Any company – very large or very small – should be driven out by Walmart if the company is not providing sufficient value to its customers. I think we agree on this point.

I guess I'm just sick and tired of hearing that crap from the anti-Walmart crowd – that small businesses are somehow noble endeavors that deserve to survive. Why should anyone care about inefficient and out-of-touch small businesses?

I have owned a small retail business for the past 15 years. I've had to adjust my product offerring and my pricing in order to remain competitive with the "big guys". I neither need nor desire any sympathy or assistance from leftist interventionists.

Agree completely. I chose my example because it's a case of a small, locally-owned shop. It's the very sort of store that the anti-Walmart crowd complains is driven out of business by Walmart.

Consider some 50-60 years ago when most families couldn't afford a tv or more than one car. The rich did not have such limits on functionality. Now, even most "below poverty" families in the US have multiple Tvs and cars. Maybe the rich have 300 cars that are really expensive, but the marginal utility is nearly all cosmetic at that point.

When the main differences in purchasing power are not based on function but status, you have a relatively narrow gap. Compare to places like China where many people consider furniture we buy in Wal-Mart for a pittance something to save for.

After all, there are thousands of economists out there creating lots and lots of papers, and it would seem someone should be replicating the results.

On another note, CNBC, the official mouthpiece of Wall Street, it now running shows on the super-rich and the greedy. But let's not jump to conclusions.

(Don, I'm interested in your take on what should happen when executives get very very rich in the "free market," and then the company that enriched them collapsed in a heap of fraud and/or gross incompetence. Any problem with that?)

I think Target, Costco, Home Depot, Krogers, Safeway, Best Buy, PetSmart, Sports Authority, and Kohl's are all competing very well with Walmart. I'm sure it's not an easy business for them, just as it is not an easy business for Walmart.

Nevertheless, he seems to be doing OK. He doesn't compete head-on with Walmart. He giftwraps; Walmart doesn't. He has story hour. He'll have coffee available for customers, will fill balloons with Helium (even balloons he didn't sell). He occasionally has Karaoke parties. He knows individual customers and talks with their children. Walmart doesn't do these things. He carries a variety of high-quality toys that he picked out specifically knowing his customers — stuff intended to stimulate the brains of children. Walmart generally only buys the big name well-advertised stuff and sells it in all their stores.

It's not an easy business, but it's possible to compete with Walmart and still be successful. You just have to find what they're not doing.

But the statement "real inequality in America, if you measure it correctly, has been roughly unchanged" is silly. It doesn't matter if the goods that the poor buy differ from those that the rich buy. What makes someone wealthy is the consumption possibilities that they have. The wealthy still have the ability to buy the inferior goods that the poor buy, but instead choose to buy products and services that include a status premium. That the cost of proving status has gone up relative to the price of inferior goods indicates that income inequality is growing, not shrinking.

The poor would naturally want to consume the same goods as the wealthy if they could. But that's the point: they can't. However, the wealthy can buy the same goods as the poor, and in increasing quantities. Hence, real income inequality is, in fact, growing.

Both present detailed studies on the benefits of Wal-Mart to local economies and individuals.