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Thanks for that article. Its great. It explains why we are where we are economically, and where we are headed.

I HATE Wal-Mart for all the reasons in that article.

I'm 60 years old. I remember when a product made in America was a quality product. It was worth waiting and saving for it - it lasted a lifetime and performed excellently. Quality tools, quality clothes, quality cars.

Wal-Mart represents greed and capitalism taken to an insane level. A corporation with the single-minded goal of an insect. They drive producers to make cheaper and cheaper junk and to do it overseas. They have contributed to the already alarming erosion of our industrial base.

Sure, companies should produce goods in the most efficient manner possible. But those goods should be quality goods and they should be made here in America, giving jobs to Americans and keeping money and capital in the U.S. for investment here.

Free trade is great - as long as the parties involved operate on an equal playing field. There is no way an American company producing a product here can compete with an operation in Red China where slave labor employees receive no benefits, there are no environmental controls, the cost of living is far lower and the prod-cut produced is a piece of crap.

Even more insidiously, not only does this contribute to a trade imbalance with the U.S. becoming more and more an economic fief of the orient, but it is destroying our ability to defend ourselves.

I have a rifle called an Eddystone Model 1917. It was built in a factory originally run by the Baldwin locomotive company. The knowledge and tooling that went into building that rifle came from manufacturing locomotives, not from providing financial or communications services to foreigners. That rifle was the main arm of American doughs in WW1. Nor is that a unique situation. In the Civil War, companies that made all kinds of consumer goods in the north converted to making war material for the northern war effort. One of the reasons the south lost was because they HAD no factories to convert. This was also the case in WW2, and throughout the "Cold War".

Wal-Mart and companies like them which are responsible for marketing cheap junk made overseas for the American market and routing American dollars to places like Red China are the enemy.

The sooner we recognize it, the better off America will be.