Why does Walmart’s hometown feel like a socialist utopia?

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]This is Bentonville, Arkansas, and and it feels suspiciously perfect.

[00:00:05]There's a free, world class art museum, a massive network of bike trails, art installations, parks, great schools.

[00:00:12]It kind of looks and feels like a socialist utopia, which is weird because it's actually driven by one of the largest corporations in the world, a pillar of American capitalism.

[00:00:23]Walmart.

[00:00:24]Bentonville is the city that Walmart and the Waltons built, and it's thriving.

[00:00:29]In just 25 years, the town's population has tripled.

[00:00:32]locals refer to the Waltons as “the family.”

[00:00:35]And if you look hard enough, you'll find that nearly every physical, economic, and cultural aspect of the city traces back to them, usually with a dollar sign attached.

[00:00:47]When do you feel like you started to feel the Walmart effect?

[00:00:51]The town's growth isn't a coincidence.

[00:00:53]It's a strategy.

[00:00:54]Billions of dollars spent in the region.

[00:00:55]And it all comes down to solving a very specific problem.

[00:00:58]But building thriving towns isn't a trait that most people associate with Walmart.

[00:01:03]Its reputation usually goes in the opposite direction killing small businesses, hollowing out Main Street, low wages.

[00:01:08]And that is what brought me here.

[00:01:10]When something looks this perfect, I start asking questions mainly what the **** is happening in Bentonville and who is all of this really for?

[00:01:21]Normally I travel alone for these videos, but this time I'm here with my coworker Shawn, who moved here when he was ten years old.

[00:01:29]most of the stuff we're passing by was not here when you were a kid?

[00:01:32]Definitely not.

[00:01:35]We're now at the Bentonville town square. It looks the same, but I would say the businesses are much different now.

[00:01:43]Downtown has seen significant redevelopment.

[00:01:45]And a lot of it traces back to Walton money.

[00:01:47]You hear people talk about how the Waltons own everything, it wouldn't surprise me to know that they quite literally own the development of downtown.

[00:01:55]You don't think anyone in Bentonville is surprised by that?

[00:01:58]No.

[00:01:59]Alright, two blocks away from town square is the world's first bikeable building.

[00:02:03]There's actually people biking right now.

[00:02:04]The national US mountain biking team now has their office here.

[00:02:08]Starting in 2020, Bentonville branded itself as a mountain biking capital of the world, There are a ton of trails here, right? Yes.

[00:02:15]They keep building them faster than, I can ride them.

[00:02:17]And it's all thanks to Tom and Steuart Walton who are avid riders and have invested tens of millions of dollars into biking infrastructure.

[00:02:24]We are heading to Crystal Bridges American Art Museum.

[00:02:26]Here we go.

[00:02:27]This is a world class art museum It's made up of Alice Walton's personal art collection, and more than $1 billion have been spent on this place.

[00:02:34]So wild it's free to come here.

[00:02:36]Norman Rockwell, Rosie the Riveter stuff.

[00:02:39]I mean, there's a Jackson Pollock here.

[00:02:41]It's kind of awesome.

[00:02:43]Okay, you gotta tell me where to go here. Straight.

[00:02:45]And then Walton Boulevard, you take a left.

[00:02:48]Okay, this is the old Walmart office.

[00:02:50]This one?

[00:02:51]Yeah.

[00:02:51]From what I saw in my research, Tom and Steuart Walton bought this from Walmart.

[00:02:56]I think it was for $60 million.

[00:02:58]And they're allegedly turning this into a STEM university.

[00:03:01]Right now, I am walking up to the Alice Walton School of Medicine here in Bentonville to which she committed roughly $250 million towards.

[00:03:11]I am told that the first five graduating classes will have their tuition waived.

[00:03:16]Okay, now we're going to see some crazy houses, the real estate market here is booming.

[00:03:20]The average home value is $488,000.

[00:03:23]Wow.

[00:03:24]Nice big house here.

[00:03:25]Oh my God. Oh, whoa.

[00:03:27]Crazy.

[00:03:27]Oh my God, yeah.

[00:03:28]Oh, wow.

[00:03:29]Oh, my God, that's massive! It’s so long.

[00:03:31]I'm going to guess $2.2 million.

[00:03:34]Whoa. It's way more.

[00:03:36]We'll take it.

[00:03:37]Yes! I'll have that one please.

[00:03:38]Right down the road, Walmart recently opened a world class HQ on 350 acres.

