I wish there was a Costco near me

I had no idea they were so progressive in structure.
What a great alternative to Wal-Mart.
The buisness status quo pretends to be unimpressed:

<excerpt>
The nationwide retailer treats its 100,000 clerks, forklift operators, and other workers as valued assets to be invested in and nurtured – unlike the Wal-Mart model of paying the least you can to rank & file employees, squeezing the last ounce of toil out of each of them, busting any whisper of unionization, and causing a workforce turnover like employees are nothing but disposable coffee cups.

How different is Costco? Starting pay is $10 an hour, workers typically earn $40,000-a-year after three years on the job, the company covers 92 percent of employees' health care costs, and the Teamsters union provides strong bargaining representation for the workers. Also, while CEOs at other major corporations average 531 times the pay of their lowest-paid employees, Costco's top boss takes only 10 times the pay of his typical rank & filer. His annual salary $350,000 – compared to some $5 million a year hauled off by Wal-Mart's honcho.
<snip>
But Wall Street analysts are sourpusses when it comes to this remarkable corporate maverick, which is defying the contrived wisdom that worker exploitation is the only way to succeed. "Costco's benefits are overly generous," sniffs one Wall-Streeter, asserting that stockholders could do even better if only Costco would conform to the Wal-Mart model.

More:
http://www.jimhightower.com/air/read.asp?id=11569

they would loose a lot of loyal blue shoppers.

I think they should be getting cover stories and awards for how they treat employees. But then other employees might hear it and get ideas. Like demanding a living wage and unionizing. Oh, the horrors this would cause wall street!

they have a lot more products on line and the prices are great.

because they sacrifice some profit to pay their employees more. Imagine that.