Mister brought up an interesting point last night. A lot of the things we buy, including but not limited to clothing and electronics (and cars too!) are manufactured in the same factories, but different labels get put on them. Jeans you might buy at Target or K-Mart or Wal-Mart or Penneys, maybe have all been made in the same place - but the ones with the designer label on them will have a bigger price.

Same with electronics - the "generic" brands come out of the same factories as name brands.

So really it's all the same stuff you can buy nearly anywhere.

Stepping into the role of Devil's Advocate.......I can only talk about Nashville, because I don't know about anywhere else... but I've lived here nearly 30 years, and there haven't been too many Mom-Pop shops here in that time. Like I said before, we still have lots of privately-owned shops of all kinds - except for books and records. The only Mom-Pop book and record shops are 2nd hand places. The old Mills Bookstore wasn't put out of business by Wal-Mart - they closed because of competition from chain bookstores, and from another locally-owned bookstore that happened to be bigger.

Another thing to consider is that maybe sometimes Mom & Pop are looking for a good reason to retire.

Like Amos said...... companies like Microsoft and Wal-Mart are huge because people buy their stuff.

Stepping down now. :-)