[notfromhere]

Local stores can't compete on price in areas where it moves it (usually rural areas where consumers are super price sensitive). So most of the local retailers go out of business, taking away a towns retail base and often hollowing out its downtown areas. Wal-Mart siphons all the profits to its corporate HQ, furthering weakening monetary flows in areas where inflows are already weak due to stagnating industry.

This leaves the small town dependent on Wal-Mart, and when Wal-Mart decides to close a town, the whole town is screwed because they don't have any retail left and no one has the means to rebuild it. The cherry on top is that Wal-Mart's square footage is almost always too big for anyone to take over, so the buildings generally sit there rotting until they're demolished

tl;dr walmart hollows out the retail base of small towns, leaving them super dependent and screwed if they ever leave