Now, Walmart doesn’t just rely on its poor employees, it also relies on poor customers to buy its cheap junk. The average Walmart customer has a household income of less than $40,000 a year and 1/6th are on food stamps. (Side note: This is yet another way that Walmart profits off of and depends upon public benefits--thousands of dollars in food stamps are being spent on Walmart products every day.) This is not to say that wealthier people don’t choose to shop at Walmart; they do. But the operative word there is “choose.” Most middle and upper class families would easily relocate their purchases to another store if Walmart wasn’t convenient for them, or if Walmart didn’t exist.

Low-income individuals, on the other hand, have far fewer options. Particularly in more rural or suburban areas where transportation is costly and time-consuming, and most local businesses have been squeezed out by big box stores--poor families have little choice but to make their purchases at Walmart. Walmart becomes their one stop shop. Unsurprisingly, a large percentage of Walmart customers are also its employees, meaning that Walmart is something like an enclosed, greed-based system which keeps feeding off itself and siphoning profits to a handful of people at the very top. It exists only to benefit them. As one former employee explains in an exposé on Gawker: “Walmart permits employees to cash their paychecks at the register which is commonly eaten up by their cartfuls of food and other necessities. This company perpetuates a system where employee earnings flow right back to this colossal unseeing and uncaring corporation.”

In short, while there are many factors that create and sustain poverty in America, counties with a Walmart have a greater likelihood of being low-income, and keeping their residents trapped in that cycle of poverty. If we didn’t have enough reasons to fight against Walmart’s encroachment into our towns, now we certainly do.