listen to its employees is one dumb futhermucker. Mr. Sam (Walton) said as much. "We get our best ideas from our employees." Smart observation, Sam. One the company dropped before your body was cold. "Once we get Mr. Sam out of the way this company can start making real money." Well, maybe short term. Which is all you bean counter futhermuckers look at. But, long term... well, you are where you are. Downsizing, losing money. But, don't listen to your workers. They're just $10 /hour know nothing deadbeats.

If congress keeps transferring our money to the rich and then cuts our social programs, who's going to be able to buy anything?

It's not just the employees that were effected by the store closures, the people who shopped there were also screwed. What's going to happen when things go to automation and unemployment goes through the roof? The robots aren't going to buy anything.

As Wink stated, Sam was a decent guy who paid his workers decent wages. Just how many millions do people need? They can't possibly spend what they already have. Bezos? $100 billion? This is beyond insane in a country that has 9 million children who are food challenged.

The same day I was seeing headlines trumpeting WalMart’s raises, I talked to my mom who mentioned the two Sam’s Clubs around them just closed. No warning. No explanation. Just went dark. I can’t believe these were underperforming stores, based on the amount of activity that always surrounds them. If I still talked politics with mom, I’d be kind of curious to hear her explain that away. (She’s hardcore Fox/Team Republican who is having a very hard time accepting that Trump etc. are actively making the world a worse place for her young disabled granddaughter. We’re not quite to the point where we can discuss things without me getting the talking points du jour thrown at me, unfortunately.)

Well, just guessing, but one such guess might include the fact that Wal-Mart depends heavily on their US workers receiving food stamps and other aid, in order for them to survive; I would suspect that if these corporate welfare aids are going to be cut/eliminated, the level of Wall-Mart worker raises - especially with hourly rather than full-time jobs - still won't allow workers to eat and pay rent most places, so why wait for workers to starve into weakness to shut down businesses then anyway due to slow from the general effects of any such homicidal/economically damaging move?

They pretty much have a monopoly in too-many smaller/poor areas, having driven local business out of business, so maybe they also hope to get a response regarding their huge facial boot-print as a major 'American Job Creator Of Importance'?

Especially if the ongoing elimination of public-protective law seems likely to include the elimination of any minimum wage protections, which would further reduce the number of people able to afford to buy essentials like food, anyway resulting in some 'necessary' closures, but still exerting a perception of their power over the public, enabling deals to be struck between Those Who Matter.

This works well coming into in grossly impoverished countries desperate for any jobs at all, at any wage and pollution level; they just have to bring down the publics of the wealthy industrialized countries to that 'level global playing field' they keep shaving down lower for the general global public to ultimately and universally 'remain competitive' with slave labour.

At this point, however, relatively few workers would be required, as there would be far fewer buyers being paid in actual money and very little need for many sales outlets apart from those supplying minimal basics for the remaining workers and whatever for a relatively few PTB, so maybe the latter have to then turn to socialism among themselves? (Just kidding, the parasites will perish with their hosts of course, or in the process of cannibalizing each other.)

Lets face it - they got a giant tax cut for the wealthy on the insanely well-proven as totally insane claim that this would 'boost the economy and cause corporations to hire more people and pay better' and Wal-Mart immediately closes 60 outlets with no notice given workers or customers. Gee, I wonder what kind of a corporate statement that makes...

But wouldn't this be a great opportunity for any (sane) government to snap up those empty stores and arrange for sympathetic, low/no-interest loans for displaced workers to start up worker-owned co-ops in each case?

Damn, always thought I wouldn't ever even want to be a billionaire, but if I was, dammit, wouldn't that be a fun thing to be able to do? Be even better if governments would freaking act in the public interest though... obviously!

I kept getting the 'interrupted, FF cannot verify the info on the page' thing over and over (had my partial comment saved before trying to view to proof what I had, luckily) then my connection got repeatedly disconnected from an actually good connection, because something sometimes tries to keep shifting me over to the sucky 'emergency booster' which is generally waaaaay worse and useless, though I'm on auto for the other one, and finally got back to find that I was signed out of here... and got to see the 'interrupted' page again and I can see, now that I'm finally back on, that I've been ninja'd a billion times over by the best and brightest already (which I expect and totally love lol) but I'm posting this anyway, even if it's been said better by so many already. I always feel better getting a good, anti-corporate/computer issue grouch out of my system, lol.

Edit: the point being that sort of thing's sometimes why I actually forget what I'm responding to by the time I actually manage to get to being able to wrote a response. Which I forgot just now to get to, despite still being able to access the site at the time. Sigh... it's a knack.