[00:03:43]20 buildings, 1000 bike parking spaces.

[00:03:46]Childcare, a massive fitness center.

[00:03:48]So big it has its own zip code and post office.

[00:03:52]I'm driving around so slowly.

[00:03:53]Everyone hates me, but not one person has honked.

[00:03:56]They don't honk here.

[00:03:57]They’ll wave at you though, if you wave at this person.

[00:04:00]If they see you.

[00:04:01]He gave me the finger. No, I’m kidding.

[00:04:03]Wow. Things have changed.

[00:04:06]Alright, we are heading to the original Walton five and dime, which is now a Walmart museum.

[00:04:11]Are you guys local or are you just visiting today?

[00:04:13]Heads up that Walmart wanted us to note that this was filmed in March, before the quiet period they enter in May ahead of earnings.

[00:04:19]A story about entrepreneurship, risk, and hard work.

[00:04:23]This is Sam Walton's old office preserved behind glass.

[00:04:27]The one thing in here that looks like it was not part of his original office, just given the color pop is a poster that says, “our profit sharing plan” That looks like it was placed there.

[00:04:38]This is the closest I'll ever get to a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[00:04:41]Okay, this is the hologram theater.

[00:04:43]Hello, Mr. Walton!

[00:04:50]Is there anything he thinks Walmart should be doing better?

[00:04:54]I wanted to ask Sam about wages and about killing small businesses and something tells me his hologram wasn't going to answer those questions.

[00:05:02]I don't think he's programed to say much about that.

[00:05:05]And that's part of what I came here to wrestle with.

[00:05:07]Bentonville is doing great.

[00:05:08]Walmart's reputation in the rest of the country? Complicated.

[00:05:12]One of Walmart's longstanding underlying business philosophies has been you have to keep costs low on the input side, to keep costs low for the consumer.

[00:05:19]Perhaps nowhere is that more famously true than the way that the company pays its workers.

[00:05:24]The company's corporate website says the average U.S.

[00:05:26]hourly field associate makes $18.25 an hour.

[00:05:29]But a recent report found that in states that track the data, a significant amount of Walmart employees rely on public assistance programs, like Medicaid and Snap benefits.

[00:05:39]And it isn't just wages.

[00:05:41]Some research has found that a Walmart opening can result in local store closures and net retail job losses in the surrounding area.

[00:05:47]Obviously Walmart pushes back on a lot of this stuff.

[00:05:50]They say that a small percentage of their workers come to work for the company already on public assistance programs.

[00:05:56]And there is evidence that their wages have improved in the last decade.

[00:05:59]Either way, none of this is new.

[00:06:01]Reporting on it goes back decades.

[00:06:02]Whole books have been written about the Walmart effect on wages and Main Street.

[00:06:06]Which makes it all the more strange that the Waltons and Walmart have built this seemingly picture perfect town.

[00:06:11]Obviously the Waltons and Walmart have spent a ton of money here.

[00:06:14]But what we've seen so far is pretty normal rich people stuff, Museums, schools, hospitals.

[00:06:19]But in Bentonville, it goes way beyond that.

[00:06:21]For example, this airport that Shawn and I flew into.

[00:06:23]In the 90s, this region was fairly disconnected from the rest of the country.

[00:06:27]Around that time, Sam Walton, Don Tyson and J.B. Hunt formed the Northwest Arkansas Council to push for regional development.

[00:06:33]One of their first major projects was getting this airport built.

[00:06:36]With Walton money helping to get it off the ground, and the FAA covering a big chunk of it.

[00:06:41]Another example of how the Waltons have shaped this region involves alcohol.

[00:06:45]From 1944 to 2012, Benton County was a dry county.

[00:06:48]In 2012 a group called, “Keep Dollars in Benton County” pushed to get the wet dry question on the November general election ballot, and it passed.

[00:06:57]According to campaign filings, 90% of the funding for that group over $600,000, came from two people, Tom and Steuart Walton.

[00:07:06]But this next one really caught my eye.

[00:07:09]Bentonville has seen so much population growth that it desperately needs to overhaul its sewer system.

[00:07:15]And it's doing that with a $239 million loan from the Alice Walton Foundation.

[00:07:23]That is not normal.

[00:07:24]Cities usually issue bonds.

[00:07:26]They apply for grants. They fight for a budget.

[00:07:29]They don't call up the richest family in town.

[00:07:31]And ask for a quarter billion dollar loan.

