When I began working in college I was making sixty-five cents per hour. Nothing taken out, paid in cash every two weeks, work as many hours as I wanted or could. Then I got on college work-study. My wage went up to USD 1.15 per hour, but taxes were taken out and I was paid monthly and could work no more than 15 hours per week.

That brought me up to minimum wage, but it was effectively a cut in pay. If I hadn't had the National Guard pay coming in I couldn't have made it, even with the loans I had from the government.

GUEST, if you have kids you work at whatever you can get. Minimum wage, or even less. Ask a migrant farm worker. I didn't say it's right or just; it is what is and all the rhetoric about right and wrong won't change it.

Likewise, if you're working for minimum wage you do what you have to to make ends meet. If that means buying at Walmart you buy at Walmart. If that means wearing clothes or eating food given to you by charity, you do that too.

I know, friend. I grew up that way -- only there wasn't a Walmart then.

Come tell the unemployed out on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation they shouldn't shop at Walmart. Or the rancher or farmer who's facing another bank loan to keep afloat until harvest.

I don't condone Walmart. But I understand as only someone who's been there can about why.