George Will weighs in on the Chicago Wal-Mart controversy. Surprise - - Mr. Will believes that if enough people buy it, that makes it “good.” The market is always correct; regulation is bad. (We deregulated the savings and loans, which cost the taxpayers $500 billion, but I digress).
Mr. Will throws out some whoppers:
“By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates.”
Beyond the fact that he seems to have pulled these numbers from his nether regions, Mr. Will deceives himself by thinking that “a job is a job.” "100" is clearly more than, greater than, higher than, "50," you thick dummies, so be happy and bow before your Wal-Martian deliverers!
Even if these made-up numbers are remotely correct, he fails to consider that the loss of a full-time job paying even a shade above minimum wage but with insurance and benefits does not in any way equate with a Blue Vest punch-in job at Wal-Mart, where benefits are laughable and “associates” can and are sent home early on a regular basis, cutting further into their wages.
And what about Wal-Mart suppliers who have to send hundreds of previously domestic jobs overseas in order to meet Wal-Mart's near-monopolistic demands for "the low price"? Is that just one layer too deep to think about?
“So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.
"Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money. Besides, she should not brood.”
This could be the Holy Saving Statement for pro-business Republicans everywhere: “Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money.” I imagine the civil rights activists who staged the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 should have been sensible and “compartmentalized their mood and their money” as well. Mr. Will seems almost amused by the woman's economically enforced inability to ignore Wal-Mart and go elsewhere.
Woe be to the people at the top of the pyramid when the middle and lower classes finally do decide to get “uppity” - - stop being, as Mr. Will condescends, "sensible" - - and actually vote with their pocketbooks.
(Also, DVDs are not all that inexpensive at Wal-Mart, as anyone who took the time to look can tell you. They generally "front" some inexpensive loss-leaders at the end-caps and charge more than, for example, Best Buy, on the balance of their titles.)
I could go on and on - - and probably will tomorrow, since Mr. Will has tackled this issue as ineffectively and one dimensionally as my poor Green Bay Packers tackled Bears ball carriers last Sunday.
Condescending lectures by liberals
by George WillEVERGREEN PARK, Ill. -- This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city, and more than 90 percent of the store's customers are African American.
One of whom, a woman pushing a shopping cart with a stoical 3-year-old along for the ride, has a chip on her shoulder about the size of this 141,000-square-foot Wal-Mart. She applied for a job when the store opened in January and was turned down because, she said, the person doing the hiring "had an attitude." So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.
Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money. Besides, she should not brood. She had lots of company in not being hired: More than 25,000 people applied for the 325 openings.
Which vexes liberals such as John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?) In 2004 he tested what has become one of the Democrats' 2006 themes: Wal-Mart is, he said, "disgraceful" and symbolic of "what's wrong with America." By now Democrats have succeeded, to their embarrassment (if they are susceptible to that), in making the basic numbers familiar:
The median household income of Wal-Mart shoppers is under $40,000. Wal-Mart, the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy, has almost as many employees (1.3 million) as the U.S. military has uniformed personnel. A McKinsey company study concluded that Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the nation's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s, which probably made Wal-Mart about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation. By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates . [editorial comment - wha...?] Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion).
People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart -- it has one-fifth of the nation's grocery business -- save at least 17 percent. But because unions are strong in many grocery stores trying to compete with Wal-Mart, unions are yanking on the Democratic Party's leash, demanding laws to force Wal-Mart to pay wages and benefits higher than those that already are high enough to attract 77 times as many applicants than there were jobs at this store.
The big-hearted progressives on Chicago's City Council, evidently unconcerned that the city gets zero sales tax revenue from a half-billion dollars that Chicago residents spend in the 42 suburban Wal-Marts, have passed a bill that, by dictating wages and benefits, would keep Wal-Marts from locating in the city. Richard Daley, a bread-and-butter Democrat, used his first veto in 17 years as mayor to swat it away.
Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce -- yes, announce -- that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by . . . liberals.
Before they went on their bender of indignation about Wal-Mart (customers per week: 127 million), liberals had drummed McDonald's (customers per week: 175 million) out of civilized society because it is making us fat, or something. So, what next? Which preferences of ordinary Americans will liberals, in their role as national scolds, next disapprove? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?
No. The current issue of the American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for "lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses" and for having brought "great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world."
What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company's products each week: 2.5 billion).
When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Notice a pattern here?
Link: George F. Will - Democrats Vs. Wal-Mart - washingtonpost.com.
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