Posted On: Saturday - October 25th 2025 12:24PM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Geography Big-Biz Stupidity
Alternate title: The Other People-of-Wal-Mart
That's Northwest Arkansas National airport, formerly "Regional", and all it would take is one regular flight to Canada, hell, make it Mexico, with a customs agent or two on-call, and it could be "International". That's a pretty good airport code, as these codes go, with that cool "X", and then the "NA" for Northwest Arkansas. That's where it is, up in the corner of the State, closest to Bentonville, but also near Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville, etc.
That's quite a few destinations there on the map. The airport terminal, a small dingy place with what looked like Wal-Mart plexiglass-walled jet-bridges 20 years ago, is now decent sized, being renovated some more, and very busy. 20 years ago, as with lots of small "out-stations", this airport would have had a few flights a day to the hubs of some of the 6 big air carriers of the time.* Those Allegiant, Breeze, and Frontier flights (the latter to some degree) are different, as they don't do so much of the hub/spoke flying. There are also the Avelos and, God-help-you, Spirits that do the same, taking people to resort type destinations like Las Vegas or anywhere in Florida.
Why is this much going on in a remote corner of Arkansas? Sure, there are the Ozarks and lakes for water skiing, but no, normally an airport in an area like this would have just your basic hub flights a few times a day to the closest of them, with a few outliers. I mean you can go to Los Angeles direct from XNA. (The map shows this as an Allegiant flight now, but American has done this flight too.)
This metropolitan area, if you can call it that, now has over half a million people, having doubled in the 30 years from 1990 to 2010.. OK, but lots of half-a-milliion-people-filled places don't have airline service like this. The easy answer why XNA now does consists of one word: Wal-Mart.
Well, yeah, duh, Bentonville, Arkansas is headquarters of Wal-Mart, Wally World, the biggest brick-and-mortar (that's pretty silly, that '99-era "TECH" term, so call it "steel-and-sheet-metal-screw") retailer in the world. Let me go back to 35 years ago. My girlfriend at the time was very excited that a Wal-Mart was going to be built in our town. I had no earthly idea and thought - I can remember this - is that that Wall-Drug thing that I saw a bunch of signs about on the roads in South Dakota? I guess she was more into this than me. I got my department store stuff at K-Mart or Sears. (What's a K-Mart? What's a Sears? OK, Zoomer.)
Let me jump to a few years later, the mid/late-90s, as that's when I remember Wal-Mart's "Buy American" campaign. I'm glad I didn't go completely by memory here, as this Talk Business article says that campaign goes back to '85, way before I ever heard of the place, yet they had 882 stores and over 100,000 employees already:
Walton championed the Buy American initiative for the next few years and altered the formula the company used to determine a competitive pricing practice between goods made in the U.S. and those imported. He said if Walmart could get within 5% of the same price and quality, the retailer would take a smaller markup and go with the American-made products.That was Sam Walton, who's no longer around (died back in '92), and I imagine the imports in '85 were from Taiwan or Mexico, not China yet.
The title of that article is The Supply Side: Walmart celebrates 40 years of buying American-made goods. Haha, yeah, where, on the toilet paper aisle... cause I don't seen ANYTHING made in America. (I have generally tried to avoid the place for the last 10 years.) I noticed the store campaign with the red, white, and blue banners was done by the latest, 1999.
Back to the Geography, there are the original small towns in this "Northwest Arkansas Statistical Area", the four mentioned above, of which Fayetteville has the Razorbacks - Univ of Arkansas - and what comes with the University environment.** There are boutique cutesy little downtowns, but no real original Arkansas towns. Bentonville has lots of mansions. I don't mean McMansions, crowded together on 1/2 acre lots either. These actual mansions have 2 acre, 5 acre, maybe bigger lots, though it's hard to tell from the ground because the place is hilly everywhere but the airport.*** Drive around the roads out of XNA, and you'll see them, one after another. These are the there for the OTHER people of Wal-mart, managers, executives, along with those of the various supplier companies.
There is a LOT of money coming into Northwest Arkansas. People can travel easily around the country and the world with it or to make some more - via Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, Detroit, to cough, China, cough, cough, from right there at XNA.**** I imagine the people of Bentonville, Fayetteville, Rogers, and Springdale welcomed the influx of that money for some years. Now, I doubt anyone with any memory of times gone by would feel that way. The OPoWM live large off of the proceeds of outsourcing American jobs, while they additionally LUV LUV LUV the Hispanic cheap labor at home. The airport ramp areas are manned by nothing but Hispanics, and many of the people working inside are foreigners too. I've seen the Hispanics working the hotels too - they are everywhere around the area.
