holy crap

I just started reading a book, "The Wal-Mart Effect". I'm nine pages in and I've already been shocked multiple times. shocked enought that i'm stopping to blog it. here's some of the shockers for you: *Wal-Mart entered the grocery world 15ish years ago. (most of the chains are closer to 100 years old) "Today, WM sells more groceries than any company not just in the US but in the world...In the same decade that WM has come to dominate teh grocery business in the US, thirty-one supermarket chains have sought bankruptcy protection; twenty-seven of them cite competetion from WM as a factor." *" Wal-Mart isn't just he largest; it no longer has any near rivals.Wal-Mart is as big as Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Costco, Sears and Kmart combined. Target, which is considered Wal-Mart's nearest direct rival and its most astute competitor, is small by comparison. Each year Wal-Mart sells more by Saint Patricks' Day, March 17, than Target sells all year." *"WM's sales in the US are equal to $2060.36 spent there by every U.S. household in the last year. (WM's profit on that 2060.36 was just $75.00)" which means to me that they're making their money on sheer volume. i used to really like wal-mart. after all it's the cheapest place to get things like school stuff or picture frames or toys or whatever. but recently, i've become convinced that they're not really helping our economy at all.