[00:07:33]All of this leads to the question of why.

[00:07:35]Why have the Waltons and Walmart spent so much money here?

[00:07:39]Is it all just philanthropy?

[00:07:42]Maybe.

[00:07:43]A lot of it comes down to solving a very specific problem Walmart was facing years ago.

[00:07:47]Bentonville was founded in 1837, and for a long time it was a quiet farming town, typical of the Ozark.

[00:07:54]from 1900 to 1950, the population only grew by a little over 1000 people.

[00:07:58]Then Mr. Sam Walton arrives in town.

[00:08:00]In 1950 he opened Walton's Five and Dime on the downtown square.

[00:08:03]In ‘62, he opened the first Walmart store one town over.

[00:08:06]By 1970, the company had 38 stores spread across five states.

[00:08:11]This is when the Walmart effect really starts to shape Bentonville, because that same year, the company went public at $1650 a share and officially planted its flag here by opening its headquarters and first distribution center in town.

[00:08:21]Jobs multiplied and people followed.

[00:08:23]The ‘70s and ’80s were all about expansion.

[00:08:25]Store count climbs, sales pass $1 billion.

[00:08:28]The supercenter model launches.

[00:08:29]In the late ‘80s another key aspect of the town's growth emerged.

[00:08:33]As Walmart's footprint expanded, suppliers started opening offices in the area to be close to the company, Procter and Gamble being the first and setting a precedent for major suppliers that work with Walmart.

[00:08:42]the ‘90s, Walmart became the largest retailer in America and expanded internationally.

[00:08:46]By the end of the century, there are over a million people working for the company and stores in all 50 states.

[00:08:52]But in the early 2000s, the company realized it had a retention issue.

[00:08:56]People would come work for Walmart, bolster their resume, and then leave when they could find a job somewhere more appealing.

[00:09:03]Competing for elite talent against companies based in New York, Seattle, San Francisco or Austin Isn’t easy when you're based in a small Arkansas town.

[00:09:12]So if you're Walmart or The Waltons, how do you get ambitious, highly paid individuals to come to Northwest Arkansas and stay?

[00:09:19]You build them an incredible place to live.

[00:09:21]Make it easy for them to picture their future here.

[00:09:23]You invest in lifestyle, culture, schools, hospitals, infrastructure.

[00:09:28]Change the laws so people can have a drink at the local bar.

[00:09:31]The company's dominance, along with the ecosystem of suppliers and retail focused tech startups, became a multiplier on Bentonville’s expansion.

[00:09:38]When I zoom out and look at all the things the Waltons and Walmart have done in town, I keep coming back to the same weird contradiction.

[00:09:44]In one of the most conservative states, a hyper capitalistic company, built something that feels oddly socialist.

[00:09:51]Free museums. Public trails.

[00:09:53]Privately funded infrastructure.

[00:09:54]But this isn't socialism.

[00:09:56]There's no public ownership.

[00:09:58]The Walton family members are still the largest shareholders.

[00:10:00]There's no worker governance, no democratic control of the capital.

[00:10:04]Call it benevolent paternalism, corporate urbanism, philanthropic capitalism. Whatever fancy label you want.

[00:10:10]All of the things in town that feel socialist in one way or another benefit Walmart and thus the Walton family.

[00:10:17]So I call it capitalism protecting its own ass.

[00:10:20]And yeah, locals get to enjoy it too.

[00:10:23]It's a great place to live, thanks to a lot of what the Waltons and Walmart have done.

[00:10:27]And many boats have been lifted with the rising tide, but not all of them.

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[00:11:26]There is a rising affordability crisis in the region.

[00:11:30]Bentonville, really now is where rich people live.

[00:11:32]Arkansas as a state is one of the poorest in the country.

[00:11:35]Median household income is around $61,000, well below the national average, and about 15% of residents live in poverty.

[00:11:42]But Benton County, where Bentonville sits, looks very different.

[00:11:46]Median household income here is about $94,000, roughly 54% higher than the state average and about 16% higher than the national average.

[00:11:54]And the poverty rate is nearly half the state's, about 8%.

[00:11:58]I posted in the Bentonville subreddit asking people how they felt about the Waltons and Walmart, and the two most common downsides people mentioned were the town's charm being diluted and the cost of living rising fast.

[00:12:09]But in person, what people had to say was a little different.

[00:12:11]How long have you been here?

[00:12:13]25 years.

