An Increase in Waist

I bought a technical long sleeved shirt from Walmart yesterday for $5.00 because it was on closeout, and I ran in it today. It felt good to wear it so I went back to the store to see if I could find more. Unfortunately, there wasn't any left. I saw some swim trunks and lounging shorts and tried them on. I currently have some swim trunks that I wear for running and they feel just as comfortable as running shorts and they have pockets on them. So I go to the dressing room to try on the merchandise and I discover that what they have for Small size which is supposed to fit a person with 28 to 30 inch waist, doesn't fit me – they were too big! I mean they looked more like size 32 to 34. Surely I haven't shrunk. A few years ago, I bought similar merchandise at the same store and they were a true 28 to 30 inches. It appears that Walmart has adapted their clothing size to accommodate the increasing girth of Americans. Is the increase in inches on the clothing supposed to make you feel thinner? You'd just be fooling yourself or maybe its the intent of the store to fool you. Maybe the resize gives you the opportunity to tell your family and friends - “oh, I'm a Small”, which is a fallacy. Of course they don't sell Extra Small sizes. You would have to go to the children's department for that. Children's size 18 to 20 would probably fit me but the Husky size would be too big. Its not only Walmart who does this. I've noticed that Target doesn't even sell Small sizes for a lot of their clothing, they begin at Medium. And these are the more affordable products that usually go on sale. I remember hearing in the news about this happening to women's clothes too but since I don't have any experience trying women's clothes on, I can't comment on that. What am I going to tell the salesperson? That I'm doing research on true sizes of women's clothes? If any of you have noticed these size changes, please feel free to tell me about your experiences. Thank you.