Spaw,
Don't try telling me the easter bunny isn't real. I've met your kind before. Next thing, it's santy and I know damn well santy's real cause I pay for his presents every year!
And yes, I know products made in the same factory are marketed under different brand names. Sorefingers' post seemed to suggest that Walmart is selling cheap counterfeits made elsewhere and calling them Levis. A very different thing.
NicoleC,
You're right about the quality/cost issue but poor folks can't always come up with the bucks to buy a superior, longer lasting product. So you buy three cheap shirts in three years rather than one good one that lasts three years.......or single wides, or old used cars etc. I call it the poor man's installment program!
Wallmart is not the problem. The problem is the spread of the few huge outfits (like wallmart) squeezing out all the smaller outfits at all levels of business. Weather it's gasoline, modular housing, wallmart or groceries, it's the same thing. The bigger you get the better the giverment likes you and the more favorable treatment you'll have from them come tax time. Or antitrust time. For me, the problem with all this is the consolidation of too much power in too few hands. And in the end, too few choices for the rest of us.
Answers? Hell, I don't know......I guess I'll just ride this train till it wrecks then see what's next!
: ),
Chip