THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM!

This is actually not the book review of the famous economist Lester Thurow, but something very closely realted to his favourite subject-The American economy.These are some of the lesser known facts about the reatailing giant Wal Mart and how it could/is influencing the economy of the world's richest nation.It 's quite awesome that how a small retail chain of the 70's could go on to become the monolith which could control an entire eco system of supplier, distributor, and customers spread across the goegraphies of this world.

Some stats of WAL MART are as under:

• 100 million: The number of people who shop at Wal-Mart's 3400 American stores every week.
• 1.2 million: The number of Wal-Mart associates in the U.S. Any full- or part-time Wal-Mart employee, up to and including the CEO, is considered an "associate," in Wal-Mart parlance. Internationally, Wal-Mart employs an additional 330,000 associates.
• 600,000: The number of new employees Wal-Mart hires each year. The company's turnover rate is 44 percent -- close to the retail industry average.
• $256 billion : Wal-Mart's sales in 2003. In the words of Wal-Mart CFO Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart's sales are equal to "one IBM, one Hewlett Packard, one Dell computer, one Microsoft and one Cisco System -- and oh, by the way, after that we got $2 billion left over."
• $9.98: The average full-time hourly wage for a Wal-Mart employee. The average full-time hourly wage in metro areas (defined as areas with a population of 50,000 or more) is $10.38. In some urban areas it is higher: $11.03 in Chicago, $11.08 in San Francisco, and $11.20 in Austin.
• $15 billion: The amount of Chinese products Wal-Mart estimates it imports each year; others suggest the number may be higher.As someone told, WAL MART'S JV WITH CHINA.