If you're a working-class White man in the area, you've got the weight of the whole system on top of you. The good work has left, and the PRP has come home. I don't know what jobs there are that foreigners, legal and (I'm sure) illegal, won't get hired for first. These Other People of Wal-Mart don't think much of the "White trash". You could hole up on your land and make do doing a bit of this and that with your skills I suppose, but then housing and land must have gone way up in price to match the influx of money and "good White people" from where-the-hell-ever.
XNA, you say? Nah, this ain't Arkansas. It's now just the World Headquarters of Cheap China-made Crap.
* When these 6 combined into 3, that is: USAir into American, Northwest into Delta, and Continental into United, this reduced the direct-service destinations for many medium sized cities. One reason is that some hubs were just reduced to mere destinations - Delta no longer needed Northwest's Memphis, TN, and United didn't need Continental's Cleveland, OH, for example. More importantly, rather than 6 airlines' hubs to offer service to (some or even all of them), there were left only 3.
** Sure enough, the wiki demographic table from '10 says 3.1% "Asian", probably 95% of whom are at the University and/or running Chinese and/or Indian restaurants. Likely it's over 5% now
*** I'll see if I can get images later on from google maps.
**** Well, if you're one of the REALLY Big Other-People-Of-Wal-Mart, you could fly on a business jet out of Rogers, Springdale, (very nearby) Bentonville, and Fayetteville Drake Field. A Gulfstream fueled for a trip to China could get out of any one of these places I think (all have over 5,000 ft runways).
Comments:
Moderator
Monday - October 27th 2025 9:30AM MST
PS: Interesting how that went, Possumman. That also might be an item I'll look for next time I end up at Harbor Freight.
Possumman
Monday - October 27th 2025 4:19AM MST
PS hello Mod---I know--I buy stuff there too--in fact just got the Braun Tactical Pistol Light that folks on the gun forums have been touting--seems to be an "exact" copy of the $150 Streamlight--enough so that Streamlight went after HF--somehow they worked it out and the HF version is back and is only $60---I guess the Streamlight factory has a front door and a backdoor.
Moderator
Sunday - October 26th 2025 4:27PM MST
PS: "Right *by*", but that works too.
Haha, Alarmist. Yes, International indeed - nonstop flights from Coo-looom-bia - but don't bother to notify the Customs man.
Haha, Alarmist. Yes, International indeed - nonstop flights from Coo-looom-bia - but don't bother to notify the Customs man.
Moderator
Sunday - October 26th 2025 4:25PM MST
PS: Hello Possumman, that place should be avoided. However, I was going right buy and needed ONE hex key. Didn't get one - got about $65 worth of stuff, errr, cheap China-made Crap. The boy can't help it... the song goes.
The Alarmist
Sunday - October 26th 2025 2:37PM MST
PS
Then there’s the “international” airport at Mena.
Then there’s the “international” airport at Mena.
Possumman
Sunday - October 26th 2025 12:04PM MST
PS. If you wanna smell China stop in at Horrible Freight
Moderator
Sunday - October 26th 2025 7:17AM MST
PS: Right, M. I don't know much about Sam Walton - I'll read a bit now - but I'd guess he cared more about America, the country in which he was able to do this amazing business venture, than the heirs who built nothing do.
M
Sunday - October 26th 2025 5:39AM MST
PS
Sam Walton may have had that policy, but his heirs sure don't.
Sam Walton may have had that policy, but his heirs sure don't.
Moderator
Saturday - October 25th 2025 7:47PM MST
PS: Good evening, SafeNow. "It sounds like the airport would make a perfect target for ICE,," That'd be a fun thing to see though. We had some discussion on the iSteve thread #14 about whether having a lot of publicity for these deportations is good or not. I lean toward it being a good thing, but then you don't want to tip them off either, especially a big org like Wal-Mart that can be prepared for a raid.
I wonder what Sam Walton would thing of his heirs that run the business now.
I wonder what Sam Walton would thing of his heirs that run the business now.
SafeNow
Saturday - October 25th 2025 6:08PM MST
PS
It sounds like the airport would make a perfect target for ICE, but I guess there is a Walmart exemption; too big to raid. A few years ago ICE raided some Walmart stores across the country. The targets were outside companies furnishing the janitors. Walmart was shocked, shocked, and paid an $11 million penalty.
It sounds like the airport would make a perfect target for ICE, but I guess there is a Walmart exemption; too big to raid. A few years ago ICE raided some Walmart stores across the country. The targets were outside companies furnishing the janitors. Walmart was shocked, shocked, and paid an $11 million penalty.