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Yeah, Hale County Alabama having a working-age disability rate of 25% (It looks like that's dropped to 20% since that article was written.) sounds scandalous until you consider that it's mostly a dying rural area, the sort of place that doesn't even have a Walmart to be a greeter at. Especially in the crappy job market of the early 2010s, a fifty-something country bumpkin with no education and occupational experience limited to blue collar work that they're aged or injured out of is pretty close to unemployable anywhere within a reasonable commute of the area. Tuscaloosa is 30-60 minutes north depending on which side of the county you're in, and that's pretty much it. Good luck competing with a bunch of underemployed college graduates!
Nitpick and I know it wasn't your intent, but I have a hard eye for Walmart hate.
Your average Walmart does a little more that $1milion / week in sales. The average customer is a suburban woman making between $40-$80k per year. The average supercenter employs 300 people.
The trope of "lulz Walmart is for fucked up redneck towns" is categorically false. Walmart is an amazing, massive company. They were FAANG before FAANG was a thing, having picked up RDBMs for inventory management in the 1980s. They promote from within to an extreme degree. Walmart Labs, for data science and engineering, is as prestigious and as lucrative as a FAANG job currently. Their buyers are some of the best negotiators, marketers, and logisticians in the world. The conslutants (no, I spelled the right, go back and read it) from McKinsey etc. would give their left nut to get an in house job at Walmart - most don't.
And walmart sells what people want and need for ridiculous prices. In a modern consumer economy, it is the triumph of scale and American purchasing power. Walmart is why, how, and where we go to not only feel like but actually live better than 99.99% of all historic royalty in human history.
Amazon imports junks from all across the world. Google and Facebook make you the product by using surveillance capitalism to capture and re-sell your data. Walmart sells you a ridiculous TV for less than $500.
I suppose the better way to put it is that Walmart is the only hypermarket chain that is efficient enough to survive in mediocre redneck towns (A "fucked up redneck town" is one that doesn't have a Walmart.), so they wind up associated with them.
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Lucrative perhaps, but I dispute the claim about prestige. I've never even heard of Walmart Labs, whereas everyone in the industry knows of the FAANG companies and the high status that comes from working for one.
Ask your friends at Goldman Sachs about Allen and Company.
Sorry, I genuinely can't understand what your point is. I'm guessing because I don't work in finance so I'm missing a reference. Can you please clarify?
I was trying to draw a parallel between "those in the know" in the tech industry and the same in the finance industry.
People who work in data science and engineering know walmart labs. Great reputation. People who work in finance know Allen and company. Great reputation.
People who do not work in those industries have never heard of either Walmart Labs or Allen and Company.
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