Quote of the Day

"The average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco.

Wal-Mart's "every day low prices" make the biggest difference to the poor, since they spend a higher proportion of income on food and other basics. As a force for poverty relief, Wal-Mart's $200 billion-plus assistance to consumers may rival many federal programs. Those programs are better targeted at the needy, but they are dramatically smaller. Food stamps were worth $33 billion in 2005, and the earned-income tax credit was worth $40 billion."

~Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post columnist