I have not purchased anything from wal-mart in over 5 years.

i am not fundamentally against wal-mart, but thier labor practices, the forcing of manufacturing over seas to a country that still murders people for believing the wrong way, the destruction of small town economies etc.

they assist their employees in filling out welfare paperwork to make up for the lack of benefits walmart can easily afford to provide but chooses not to. if they werent doggedly on a one track course of being beholden to unlrealistic growth expectations by shareholder this would be a very easy problem to fix.

They keep artifically pushing and pushing manufacturers to establish overseas (chineese) manufacturing facilities. there is no consumer outcry to lower prices of goods. Infact they often do not lower the price of goods when the cost is decreased by sometimes 99 percent. For example if a shoe costs you 50 dollars for a made in America version, walmart may pay 35 bucks, they get that same shoe in china for 1.25 and still sell it to you for 50 dollars. The problem is that the manufacturing capital has now been shifted to china and is no longer supporting Americas economy in anyway. Trade with china is a one way street. They cannot afford our products so we ship them raw materials and they ship us finished product.

as for the labor you can simply google walmart lawsuit and see settlements for 100's of millions for mistreating workers, everything from forcing them to clock out and keep working to locking people in stores at night. They claim about 85 percent full time employees, which means they are eligable for the walmart health care plan. They dont tell you that they consider full time a megar 24 hours a week. at 6 bucks and hour thats 144 dollars for a weeks work. after taxes how on earth are these people supposed to pay for healthcare? Look at the quarterly earnings statements (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=WMT) and tell me they cant afford health care.

There are many good books out about the problems with the wal-mart economy. I highly recommend the PBS Frontline episode "Is Wal*Mart Good for America". You can watch it online here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

If you do some reading about what they are doing to the economy you will probably be startled. But you have to be willing to listen. I mean with an open mind. If you already have your mind made up about how you feel you will never learn anything.

This problem isnt just walmart and i dont want you to believe that i think that. If walmart goes away someone else will fill the void. There is too much money to be made with the trade model they have established. Walmart is however by far the largest part of the problem and its a good place to start correcting the problem. We cant wait around for a solution that fixes it over night.

vote with your dollars, I implore you to start thinking about what your money is doing when you spend it.

if you would like more sources of material to help explain more of the problems, as i have only scratched the surface and not done a great job backing it up, please let me know. I assure you that there are more issues here than you would believe.