You folks know more than me about pay scales, but let me add in that I've been treated pretty well personally at Costco in comparison to several local stores, and that Costco manages to stock local items in each of its sites, one of my favorite locally made breads in Anchorage, and Vermont cheeses in Massachusetts.

One thing I'm sort of up in the air about, whether to buy books and CDs at Costco. They have a very limited supply of high volume stuff, but it kind of cheats the local bookstores. On the other hand, the time I made a real effort to patronize a local book store, it went out of business just as I was about to qualify for a free book.