[00:12:14]About six years now.

[00:12:16]And what brought you out here? Work.

[00:12:18]I work for Walmart.

[00:12:20]My wife got a job with Walmart, My dad got a job at Walmart.

[00:12:24]Its a kind of laid back, lifestyle, low crime rates, good opportunities.

[00:12:29]This is a great place.

[00:12:29]My wife loves it here.

[00:12:31]I think Bentonville is unique.

[00:12:34]It's unique to Arkansas.

[00:12:35]It's unique to this country, really.

[00:12:37]it's just really peaceful and relaxing.

[00:12:39]What do you think of the Waltons?

[00:12:42]The Waltons?

[00:12:44]If we're going to be a capitalist, competitive society, I think they do it, you know, pretty well.

[00:12:50]I think they're a unique family.

[00:12:51]A unique American family.

[00:12:53]I think that does a lot of good things.

[00:12:55]You don't feel like you see any negatives with what they've done here?

[00:12:58]there's definitely a lot, a lot of concerns about, cost of living.

[00:13:05]I've seen some people say that Bentonville thrives at the expense of a lot of the rest of America.

[00:13:10]What do you think about that?

[00:13:12]Well, that's a deep question.

[00:13:13]Eh... I don't agree with that.

[00:13:18]No, I don't see it like that.

[00:13:20]Sam Walton started a good thing here, Walmart.

[00:13:22]And it's grown. I mean, the things that they donate... I think it's a bad rap that they get.

[00:13:29]I mean, that's a good question.

[00:13:32]I can definitely see why people feel that way.

[00:13:36]And they're probably holds a lot of truth to it.

[00:13:39]If people are making money and spending money, as long as it keeps flowing.

[00:13:44]I've had a hard time finding people in town that are just publicly negative about Walmart or the Waltons.

[00:13:52]Why do you think that is?

[00:13:53]I mean, I went to high school here and we had support from Walmart and we are at where we're at, I think mainly because of Walmart.

[00:14:04]So it's it's hard.

[00:14:06]I haven't been put in, like a rock and a hard place to where I've really had to sit and, like, linger on these things and find blame in one entity.

[00:14:18]But yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:14:20]No, I think it's really good perspective.

[00:14:21]By this point, the more I saw, the harder it was to have a simple opinion about what's happening here.

[00:14:26]Walmart has clearly transformed this region, but everyone I've talked to had a rather simple answer to the complicated question whether that came at the cost of small businesses and low wages across the country.

[00:14:36]So Shawn and I drove to the edge of town.

[00:14:39]You must be Mr. Dan Douglas.

[00:14:40]I am.

[00:14:41]I'm James.

[00:14:42]Most people in Bentonville moved here recently.

[00:14:45]Dan's family has been here since the 1850s.

[00:14:47]He's watched this place transformed from a poor rural town to whatever it is now.

[00:14:52]If anyone could help me reconcile all of this, it'd be him.

[00:14:55]There's 200 acres right in here.

[00:14:57]That's completely encircled by county roads.

[00:15:00]See all those nests down there?

[00:15:02]This year we had a pair of eagles come down there, and they took over one the nests and expanded it.

[00:15:09]Right here, That’s so cool.

[00:15:11]In the heart of Walmart City, there's a bald eagle nest.

[00:15:16]I mean, they are the ultimate symbol of American capitalism.

[00:15:19]And then there's a symbol of America right in your backyard.

[00:15:22]Yeah, isn’t that neat? That is awesome.

[00:15:24]Is that typically what they do, take over an existing nest?

[00:15:27]Wow. Yeah.

[00:15:29]They’ll steal somebody’s nest and expand it make it bigger.

[00:15:32]If that's not a metaphor for America either. Yeah.

[00:15:34]Yeah.

[00:15:38]See, right up here, there's a new subdivision going in right up there.

[00:15:42]Oh, wow.

[00:15:43]On top of the hill.

[00:15:45]Somebody sold their land? Yeah.

[00:15:47]In the past three years, I've had, two sewer lines go through.

[00:15:51]I've had a new gas line go through.

[00:15:53]They had to come in and dig it all up a half mile across the farm.

[00:15:58]Its hell to get anything done because they get your farm torn up all the time.

[00:16:02]The Waltons, you ask, what about the Waltons?

[00:16:05]Before Walmart, we relied on agriculture.

[00:16:09]Chickens, dairy, beef cattle, very few people had any money.

