If mall dies, what dies with it?

The phrase, "America is over stored" gets bandied about a lot. And there was a lot to indicate that was true, even before everything really hit the fan last fall.

And it's all shifted into high gear now, as the Wall Street Journal so thoroughly points out. Brian Florence, co-founder of deadmalls.com, says mall failures have definitely picked up in the last few years. Many of these locations had been in trouble for years but when the economy hit the skids, stores started closing and with them, the malls.

What does this mean for us, the shoppers, the ones whose communities deal with the empty buildings, vacant lots and lost taxes?