It's been well argued in many places that raising wages encourages people to shop locally more than big box stores.
A growing body of research is giving us new ways to quantify the harms of bigness and the benefits of local ownership. In this post, we round-up the important studies and provide the evidence that policymakers can use to craft better laws, business owners can use to rally support, and citizens...
ilsr.org
Keeping wages low is how you keep Walmart in power in the middle of nowhere because I'll tell you right now, living in the middle of nowhere isn't really cheaper than living in a city. Funnily enough rent doesn't necessarily go down in smaller towns compared to larger ones, property taxes also aren't really linked with urbanization. What does influence living prices in an area is how much money is already there, which makes sense, you can't get blood from a rock. If people aren't pinching every penny, they'll be more likely to shop locally, which keeps their stores open to pay people to shop locally.