[XJarhead]

Exactly. The horror of working and middle-class families having the opportunity to buy stuff for their families at low prices!

The whiners should go the Third World. Or better yet, take a Third Worlder to a Wal-Mart, and ask them whether they'd like to have something like that in their country. Wal-Mart is a quintessentially American store. It doesn't have all the lovely old world charm of a mom and pop, but then that's not what most Americans are looking for anyway.

[Protagoras]

The mom and pop stores are really charming until you want a selection of good products at fair prices.

[razorbak]

The small town mom and pop stores put the rural gravel and dirt road mom and pop stores. They made a killing when the true country stores went out of business. They had high prices, limited inventory, and good luck getting a refund. When Wal-Mart began moving into these small town areas [places that K-Mart or Target wouldn't touch], the small town stores screamed bloody murder. Everybody says they are for the free enterprise system, until a competitor begins cutting into their business. Then they want artificially propped up protected status like state run economies. Knowing human nature, Wal-Mart, as they forget what made them number 1, will be challenged by some upstart with a better way of doing business someday, too. That's what happened to K-Mart when they were far larger than Walmart. [that and dissing Christians concerning adult magazine sales which led to a boycott -- Disney did the same thing a few years ago and they are suffering for it now -- the once golden boy of the mid nineties, Michael Eisner, is now one step away from the chopping block, because of Disney's lackluster financial performance in recent years].