away at his options to stay in his field. I'm making what? $1.25 an hour? Semi-retired and few worries beyond what we all face on a macro scale of politics and the economy.

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Money simply isn't as freeing as it used to be, after the banker scum took over the whole economy in 2008. Why do you think we are still in Afghanistan? Bankers gotta bank, and the Federal Government can continue spending, unlike the credit card users or college debt holders. The bankers hijacked the US military, the education system, the real estate market, and etcetera. You can make serious money and someone is there holding you hostage for their cut. By this point, NOT having money can be, under certain circumstances, liberating. But Jim! What about if you had to go to the hospital, to save your life?

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What about it? If you have money or insurance, the medical industry WILL without any hesitation, quickly drain you of all your wealth. All those tests you simply must have, to cover the doctors ass with his malpractice insurance so ruinous many professionals leave the industry, quickly escalate any visit past a broken arm into a cost rivaling an expensive house ( the arm cost as much as a new cheap Asian car, in some cases ). You are paying for the many parasites in that system.

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Congratulations. You get to live a bit longer. In complete debt to the medicals. You are now an indentured servant. How is that quality of life, now? And your illness, or complications from inept treatment, means you didn't really recover. Not properly. But you must still labor away to pay your “saviors”. I think I'll just roll the dice and stay away from those hacks. I'll choose quality of life now over quantity later. And a large part of that quality is not trying to make lots of money. Which means I can't go to Yuppie-Mart to go shopping for my groceries.

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And that food is the same slop full of hormones and antibiotics and GMO's and Fuki radiation, but in better packages, with buzzwords like “organic”, sold in a nicer store, for four times the cost as what Wal-Mart sells it for. I'm not defending Wally. They push the envelop on their cost savings all the time and I don't like when people do that to something that might kill me, like food ( or, later in time, during Spicy Times, ammunition ). But when you are lower income, Wally is the only game in town eating affordably.

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Some towns have “competition” that is all the same Yuppie Food Pellets at high prices, and hence no competition at all. The prices vary from “anal sodomy” to “sell us your first born”. I got lucky. My town has a Kroger ( thanks, LDS dudes, for running a good enough business with Smith's groceries that Kroger wanted to buy them up. I do miss the bulk bucket isle, though ). Many small towns do not. You get jacked by Safeway or Albertson's or one of their clones. Your only choice is to drive a ways to Wal-Mart.

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You might be in the minority and choose quasi-poverty, genteel poverty, like I did. You might have made good money and the business closed down and bankrupted your community. You might be stuck underwater in a house, with high property taxes and laws against jingle mail ( staying liable for the difference in the mortgage and what the house sells for ). You might have been a good little middle class worker your whole life and circumstances screwed you. Wal-Mart destroyed the shopping competition, and your only choice is to shop there. But what happens when Wal-Mart goes out of business, like Blockbuster Video did, wiping out an entire industry? In this case, the affordable groceries industry.

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Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

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