Wal-Mart to Open About 1,500 New Stores

[drm604]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_expansion

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to open more than 1,500 stores in the United States in the coming years, on top of nearly 3,200 it already operates, the world's largest retailer said Tuesday.

John Menzer, the company's vice chairman and head of its domestic Wal-Mart stores division, said Wal-Mart was on schedule to meet an announced target of between 335 and 370 new U.S. store openings this year after 341 last year.

That number includes Wal-Mart discount stores, Supercenters that also have a full grocery section, smaller Neighborhood Markets and Sam's Club membership warehouses. Supercenters are the largest single group with 1,980 locations in the U.S. and the focus of future growth plans.

Menzer did not specify a timeline for the new stores. He also did not refer to zoning and permit fights that have erupted in some places where Wal-Mart wants to expand, including big markets such as California where the company has fewer locations than in its traditional bases in the South and Midwest...

More at link.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_bi_ge/wal_mart_expansion

[marmar]

1. Ugh!

One day the landscape is going to blighted with these massive abandoned Wal-Mart stores. They're going to expand themselves right out of business.

:nopity:

[Earth_First]

2. Not im MY hometown...

if we have anything to do with it.

[rsmith6621]

3. Why Dont they Try Something differnt

Like take care of their employees????

[tanyev]

4. I pledge allegiance to the smiley of the United Corporation of Wal-Mart

and to the shareholders for which it stands, one store under Mammon, indivisible,
with false savings and crappy merchandise for all.

[mcscajun]

5. And one day, we will reach "the Wal-Mart Event Horizon"

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing.

It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine.

Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.

-- from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. I think that's called "Capitalism"

--p!

[PatsFan2004]

7. The problem I see with the illustration is that customers choose

the shoes that look the best, wear the best, and cost the least. The worst stores would go out of business. I believe this is part of capitalism, too.

[mcscajun]

9. The illustration is comic, from one of the funniest five-part "trilogies"

extant.

The Wal-Mart situation is not.

[bleedingheart]

8. and one of the behemoth monsters is going to be in my neighborhood

ick...

[OneBlueSky]

10. wow! . . . 1500 more stores not to shop at! . . . n/t

.

[LiberalEsto]

11. Meanwhile they're suing Maryland over health coverage

About 2 weeks ago Maryland's legislature overrode the rethug governor's veto to pass a law requiring employers with a certain number of employees to provide health insurance for them.

This was to relive Maryland from the costs of providing care to all these Walmart workers.

The Walmart lawsuit to get rid of this law is pretty scary - it has the potential to set a precedent whereby employers of all sizes can opt out of providing health coverage and let the state's taxpayers do the paying.

[Dora]

12. They're bloating.

Just my humble and uninformed opinion. There is no way they can maintain.

Wal-Mart will bust one of these days. It's going to start competing against itself, I think.

[Occulus]

13. Well, they have a larger potential employee pool, doncha know

All those recent plant closings. Yes, the economy is going along swimmingly right now.