What is accepted as gospel by the majority of urban planners is that Walmart is bad. The planners will tell you that Walmart's retail practices kill off main street businesses, they do so knowingly and gleefully, and the video and audio evidence has been distributed widely. I'll leave the curious reader to search for those videos themselves and allow them to form their own opinion. What I'm more interested in is the how those that hold that view are undermining their efforts by supporting policies that reinforce Walmart's position in the market.
A report from Tulsa World discusses how food stamps equals big money for Walmart.
...much of the nearly $1.2 billion in food stamp expenditures went to Walmart stores, which brought in about $506 million between July 2009 and March 2011...
This creates an interesting chain whereby the increase of food stamp usage will likely lead towards increased patronage of Walmart. Therefore a large percentage of the farm subsidy bill will in effect be transferred to Walmart. The retailer will then be able to increase its efforts, if the planners are to be believed, of eradicating the US of small towns. It will ostensibly hasten the vision depicted in Disney's Wall•e where there is but one store which is either run by the government or vice versa.
The paradox, even the irony, is that those on the political left believe in the system of support which enables the growth of the retailer which has bedeviled their planning efforts. Those on the political right advocate for planning methods that lead to the growth of the percentage of the populace that, in their own words, is unlikely to vote for them. They are at cross purposes and cannot seem to reconcile their respective world views with reality.
Lost in all of this is the fact that Walmart operates on notoriously thin profit margins and are highly susceptible to price fluctuations. Walmart is now too big to fail for in it's role as the government store the millions they serve would be in a desperate situation should they go under.
Agrarian Urbanism won't solve the country's political quagmire, but it goes a long way towards protecting the individual and the community against potential food shortages and price spikes. This, as predicted by famed investor Jim Rogers, will be most important concern of this generation.
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