Timothy Egan over at the
New York Times
opined in a poorly argued, talking-points-laden screed about
how terrible Walmart is. Typically this would be dog-bites-man
stuff. It contains stupid sentences like this one: “It’s a sad day
when we have to look to corporations for education, health care and
basic ways to boost the middle class,” as though the money the
government grabs to attempt to (extremely poorly) manage these
things would exist at all were it not for the marketplace that
created corporations in the first place (and as if the extremely
poor government management isn’t what is driving up prices of
health care and education as well).
But something different happened this time, causing a bit of
viral buzz in conservative-libertarian circles. Walmart took a red
pen to Egan’s column and
posted it on their site, with corrections. In response to Egan
calling Walmart a drain to taxpayers, they argue they’re the
biggest taxpayer in the country. In response to him claiming the
company forces employees onto public assistance, they point out
that they are responsible for moving employees off public
assistance. They even note that one piece of evidence of Walmart’s
bad behavior was
debunked by Politifact. In response to a simplistic
back-of-the-napkin mathematical claim by a Fortune writer
that Walmart could increase the wages by all their employees by 50
percent with no consequences, Walmart suggests checking out the
description of the company from a gentleman named Jason Furman.
Read the whole thing
here. (Tip to Walmart’s public relation’s folks: If you want
people clicking on links, actually make them links, not images of
site addresses that can’t even be copied or pasted.)
Walter Olson over at the Cato Institute noted
Furman is President Barack Obama’s current chairman of the Council
of Economic Advisers and what he had to say about Walmart:
Wal-Mart’s low prices help to increase real wages for the 120
million Americans employed in other sectors of the economy.
And the company itself does not appear to pay lower wages or
benefits than similar companies, or to cause substantially
lower wages in the retail sector…[T]o the degree the anti-Wal-Mart campaign slows or halts the
spread of Wal-Mart to new areas, it will lead to higher prices that
disproportionately harm lower-income families…By acting in the interests of its shareholders, Wal-Mart has
innovated and expanded competition, resulting in huge benefits
for the American middle class and even proportionately larger
benefits for moderate-income Americans.
As usual, during this poorly argued babble about the “income
gap,” what is left out is how much more the poor and middle class
are able to get for their wages thanks to places like Walmart. It
will not be the one percent flooding the stores come Black Friday
buying television sets the size of dinner tables. It’s interesting
how the things that are allegedly becoming less and less obtainable
for the poor and middle class (education and health care) have been
heavily regulated and managed by the government.
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