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To even have a POSSIBILITY at a CHOICE of reasonably-priced consumer products, you spent the weekends driving 100 miles to one of three major metropolitan areas, each of about 500,000 population. When Wal-Mart arrived within 20 miles of my home...it was like the falling of an economic Berlin Wall that local merchants had benefitted from for maybe 50 years. Those local merchants had grown FAT AND RICH. They had NOT given us ANY reason to even just LIKE them more than that Wal-Mart 20 miles away. In fact, they had simply p-ssed us off.

First of all it sounds like many people didn't make the 100 mile drive and shopped in town since the local merchants were getting rich.

Secondly the merchants whom you say grew fat and rich and pissed you off, kept their money in town and spent their money in town unlike Walmart, which tradeed the incomes of hometown merchants for minimum wage jobs without benefits and sends the town's money to Bentonville AR.

My guess is your home town is poorer for Walmart coming, they don't support little leauge teams, local charities or give back to local commmunities in anyway.

Since you supported a union picket line and condemed local retailers as rich fat bastards you really need to send a check to Howard Dean, he is your man.

First of all it sounds like many people didn't make the 100 mile drive and shopped
in town since the local merchants were getting rich.

The local merchants did do well.
Until the free market came to town.

Secondly the merchants whom you say grew fat and rich and pissed you off,
kept their money in town and spent their money in town unlike Walmart, which tradeed
the incomes of hometown merchants for minimum wage jobs without benefits and
sends the town's money to Bentonville AR.

Well, there must have been some sort of trade-off. Because my hometown is still an island of
relative affluence, even when WalMart was located 20 miles away, then opened a SuperCenter
in our town.

Down-turns in our economy? Only from an overzealous state environmental agency
putting a sqeeze on a major local employer that actaully made a product 99% of
America wants (energy products).

My guess is your home town is poorer for Walmart coming, they don't support
little leauge teams, local charities or give back to local commmunities in anyway.

Go to this URL:
http://www.thousandpines.com/main.htm
There you will find the phone and e-mail contact info for one Mr. Pate.
Contact him and tell him what an evil, miserly business WalMart is.
And that he must have been deluded with his recent comments about WalMart on
KKLA, 99.5FM (www.kkla.com).
Maybe you'll do a public service by exposing a big fat fraud.

Since you supported a union picket line and condemed local retailers as rich fat
bastards you really need to send a check to Howard Dean, he is your man.

"Supported a union picket line" -- LOL! I just didn't want to get the verbal harrasement
from these folks.

As for YOUR assertion that I called the hometown merchants "rich fat
bastards"...those are YOUR words, not mine.

But it's nice to see you and I apparently both have a decent capacity for
disliking certain parts of corporate America, big, medium or small.

which tradeed the incomes of hometown merchants for --- for the lower cost of private goods.

sends the town's money to Bentonville AR.

Not at all: only the amount of profit that local merchants used to have is "sent out" -- and not to Bentonville AR but all across America.

In fact, the consumer in that town can now, for the first time, get some of those profits also --- by buying a stock in Wal-Mart.