I've been fooling around with Google's blog search in order to find more interesting Wal-Mart-related stuff to write about and I came upon
this from an economist at Northern Illinois University:
WHAT HAPPENED TO TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION? I asked this question on a principles of microeconomics examination Wednesday.
Business owners in smaller communities often object to the construction of new Wal-Marts, claiming that the competition hurts their businesses. Wal-Mart has more recently opened stores in larger communities. There are relatively few protests from small business owners in the larger communities. Explain why not.
A number of students asked me to clarify the question. The phrasing strikes me as straightforward enough. Small business owners in larger communities don't object to Wal-Mart. Why not? I'm pleased that students exercised their right to have the point of a question clarified, and at the same time startled that not objecting -- why not? is too daunting.
Of course it's not clear. What constitues a large and small community? Many Wal-Mart fights are in suburbs these days, do they count as a metro area or are they their own communities? What if the small business objects to Wal-Mart on political rather than self-interested grounds? Is that even possible under the premise of your question?
Furthermore, the premise of the question is completely wrong. Large cities have been the site of some of the strongest protests against Wal-Mart. One of my favorite anti-Wal-Mart blogs is run out of a very large community called New York City by a group called The Neighborhood Retail Alliance [Hi Matt!]. Small businesses have been part of broader anti-Wal-Mart coalitions in other cities such as Cleveland and Chicago too.
And a special note to Professor Stephen Karlson of Northern Illinois University should you ever Google yourself and come upon this: You really should make sure that you have the slightest idea of what your talking about before you find it necessary to insult your students' intelligence. Your arrogance gives all of us in academia a bad name.
JR