It's astounding that you wind-up with stores which seem to intend to give nothing what-so-ever back to their communities. What is the long term plan here?
These store provide a lifeline for a certain segment of the population. Without these stores, one store in particular, there would be a lot of instability in society as we transition from a mostly middle class society to something a bit more bipolar.
Inequality is real, and these kinds of stores go a long way towards making it tolerable. Now I can't put a dollar value on that, but it has to be worth something.
Now what Walmart did do was to take advantage of the economic detritus left in flyover country as productivity gains and outsourcing started to eviscerate the jobs landscape. But Walmart was not the cause so much as they came along after and capitalized on the ruins.
When I graduated from college and had my first job and apartment, a relatively large amount of my income was spent at the local Walmart. It was a godsend for me at the time. What I didn't spend at all those too inefficient to compete mom and pop stores was money that I could use to pay off student loans, rent, utilities, and still have a little money left over to save up an emergency fund.
Its harder to invest in meaningful job creation when you are spending inordinate amounts of money keeping Walmarts employees fed and housed.
If the Walmart disappears, you don't end up with former Walmart employees with middle class jobs, you end up with former Walmart employees who are now unemployed, require even more government assistance, and have to spend more for staples along with everyone else in town.
Government subsidizing low wage workers is how redistribution of wealth works. That's its mechanism of operation. The rich pay taxes and the government gives the money to lower income people. It would be great if we could just stop having lower income people so we wouldn't need to subsidize them anymore, but where does that money come from? When the answer is higher unemployment and higher prices for other lower income customers, how is it better for the money to come from them instead of wealthier taxpayers?
Selling cheap stuff, however, doesn't actually build an area.
The poor today in the US are not saving anything. Money for infrastructure and other improvements to an area is not going to come from Wallmart's low prices.
However, trying to live without the moderating influence that Walmart has on the ravages of inequality is a worse problem than trying to figure out how to get infrastructure paid for.
The poor living without infrastructure actually keeps them poor (can't commute to work, say). The poor not being to buy at Wallmart leaves them with Amazon and with a corner store that might rip them off a bit but has some relation to their lives.
Edit: I mean, I live on a limited income and have plenty of friends as close to absolute poverty as it gets. None depend on Walmart in particular though some depend on Target, an equivalent. You can live even more cheaply buying from thrift stores than Walmart. Moreover, most people who can go to the giant big box stores have working cars which put them on a tier slightly above the very poorest.
Sure, broadly, the last thirty years of declining wages for the working class have been softened by the flood of cheap manufactured goods. But that's overall - Walmart is not the only conduit of this flood, though it's helped. And Walmart + other big box stores also benefit from economies of scale and dodging taxes for infrastructure. Of course, it's reasonable to say Walmart isn't a pure evil but touting it as a net good seems equally misguided. The despair of "Walmart-ized" small town American is well documented.
For example, It sounds impossible that lots of people today subsist out in the middle nowhere, where the bus services barely exist, without their cars. But this is what happens today and the cuts in infrastructure, no buses and etc, hurt this group a lot.
Wealthy people benefit too. Just last week my water heater started leaking. My girlfriend turned it off but I wasn't able to get home and assess the situation until ~6pm. Well by then most traditional plumbing supply places are closed. Enter Home Depot. Long story short I was able to choose from 5+ models of water heater buy one that was almost a dimensional replica of my leaking one, everything I needed to install it at ~7pm on a weeknight. Your local plumbing supply store that caters to tradesmen probably isn't open past 6.
I'm fairly poor but the bread and the jean and what-not sold at Walmart is of the worst imaginable quality. Ross Dress-for-less and thrift stores offer deals. Walmart sells cheap stuff that's more or less worth what you pay for it.
Seems to me that it might be a good idea to issue retroactive tax bills (or refunds!) based on the actual price when a property finally does sell. So if they're honestly right that these properties are worth less, then they'll see for less someday, and they don't need to worry about a retroactive bill. OTOH, if they're wrong — there'd be principal & interest to pay.
This might even help keep property prices low, which is (I think) generally a good thing, since there are so many forces acting to keep them high.
I dunno — maybe someone can point out the flaws.