[Fledermaus]

You have good points, but forget the concept that "small stores are put out of business".

That is urban legend stuff. Ancedotes used by idiots (not you) that don't understand markets. Look around any Wal-Mart store, Sam's club, Supercenters, etc. Do you see desloute land? No, you'll find more and more businesses that actually compete against the Wal-Mart. Strip malls, local stores, fast food, restaurants, other retail outlets.

The people that think Wal-Mart is taking over have blinders on. If they weren't so young and stupid, I'd say they were they same ones I knew as a young kid when I heard K-Mart, Sears and JCPenney would NEVER be taken down. When Wal-Mart really started exploding (post mid-1980's even though I knew they'd been around and started building mostly in the early 70's providing a service to mostly rural areas), the critics said they'd never get the market share to beat K-Mart or Woolworths, etc.

HA! The whiners live in the past. And what is ironic to me is that it's the left wing thinkers living in that past are being supported by so-called conservatives that really don't understand the free markets. They think for every Wal-Mart opened there is equivalent loss in sales from others. False. It increases the sales of all. As I pointed out above, the competition creates more opportunity and jobs to compete. If they were right, which they are not, then wouldn't a large Wal-Mart organization wipe out Home Depot, Lowes, Circuit City, Costco, etc? We even now have a Kohl's next to our Super Wal-Mart and Kohl's is run by left wing commie loving libearls that have their top gun in the U.S. Senate.

[Snerfling]

Thank you for our well reasoned and articulate posts. Sometimes in the bizzaro alternative FR universe, the commentary starts looking more like The Nation.

[adam_az]

We even now have a Kohl's next to our Super Wal-Mart and Kohl's is run by left wing commie loving libearls that have their top gun in the U.S. Senate.

Details? They just carpet-bag invaded my adopted carpet-bagging home town. ;) I visited one the other day for 15 minutes to check it out - didn't see anything special about it?

[EagleMamaMT]

You say that Wal-Mart never puts other stores out of business and that you don't know of any place that they have put stores out of business.

I do. My home town. Go to Wagoner, Oklahoma. There used to be two other grocery stores in town, an IGA grocery and a Homeland (subsidiary of Safeway). Now, the only place in town to buy food is the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Drive through the downtown section and look at all the boarded-up buildings. There used to be a full-service hardware there. Gone. There was a Western Auto and an OTASCO. Gone. The only businesses downtown now are flea markets in a few of the old buildings.

Oh, and BTW, the quality of the food is really lousy in the SuperCenter (for example, rotten eggs and spoiled meat) and yes, they did raise their prices on milk and meat and other staples when they finally killed off the two grocery stores and people had to drive about 20 miles to shop at any other grocery store.