Wal-Mart seems to be taking over the world! Or at least that part of the world that controls retailing in 21st-century America. With its sales over $256 billion in fiscal 2004, Wal-Mart is within striking distance of dominating a 10 percent share of the total $2.9 trillion U.S. retail market, excluding motor vehicles and parts. When it reaches this pinnacle, and I suspect it will unless the government moves in to break up what increasingly looks like a monopoly, it will mean that Wal-Mart alone takes in one of every $10 spent in this country at every retail and food service establishment, including car dealers, gas stations, convenience stores, restaurants, gift stores, grocery stores, and drugstores. It is unthinkable that an economy as broad and wide and diverse as 21st-century America could have nurtured a single company that controls so much of the U.S. national pocketbook.