There are also people that feel closing thousands of businesses, and putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, for the purpose of concentrating wealth in a few hands, is abhorrent, and certainly not "prosperity for everyone".

:lol2:

Yay, Ridgecrest is finally on the map for something!!

Bravo!

I appreciate your business. By the way, I'm not bad. I'm actually kind of nice when you get to know me.

Exactly! Since Chinese laborers are relatively unskilled when compared to the US it is advantageous to hire more workers instead of trying to make them more productive. While a single US worker might be able to produce 10 units of goods with the help of automation, ten Chinese workers would be able to produce 10 units of goods manually for less cost. Now there are ten people employed as opposed to one, and the one left unemployed has much better opportunities and safety nets than the other ten.

Protectionism is just that; denying a good deal and people their livelihood for the sake of keeping wealth within a privileged group. Besides being somewhat mean-spirited it does not result in overall gain.

That's make you the devil's advocate? :lol:

Yup, that's walmart.

One of the reasons I loved Leicester was because it still had a vibrant city centre. Even while I lived there however, more and more retail was focussed on out of town shopping parks. Including - and especially - the Big Four supermarkets, one of which is Asda (a division of Walmart).

One of the reasons I now love Greenwich is because there isn't an awful ot of land available for this sort of thing. It's London, space is at a premium and even though I have a big Sainsbury's and a big Asda within walking distance, they are nowhere near the category-killer size of those in Leicester.

And there are so many small independent places still thriving in the urban centre. Given that this is a tourist destination there are a few more places selling ships and telescopes rather than speciality cheeses and freshly ground coffee. But the market makes up for that. And I am ?15? minutes from the London markets anyway.

I understand that Government control might be unpalateable when it comes to success and achievement. But in this country at least, most of those in the corridors of power haven't been to a big supermarket in years. Some safeguarding of the specialist and independent retailer is surely reasonable. Otherwise we end up with a situation where the hoi polloi queue for their sliced white bread, while the ruling classes get their hand baked ciabatta delivered along with the brown envolope of money that ensure the next supermarket is built on greenbelt land.

Following on the IoTD castle image debate - I believe some safeguarding is necessary to make life better across the board. I know there's a fine line, but might is right and dog eat dog will surely end up in unpleasantness somewhere in the near future.

All your base belong to us.

:thepain:
I wish I could say that I never shop at Wal-Mart, but around here there are few choices.

My workplace is in a suburb that as far as I can tell, started out as kind of a quaint small town, but has long been overrun by strip malls, a huge enclosed mall, random big-box stores, and various scattered chain stores and restaurants. So when we saw a Super Wal-Mart going up nearby, I couldn't understand why some of my co-workers were so excited about it.

What is the allure, besides the cheap prices? A lot of the surrounding chains are discount stores, too--its presence in that area just seems so redundant to me. It opened next to a Sam's Club, for christ's sake.

Walmart wants to save that quaint little town by driving all those other stores out. Then they'll close that store and everyone will have no choice but to drive a few miles to the next one. :(