Martin, given that I have a PhD in economics and own two businesses, I think your opinion of your minor in business is too high. Your explanation of what happens to your three dollars is completely irrelevant to the point I made, which is that you pay to keep Wal-Mart employees on public welfare, you pay to subsidize their tax breaks. You probably pay more for this than you save by shopping there. But you will continue to do it because like many Americans you are an addict. Addicted to consuming. As you said, your three dollars will be spent elsewhere. It will all be spent because Americans are habitual money-spenders.

The idea of the the American Citizen and the American Worker has been replaced by the American Consumer. Martin is not, as someone said above, a model capitalist. He is a model consumer. The only thing that seems "smart" to him is buying more with the resources he earns. Transforming the system, learning how the world works, even taking charge of the economy which he claims to understand so well, take a backseat to that three dollar fix he can only get at Wal-mart.