[Dialup Llama]

from the article "2004: Three things to watch"
money.cnn.com/2003/12/31/commentary/bidask/bidask/index.htm?cnn=yes

The Wal-Mart backlash
Complaints about the "Walmartization" of the U.S. economy -- where highly skilled manufacturing jobs get shipped overseas, and U.S. workers are forced into low-paid jobs as retail clerks hawking foreign-made wares -- are growing.

For the world's biggest store, being a political target in an election year is not good news. Most important, many Americans are making a connection between the store that ran out all the competition in town and the shuttering of the manufacturing plant that was the town's big employer

[Willie Green]

Not much prosperity in a town where all the people both work and shop at WalMart.
That's nothing but a one-way downward spiral.

[RobFromGa]

many Americans are making a connection between the store that ran out all the competition in town and the shuttering of the manufacturing plant that was the town's big employer

Maybe they're making this connection while they're waiting in the expanding Wal-mart lines to purchase their lower cost stuff.

Or when they're looking in the mirror in the morning. Because it is not Wal-mart that is the cause if this, it is the consumer who wants more for less.

It is a natural human desire, to stretch one's resources as far as they will go to improve one's position in life.