14 years ago, we had a baby girl. We found that baby formula at Wal-Mart was less than half the cost as the same brand at the "local" supermarket, which incidentally is owned by a large Danish holding company. In this case, they were not buying from off-shore sweat-shops, but from the same manufacturer, and just reducing the middleman costs.
Yes, Wal-Mart could certainly provide better wages and benefits for their workers. On the other hand, the workers could unionize, but so far they haven't done that. Wal-Mart is one of the few places where someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of English can find a job outside of the agricultural sector, so in some ways they are providing that important first step out of dependency on government programs.
Sure, Wal-Mart stifles competition. Up here in New England, though, the competition is just other big-box retailers like K-Mart or Ames. Most of the little Main Street shops disappeared a long time ago. Our Wal-Mart in the next town is in the space formerly occupied by a department store called Caldor, which died all by itself a few years back. This was just vacant retail space in a dying strip-mall when Wal-Mart moved in. Now I can't even drive near there because of the traffic, so somebody is happy with the place.
Remember, if you don't like Wal-Mart, then you shouldn't be shopping on the Internet, either. I support my local LHS whenever I can, but I'm not going to send extra money off to Denmark to pay high prices for commodities at one mega-corporation when I can get the same thing cheaper at Wal-Mart.
