A ringing defense of Wal-Mart in the Washington Post!

Sebastian Mallaby, in the Washington Post(!), vigorously defends Wal-Mart:

There's a comic side to the anti-Wal-Mart campaign brewing in Maryland and across the country. Only by summoning up the most naive view of corporate behavior can the critics be shocked -- shocked! -- by the giant retailer's machinations. Wal-Mart is plotting to contain health costs! But isn't that what every company does in the face of medical inflation? Wal-Mart has a war room to defend its image! Well, yeah, it's up against a hostile campaign featuring billboards, newspaper ads and a critical documentary movie. Wal-Mart aims to enrich shareholders and put rivals out of business! Hello? What business doesn't do that?

Wal-Mart's critics allege that the retailer is bad for poor Americans. This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is "a progressive success story." Furman advised John "Benedict Arnold" Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart's products.

Read the whole thing.

Comments

[suprfancy]

Fair enough, but then government coffers should be taken out of WalMart's successful business model. I loved the concept of WalMart -- thought of it as a sort of "freeware" of retail, thumbing its noses at the concept of brand name stores -- till I learned 2 things: 1. WalMart counts on tax breaks and actual incentives to increase profits and also counts on food stamps and medicaid to supplement workers' wages, and 2. retail monopolies are dangerous to consumers (though of course the nirvana to retailers, as it should be). Last year our local WalMart -- estimating they'd effectively knocked out ALL competition from the area, bumped its prices up 25% between Thanksgiving and Dec. 20 -- on EVERYTHING in the store. The store stayed empty. Management publicly apologized and reduced its prices, saving itself, barely. I understand this went on throughout the US last year. The customers' interest is low prices, but WalMart's is profits and monopoly -- the unpure reality, from a capitalists' view, is that these interests are NOT aligned.

[tracelan]

My problem with Wal-Mart is that they encourage (more like demand) their suppliers to move production to China. Which gives more money to China to build weapons they want to use again us. China is NOT the only source of cheap labor in the world.