Hurt Walmart - Hurt the Poor?

Sebastion Mallaby of the Washington Post has a very good editorial on Walmart and how the left's shameless attacks might hurt the poor. Actually during my last few visits to Walmart I have been thinking along the same lines, but Mallaby beat me to the punch.

He first looks at the folly of the left's anti-corporation warpath:

Once upon a time, smart Democrats defended globalization, open trade and the companies that thrive within this system. They were wary of tethering themselves to an anti-trade labor movement that represents a dwindling fraction of the electorate. They understood the danger in bashing corporations: Voters don't hate corporations, because many of them work for one.

Then dot-bombs and Enron punctured corporate America's prestige, and Democrats bolted. Rather than hammer legitimately on real instances of corporate malfeasance -- accounting scandals, out-of-control executive compensation and the like -- Democrats swallowed the whole anti-corporate playbook.

In other words, to gin up voter rage, they throw the baby out with the bath water. Only this baby is very beneficial to the people they claim to champion. Just look at the droves of people applying for work at Walmart when a new store opens.

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.

So the whole anti-Walmart broohaha is not about wages or health care. It is about Democrats pandering to unions.

Research by Jerry Hausman and Ephraim Leibtag, neither of whom received funding from Wal-Mart, big-box stores led by Wal-Mart reduce families' food bills by one-fourth. Because Wal-Mart's price-cutting also has a big impact on the non-food stuff it peddles, it saves U.S. consumers upward of $200 billion a year, making it a larger booster of family welfare than the federal government's $33 billion food-stamp program.

Next time you are in Walmart, take a good look around you. Most of the stores I have gone in are flooded with low income minorities. The low prices found at Walmart are quite a benefit to these that are in need. But in order to pander to one of their special interest groups, they must harm another special interest group. Guess which group gives the Democrats the most money? Of course the unions do. Democrats also resent a non-government assistance to the poor. It robs them of power. So the so-called champions of the poor are willing to sell them out for a buck and for power.

Right now the Democrats are a very, very confused party. They have thrown all moderacy out of the window and every major policy point is completely under the thumb of their hard left members. They would not know consistency if it hit them on the head. Every day they must wake up and look at the slavery shackles they willingly donned in their utter hatred of George W. Bush. If we see how bad it is now, just wait if they assume power after November. They will be puppets to hard left groups of seething hatred. Somehow this will be good for America? I don't think so.