America is Driving to Wal-Mart

A few sensible sympathizers of the Democrat party are appalled at its anti-Wal-Mart tack. Last week it was an LA Times editorial, today a Washington Post column by Sebastian Mallaby:

Other Democrats reaffirm their centrist credentials while calling upon Wal-Mart to pay workers more. "We are not here today because we are anti-business," Bayh asserted in Iowa recently as he demonstrated against Wal-Mart -- a contention that the retailer's shareholders, who have spent millions defending their brand against Wake-Up Wal-Mart, may have a hard time swallowing. But the idea that Wal-Mart pays below-market wages is false. Otherwise nobody would work there.

Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry have attacked Wal-Mart for offering health coverage to too few workers. But Kerry's former economic adviser, Jason Furman of New York University, concluded in a paper last year that Wal-Mart's health benefits are about as generous as those of comparable employers. Moreover, Clinton and Kerry know perfectly well that market pressures limit the health coverage that companies can provide. After all, both senators have proposed expansions in government health provision precisely on the premise that the private sector can't pay for all of it.

The truth is that none of these Democrats can resist dumb economic populism.

The grocery workers union and its allies are driving this. And Chicago aldermen are trying to drive Wal-Mart out of the city. But America is driving to Wal-Mart.