There's more to it than that.  Many of these small towns are crippled by economies that are not diversified.  The Carolinas are a perfect example.  My father, who used to be an accountant for a retail and real estate company in Miami and Columbus (he now owns his own small business), liquidated a few bankrupt textile companies -- Pillowtex the largest among them; that story was all over the news -- a few years back for his old boss.  (The equipment was bought by two companies -- one from South Korea, the other from Germany.)  It, literally, took over half the jobs out, and one of the towns, Rocky Mount, was left with little more than a McDonald's.

You see the same thing in Michigan's old auto towns, like Flint (home of Michael Moore and the subject of his movie, Roger & Me, which I highly recommend).  Flint was once a perfect example of middle-class, suburban, blue-collar America.  Today, it has one of the highest murder rates in the country, and its fall began when GM pulled its Buick plant out in the late-1980s.  The city had no other economic activity.

The problem is deeper than Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart is simply a chain of stores that sells cheap shit.  What's happening in small-town America goes well beyond any damage Wal-Mart might cause.  Mom & Pop businesses die when Wal-Mart comes to town because consumers choose low prices and brand names.  Now we can say this is monopolistic, in practice.  But it's really not, when you consider the outcome.  Wal-Mart is simply able to beat the other companies' prices, which is what is supposed to happen.  If Wal-Mart attempted to set prices too high, the low barriers to entry, coupled with innovation, would allow other firms to move in (as they will).

It's one thing to call everything out as being the fault of Wal-Mart.  I don't even shop at that store, because it's impossible to walk through the aisles due to the high concentration of overweight hicks and their obnoxious children who have a tendency to run shopping carts into the back in my ankle.  (It also doesn't carry my beer of choice, and the meat selection is just pathetic compared with Publix.)  But I don't blame Wal-Mart for these issues.  Wal-Mart is a company, and companies are best viewed as machines rather than living beings (in other words, stick to the positive over the normative -- it is what it is).  The real question to ask is, What are we going to do about it?  Are we going to regulate the shit out of Wal-Mart?  I think that would be a mistake.  You'll only end up raising prices on poor people, and, frankly, they need lower prices whenever possible.

No, what we need to do is build on the educational base, and expand it (that includes adult education and training).  We also need to rebuild infrastructure, because, at least in America, infrastructure spending has been woefully inadequate for thirty years, and counting.  It's time to stop playing short-run games with long-run issues.  Instead of criticizing a system that generally works well, we should be seeking to build and improve upon it.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.