The finish line.

Checking out at the register at Walmart and Costco are completely different experiences.

If you learn nothing else about Kentucky, you pick up on the unique behaviors of a crowd at the finish line of a horse race. It's the collective scream of the crowd in the final stretch that builds and builds and suddenly cuts short when the horse flashes over the finish line. Right there, right at that moment, you can easily pick out the winning bets; they're the only ones still cheering.

Today shopping for groceries is like a race. Jockeying a cart around other carts, racing to get everything you need, avoiding or getting things you might not need. Racing to the checkout in retail is a lot like a finish line, the final receipt, the winning or losing ticket.

I see this race run in many stores. Like a horse race, the pace of the race and the "payoff" may be completely different, completely different animals depending on the race.

U.S. GDP, the total value of all money spent in the U.S. domestic economy in a year, was approximately $16.8 trillion in 2014. Divide that by 365, and we have a lower bound of at least around US$46 billion a day changing hands between investors, producers and consumers of goods and services.

I've been to Costco many times and I never get in or get out of the store without a dramatic spike in my blood pressure. People stroll through the aisles in packs, clogging the aisles as they gawk, buying anything from high-end appliances to large packages of expensive sirloins, lobster and gourmet spreads. Shoppers stand or stop whenever and wherever they please, with blinders of self-involvement, creating their own path and keeping others out of their view.

Surrounding this melee of excess of shopping carts pilled with every luxury, they push and elbow their way to vie for food samples, pushing to the front of a crowd like a running back to the goal line, unapologetically scooping up several samples. There's rarely disapproval because this is a wholesale cathedral of entitlement, where you come to be greedy and people are there to get whatever they want.

Shopping at Walmart is an entirely different race. The gawking and the narrowing of the field may be the same, but the means are for a very different end. The odds in a Walmart race are not on how much you can get in the cart. The odds in a Walmart field of shoppers are based on how much you can get with what you can afford. The "tell" is at the finish line.

I've seen people at Costco checkout race pay out hundreds, even $1,000 in receipts without elation, excitement, or concern. Cars, vans and SUVs slow everyone's exit as they strain to pack their purchases into every available cranny in their vehicles.

The Walmart finish line there is a more strategic jockeying. Every item placed on the finish line is mentally assessed for the final total. Winning receipts are regularly cheered and enthusiasm shared for a run that's less expensive than what they expected to spend.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States

I see many versions of the cash register finish line, even at malls. We had a couple very dreary days in one week and I took my dad with me to a mall to run an errand. We seldom go to the mall; we're Walmart shoppers.We entered through a high-end department store. It was hard for me to get dad through the store into the mall. He stared around at the people and the store like he'd just dropped out the sky. He stood transfixed in front of shoes and clothing with price tags in the hundreds of dollars.

We ran our errands and returned to the car. My dad, still dazed by the experience spent the entire rest of the day puzzling over how many people wandering for hours, leave the store with more bags and boxes than they can carry.I asked myself, "If we had a lot of money, would we shop at higher end stores?" I can honestly say no. Walmart without a doubt has the lowest prices and I can't imagine why you would spend any more on the same thing. I guess for many people, that makes Walmart the lowest common denominator.

I know many people who hate Walmart for being a corporation that doesn't pay their employees enough. Then they should never eat in a restaurant, never order a pizza, and never stay in a hotel, or frankly, never shop at any store.

According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO pay is 271 times the nearly $58,000 annual average pay of the typical American worker. ... Compare that to 1978, when CEO earnings were roughly 30 times the typical worker's salary.Jan 22, 2018

I used to think of working at Walmart a disastrous experience in my life. Today I'm glad I had a chance to work side-by-side with people we believe to be at the bottom of the ladder, people I got to know and respect. People, who were much nicer, worked harder and thought more of themselves and others than anyone I met at the top of the ladder.

That's a horse of an entirely different color.

Some policy analysts, policymakers and scholars argue that low-wage workers should “work their way out of poverty” by acquiring the human capital that would enable them to leave poverty-level jobs. A new study interviewing 25 low wage immigrant workers by Center for Poverty Research Affiliates Vicki Smith and Brian Halpin finds that while many of these low-wage workers recognize the need to enhance their skills and educational credentials, the conditions of their employment trap them, making it nearly impossible to escape.