Barry:

I live about 1 mile from the new Wal-Mart mentioned in that yahoo news article. You should have seen the parking lot today (the first Saturday it was open). There's an elevated highway on one side of the parking lot, and when I drove it today I looked down on the Wal-Mart parking lot. There literally was not a single vacant spot.

What's interesting is that right across the street is a Super Target that's about 5 years old. It's established and has the higher-class connotation that people in this locale place so much emphasis upon. It will be interesting to see which one survives.

Judging from your stylish hat, I would love to see how you would dress up people.

Can't you make a before and after section featuring random people you just meet outside Wal-Mart?

Wal-mart has its place for me. I have a Costco card, so 70% of what i need can be found there, and typically it's of better quality than Wal-Mart. I usually only shop there when I just CAN'T find it anywhere else for a price that isn't cheap, or at CostCo. CostCo for me has its place, the problem is that it really is a sort of lottery when you go there for non-food items. Of course, they're going to have things like tires and car batteries, however they might not have that HID light cannon that I want.

I also pretty much am set in terms of stuff that I need/want. The stuff that I do buy typically is fixed-price or has the best deals on the internet (specifically: computer gear and Apple stuff).

If you get pulled over by a cop, and dont wanna paid the ticket, give him 20$. If somone has a problem in the store they can take it out, if not they can get a fist in the face. No smiling, no nodding no teambuilding idiotism. If I really piss somone off I do expect tu be punched in a face, and no law suits or shit. That IS the Balkan way. You cant turn a balkan guy into a WallMart or McDonalds employe.

Magnus - I'll check it out. Maybe I should have been more clear, though. I don't eat food from Wal-Mart.

In fact, I buy almost nothing but organic raw produce and prepared foods from Whole Foods as well as organic produce delivered from local farms.

I am in no way a hippie, but I do believe the choices you make have bast consequences. When you shop at wall mart, you are paying that low price because the workers are underpaid and that is the bottom line. They don't get health insurance or anything like that either. Wal mart costs the state of california millions of dollars each year because their employees are on medical. Medical is for the poorest people who can't afford insurance, not for people with jobs! They "actively dicourage" employees from forming unions and get rid of any that do form. Why would a company prevent their own employees from forming a union? They do nothing but reinforce a culture of poverty, and study after study has shown that for walmart to be sucessful in a community, that community must get poorer or the wal mart fails! I wonder why that is?

All of that aside, WallMart does give you a damn good value. But wouldn't you like to know your dollar isn't being spent to reinforce poverty? Although you will probably call me a damned commie hippie liberal douchebag, or whatever other things they call people like me, being informed and socially responsible should play a part in everyone's life. Just because you can't directly see the people affected by something, doesn't mean they aren't affected.

I happen to think walmart is awesome and on the other hand I agree with Another Guy. Both you and Another guy have awesome points that I agree with.

In response to "Another Guy":

I don't blame Wal-Mart in the slightest for discouraging unions. From a business standpoint, they are about the worst possible thing that could happen in your business.

A union is basically a group of employees, or a joint agreement on the part of all or most employees that attempts to make business descisions without any formal experience. Because of their power, a union that holds a critical level of employees will kill a company from the inside out. To support a union, other parts of a business must suffer that will open the business to competition from outsiders or degrade the quality or service that the company can provide. The reason Wal-Mart destroys unions before they start is because they KNOW they can't afford them. They know their business will immediately become unprofitable due to the demands of an uneducated group of employees who demand more than the company can provide.

One of the biggest things I've learned in running my business is NOT to compete on price. Trying to make the lowest prices service or items severely degrades quality, or other parts of a business, and unless it can be done on a massive scale (like Wal-Mart has done), it is impossible to run a successful business based on providing lower prices. Wal-Mart works the way it does for a reason, and that's because it cannot afford to run it any other way.

Walmart costs you and the community around you a fantastic deal of money to employ people without a decent healthcare system. Figure out how many of your tax dollars are going to workers that are told to go on public assistance instead of being provided health care.

Fact of the matter is Target is better than Wal-Mart, Super Target is better than them and Costco is about a million times better than Sam's Club.