I'm really surprised because there are so many Walmart haters!

I love Walmart a lot haha. Last year, a huge Super Kmart store was shut down in San Jose because of its corporate downsizing.
The rumour is that Walmart will take over and open it early next year. Again, I love that.

One of the best things in the US economy is that we have very intense but healthy competition among vendors/retailers. That translates into lower prices for consumers. I've been to Europe and Australia, and I have to admit that I do not want to live there due to low salaries and high living costs. Please remember that this is a capitalist economy and the more competition there is, the better for consumers.

BTW, Walmart's IT division has been considered one of the best in the country. However, its IT staff seems to be more knowledgeable with more "recent" computer technologies (Windows, Linux, Solaris etc...). One of my brothers works as a programmer for a big mainframe software company and he said that Walmart's IT staff is pretty bad at mainframe stuff. However, his company's support staff has always been on constant alert and on edge whenever they receive any support calls from Walmart's IT, because it is one of its very big customers.

Eric