Oh the joys of my life, i deal with this big company dictating prices every day... i work in the AUTO industry... you start out at a selling price and YOU figure out how to make a profit... and every year the customer DEMANDS a cost down or they take the business elsewhere... it is PURE cut-throat... if you don't practice strict continual improvement you are going to go right down the crapper... I've recently changed jobs and moved to a smaller company that supplies many Tier 1 companies... Denso basically dicatates that we will only make 5% profit on anything we manufacture for them... they get a copy of the balance sheet at the end of the year...

as for firearms... yes walmart sells the same guns as everyone else... you can walk in and order any regular production remington for a significant amount less than the average mom and pop shop. I don't though.... i would rather spend more at my local gunshop because i walk in, they know my name, they treat me like family and their prices are still less than the local cabelas retail store... I just prefer to support someone who has been there 2 1/2 times as long as i've been alive... and they must be doing well because the place is always packed... and they always have 6 folks behind the counter waiting on people and 2 gunsmiths in the back... with a 6 week backlog just to get your firearm blued...

as far as people go... we all want to make a very comfortable living and we want to pay as little as possible for goods... it is a big circle... if you figure that 40% of the cost to produce the average good is direct labor cost you can see the issue... the more you pay the worker the more it costs you to produce that part and you have to pass taht onto the customer... sadly this is a large reason for outsourcing to foreign lands... cheap labor = cheap prices which are still not "truly" passed onto all of us but makes a corporations balance sheet look very attractive to shareholders... there has to be a fine balance somewhere.... people don't understand it is a big circle that effects them, maybe not right now but surely in the futire in one way or another...

I don't make a point to shop at walmart but i do when i KNOW they have something i need when i need it... such as when i happen to be doing some form of work and it is 11 pm on a saturday night and i have an O-CRAP i need this now situation... otherwise i'll take my business to the smaller grocery stores and hardwares, etc closer to home...

People are easy.. they want what they want, when they want it and they don't want to pay an arm and a leg for it... we aren't all like this but unfortunately many folks are...

Jamie