Went to Walmart the other night...

[john dough]

When Wal-Mart opened in my area, a mom + pop store that was locally owned and run by some very nice people was driven to close (they were within 3 blocks of that store and a majority of the customers started shopping at the WM - according to the owner). That store was around for 15 years and everyone knew the family that ran it, and since then (about 2 years ago), the old store is still vacant.

Every dollar that you spend at WM helps close local businesses and hurts your local economy. Smaller stores cannot compete on price as they buy hundreds to thousands of times as much product (or more) and lock vendors into prices that no other retailer has the power to do so. They play dirty and threaten vendors to get what they want, as in this instance: http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

I would rather pay a little more at my locally owned store as the money goes to people in my community, not to some WM heir that has more money than they will ever spend in a hundred lifetimes. I don't care what sort of deals WM offers, they are never getting one penny from our family.

Check out this story on how WM hurts your local eco-system as well: http://www.american-buddha.com/walmart.scr47.htm