You already are.

Do you even realize that you're subsidizing their jobs by shopping there? They get paid minimum wage, mostly part time. Your tax dollars are going to keep them on medicaid, and food stamps, so Wal-Mart keeps the piggish profits to themselves.

90% of the stuff coming from China goes directly to Wal-Mart. (And that's an old statistic. Might be more now.)

When a manufacturer wants to place a product at Wal-Mart, they're faced with some hard decisions. This has been occurring for many years now. Here's an example.

Take a box fan. The manufacturer goes into display the fan. If Wal-Mart sees profit, their primary goal is to push the price as far down as possible. If they accept it, they force the manufacturer to make the fan as compact as possible so that the product takes up the least amount of space on the shelf as humanly conceivable.

So what must the manufacturer do? If Wal-Mart is only going to dish out a certain amount for the wholesale price of the fan, then the manufacturer usually has to go back and determine how to maximize his own profits. So he becomes "more productive" (that's code for lost jobs.) "How can I make this fan in as little work time as possible? How many workers will I have to lay off so that I can make a profit off this fan? What components can I ship in from 'low cost' countries to maximize my profit?" And it progressively gets worse from there. This caused the loss of literally MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of manufacturing jobs in this country since 1998. And that nice fan that you originally bought from Wal-Mart made by US workers, are now made by slaves in China, and the quality has sunken (took time, they had to compete for a while) to an all time low. Notice you're paying about the same now as you did 15 years ago when they were made here, but now you're having to buy one once a year, instead of once every 15 or so years.

Where are those men working that used to work at the fan plant? Oh, they're working at the "better" jobs that were supposed to come with "Permanant Normal Trade Relations" with China. Those jobs are at where? Wal-Mart. The job that was supposed to be "so much better." Instead of paying more for your fan, you're paying more, instead, for tax subsidies for these people to be slaves for Wal-Mart.

Bye bye middle class.

I do not care- it is not my job to open my wallet so someone else can give their kids a better Christmas than mine.

And this is the sentiment of people that don't recognize they've been had.

Walmart is the General Store of the welfare state.

They're the first stop for many who receive welfare benefits. Worst time to shop is the first of the month when their cards get refilled.

The workers are paid little. Now, like many other big box stores they're cutting all part time healthcare which dumps them into receiving Medicaid. Many are on welfare themselves to survive.

I comparison shop and I can tell you from my own personal experience that Walmart does NOT have the lowest prices in food by any means. They may have some things with comparabley low prices but they are not the lowest.

I do not know where you are comparison shopping at, but the only time prices are matched by competitors is when they place the item on sale. I do not have time to do that not the patience. I know right off the top of my head that the nearest market charges $2 more for Folgers Instant coffee than Walmart, same product same amount.

Your tax dollars are going to keep them on medicaid, and food stamps, so Wal-Mart

Those are government problems, did you vote ? Walmart did not do that, the person you sent to Washington did that, you did it.

Look, this is not a perfect world, if you want to pay more money somewhere else on principle then shop somewhere else. If you do not like Walmarts employment practices then don't work there.

I don't think there are any Walmarts in New York City. I think they passed a law banning them.

My husband works for Walmart.

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I comparison shop and I can tell you from my own personal experience that Walmart does NOT have the lowest prices in food by any means. They may have some things with comparabley low prices but they are not the lowest.

I do not know where you are comparison shopping at, but the only time prices are matched by competitors is when they place the item on sale. I do not have time to do that not the patience. I know right off the top of my head that the nearest market charges $2 more for Folgers Instant coffee than Walmart, same product same amount.

YMMV. Here the prices are very similar and a large percentage of grocery items that we buy are not available at Walmart. I go to Walmart when I want to stock up on canned soup and toilet paper. That's about it. Even the soup has nothing to do with price, but rather selection.

On the other hand, at the grocery store, the computer systems always work as they're supposed to, they still bag your groceries for you and deliver them to your car if you'd like (most helpful when juggling children), and you don't have to wait in line for 30 mins or more just to check out!

If I could save any significant amount of money at Walmart, I'd be there despite the low service standards, but that's just not the case in this part of the world.

Matthew, you ought to take a leaf from your lady wife's book and stick to your guns! PfT's complaint is the same tired old nanny-state nonsense that gets dragged out of the cellar every time someone fails to genuflect to the imaginary glories of unionism.

If you discover blood coming out of a wound in your calf, the right things to ask are "How did I get this wound, and how long has it been bleeding?" not "I wonder why I'm not bleeding from my thigh?" and "Will I ever get the stain out of my pants?" Mutatis mutandis, Walmart* has no demonstrable incentive to "buy American" rather than Chinese, in part because American manufacturing had already become unspeakably shoddy thirty years ago and has shown few signs of getting better.**

What is more, Mater is squarely on the money in using her wits to make a sound generalization about the best way to expend her precious time and energy. In addition, nothing in her outlook argues in favor of buying a poorly made box fan. If PfT and others chose to be far pickier about box fan quality—perhaps even buying a forty-year-old used one from a thrift shop or from an online auction site in preference to buying a new junky one, whatever its country of origin—manufacturers and retailers would have an incentive to raise production standards, at least they would until the government started "regulating" box fan production!***
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*Hasn't anyone else noticed that the government and media bashing of Walmart never abates for a day or two, whereas the same combine has bent over backwards to be kind toward Target in its "time of trouble"? Target's mishandling of the credit records of tens of millions of customers should have been enough to shut the company down and subject it to criminal investigation at the federal level and in each and every state. Instead, it's been given understanding and endless compassion for a level of managerial incompetence that would have caused the late Sam Walton to be perp-walked straight into the (managed) history books.

**Everyone whose head isn't firmly implanted in the sand is aware by now that it was known as long ago as the seventies that the clear superiority of Japanese cars to American cars was in part due to the fact that Detroit's tolerances for part assembly were generally in the 0.01-inch area, whereas Japan's were routinely 0.001 inch and frequently tighter.

***Something else that shouldn't be forgotten is that far too many "made in the USA" products today are made, not by actual Americans, but by illegal or (just as bad) legal immigrants. The employment gains heralded by the Bush and Obama administrations over the past decade have solely benefited aliens. The employment rates of native-born Americans have worsened markedly over the same period. So why not buy authentic Chinese or Malaysian or Nigerian products instead of their faux "US" equivalents? At the very least, one is spared the domestic items' markup.