• Wal-Mart takes business from existing stores -- particularly grocery, hardware, drug, apparel, hobby, and toy stores. The first formal study of the impact of Wal-Mart on local business, by Iowa State University economist Kenneth Stone in 1988, found that the typical Wal-Mart took more than 75% of its sales from existing stores in town. New studies confirm that pattern.
• Wal-Mart has a "Saturation Strategy" -- typically several stores open close together, to keep distribution costs down and to overwhelm competition. Wal-Mart plans to open a store in LaPlata and in Accokeek and there are reports of another one to be built at 210 just south of Livingston Square Shopping Center.
• Wal-Mart isn’t around for long -- it continuously relocates stores, in search of new markets and greater profits. Wal-Mart currently has about 326 empty stores across the US, with roughly 20 million square feet of empty space.
• Wal-Mart promises jobs and tax revenues but there are few net gains – the price is jobs lost elsewhere in the community, and Wal-Mart's low wage, part-time, low-or-no benefits are not the kind of jobs which support families. The added tax revenues are at the expense of falling sales in other community businesses.
• Wal-Mart's profits leave the community – they go to Bentonville, AR, the home of the Waltons, who are still heavily involved in the business. They are the second richest family in the US, with a combined fortune of $64 billion, second only to Bill Gates. Not only do the profits leave the community, so do the managers. The Wal-Mart managers are moved to different stores, often every six months, so they don’t put down roots and become neighbors.

Questions? Suggestions? New ideas? Email us at liveable210@radix.net.