In 2011-12, Walmart paid $5B in dividend and bought back $6.2B of stock. They also spent around $13B on capital expenditure -- new stores, equipment, warehouses and so on, all of which would be employing new people.

People latch onto Walmart because of the amazing numbers involved. Hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue! Thousands and thousands of stores! Millions of employees!

But the thing is, retail is a really tough business to turn a buck on. After this massive machine has sprint through a year, the result is ... about a 3% profit on revenue.

Compare that with Google: On ~$50B revenue Google walks out with ~$10B of net income. For eight times less revenue Google is still managing to make more than half as much profit as Walmart.

Where are the picket lines outside Google HQ?