[00:16:14]You know, everybody was in the same boat.

[00:16:17]and it was hard to make a living. Now, they have turned this into an area that we have opportunities.

[00:16:25]After graduating from the University of Arkansas, he worked various jobs and farmed cattle on this land for decades until... Land prices went crazy around here, and the, early 2000s and, I had the opportunity to sell some land.

[00:16:38]And I made some investments. And it allowed me to have a little more flexibility.

[00:16:44]I got involved in politics.

[00:16:46]Eventually becoming a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives and serving eight years in the state legislature.

[00:16:51]I had the opportunity to travel all over the state block after block of old buildings that are empty and decaying, it's all over the Delta, without Walmart here with me.

[00:17:04]We’d be a dying community.

[00:17:07]Some of my old classmates and friends say, oh, we don't like all the growth we've got, all these houses, we've got all these new stores.

[00:17:17]We can't find our way around.

[00:17:18]The traffic's terrible.

[00:17:20]I'm sure that, my grandfather was upset whenever the last blacksmith shop closed.

[00:17:27]I mean, part of that is the advancement of civilization and time.

[00:17:32]We get comfortable with where we're at, and we don't like change, but change isn't necessarily bad.

[00:17:41]And it's not waiting for you either, right?

[00:17:43]That's right.

[00:17:44]You can either get on board and be happy or be miserable.

[00:17:48]We eventually started talking about infrastructure, how it's struggling to keep up with growth, and the Alice Walton sewer loan.

[00:17:53]Could we have planned a little bit better? Yes.

[00:17:56]Now who could have predicted, when Centerton was 422 people, that 40 years later, it would be 20,000 people.

[00:18:06]And so it's got us behind the eight ball.

[00:18:09]If, Alice is willing to give a line of credit there, I think she'll still be able to utility bills and, grocery bills.

[00:18:19]That's a win win situation.

[00:18:21]It's no secret that all of this land makes Dan a very wealthy man now, but he can still see the downsides of Bentonville’s expansion.

[00:18:28]The cost of living is certainly going up.

[00:18:31]I don't know how young people are going to afford housing.

[00:18:35]There are a lot of people that would say that Walmart is known for killing small businesses and for hollowing out Main Street a lot of people could look at Bentonville and say it has prospered at the expense of the rest of the country in a lot of ways.

[00:18:49]Don't throw rocks at Walmart alone until you look at the overall, economy and the way business has evolved.

[00:18:58]It's just the way business in a capitalist society or business environment works.

[00:19:03]If it wasn't Walmart, it would have been somebody else doing it.

[00:19:08]I guess my last question for you is if you think about all this change, the Walmart effect on town and everything that's happened, the ripple effect and the other surrounding towns, where do you stand on it?

[00:19:19]The growth has been good.

[00:19:22]Does it have its problems?

[00:19:24]Yes it does, but life has its problems.

[00:19:28]I heard some of the cows coming up.

[00:19:29]Can we feed some cows?

[00:19:30]You bet!

[00:19:31]Dan highlights the real tension here.

[00:19:33]He doesn't hate Walmart. Most people here don't.

[00:19:36]The rising tide is real, but it doesn't lift all boats the same way.

[00:19:40]Some win and some lose.

[00:19:42]It's easy to look at Bentonville and think that it's the most successful company town of all time.

[00:19:47]And it might be.

[00:19:49]But it's hard to picture this ever happening again.

[00:19:51]Walmart was founded here at just the right moment in American capitalism.

[00:19:55]Grew into one of the most valuable companies in the world.

[00:19:58]The largest retailer on the planet and never left.

[00:20:01]In a low cost, low regulation state, with the founding family still in control.

[00:20:06]I just don't see that rare set of circumstances ever coming together again, especially in a small town.

[00:20:13]Bentonville isn't a socialist utopia, and it isn't a dystopian company town either.

[00:20:18]It's something else.

[00:20:19]It's an anomaly.

[00:20:21]In the intro, I said that Bentonville feels suspiciously perfect, but really, it's strategically perfect.

[00:20:27]The town was, and continues to be engineered by one of the most powerful companies in the world and the richest family in the world.

[00:20:34]To retain talent and to anchor power.

[00:20:37]Now that James is gone, I can tell the real story of Arkansas. Sam.

[00:20:41]Sam Walton’s actually from outer space.

[00:20:43]And he's made out of metal.

[00:20:44]A liquid metal that can reform... Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.