Where even the Walmarts are closing
by Washington Examiner
February 20, 2023 08:00 AM
It feels like eons ago, but there was a time when liberals would shriek if a new Walmart planned to come to their area. Now, ironically, they are shrieking because the Walmarts are leaving.
Store closings are not necessarily rare; we found 160 in the past couple of years. A retailer with 5,000 stores across the nation has to be flexible and go where the business is. But there is a revealing pattern. In the suburbs of Chicago, three underperforming stores will close almost simultaneously. The company declined to give specifics to local media, but this is a reminder of the Chicago area's decadelong decline. Its population and tax base have been shrinking for nine straight years. Crime has soared, too, in part because the area is close to adopting universal no-cash bail and making it impossible for police to enforce the law against thieves. Businesses don't like that.
Census estimates show that Illinois lost 300,000 net residents over the past nine years, almost the equivalent of the population of Orlando, Florida, which has probably been one of the more popular destinations for those fleeing.
Liberals face a reckoning for what Walter Russell Mead dubbed their "blue-state model," by which he meant jurisdictions dominated by public employee unions and their left-wing allies in government. Blue-state model policies are prompting economic refugees to get out of practically every Democratic state, leaving fiscal calamity behind. Once-dynamic states, cities, and towns are dwindling as they shed residents and tax revenues.
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