Wal-Mart & every day low prices

I avoid shopping at Wal-Mart for several reasons. I am not fond of fighting the traffic in the parking lot and don't care for poor service and long lines. I mostly don't shop at Wal-Mart because I don't like their labor practices and believe that they have lowered the bar for workers across the nation.

Because I avoid Wal-Mart, I do 99% of my shopping elsewhere and am quite price concious. I do take my Mom there 4 or 5 times a year and ocassionally purchase something else. Yesterday when I took her I did some price checking of my own.

I found that I knew someplace that had better prices for almost everything.
I didn't want to make an extra trip to the grocery store just for a loaf of bread. The brand of whole wheat bread I usually buy was $2.00 at Wal-Mart. I usually pay anywhere from $1.09 to 1.89 depending on whether it is on sale or not. Candy Bars were 48 cents +tax = 52 cents, in the vending machine at work they are 50 cents tax included. Most of the soaps & shampoos were a few cents more than at Family Dollar or Dollar General.

If you are a smoker you sure don't want to shop at Wal-Mart! Cigarettes there were about 20% higher than the local convenience store and 40% higher than the tobacco store.

You sure don't want to buy meat from Wal-Mart, thry union busted their meat cutters and no longer have butchers in the stores. With no butcher in the store, their meat is not as fresh. Furthermore, the meat they sell is USDA select which is one grade below the USDA choice which is what most grocery stores sell.

Now I keep hearing people say that they cannot afford to shop elsewhere.... I don't understand this. If they are spending more on these things or getting significantly lower quality of goods. I fear that there are a lot of brainwashed people out there.