True-Liberal,

My great-grandfather was a successful insurance agent in Ogden, Utah just before the Great Depression. To make a long story short, his business fell apart, he lost his job, and most of his wealth. He committed suicide in his forties.

But, as you say, “jobs come and go”.

I don’t mean to be overly dramatic here (I never knew the man, obviously) - I just mean to point out that there are people behind the jobs.

Nor do I mean to be overly crass and unsympathetic to the dedicated worker who finds his livelihood threatened.

But once an economic system takes on the task of providing job stability for all, it starts us down the road to stagnation. Political sway then means more than economic reality, and progress becomes more and more of a threat than a vision.

That’s why I am very skeptical of highly focussed “career training” programs which tend to lead one into the career du jour, and ill-prepared for a variety of jobs over his lifetime.

Thank burdensome regulations, the minimum wage, and public schools for that. I am not saying that Wal-Mart can operate in every single high unemployment neighborhood - certainly there are some neighborhoods where high regulation liberals have done so much harm that not even Wal-Mart can operate there - my only point here is that Wal-Mart does it at a much higher level than many other companies.

Which is why you won’t find me condemning Wal-Mart. A company that hires more poor minorities, operates in more poor minority neighborhoods, and serves more poor minorities than most other companies is my friend, not my enemy.

My great-grandfather was a successful insurance agent in Ogden, Utah just before the Great Depression. To make a long story short, his business fell apart, he lost his job, and most of his wealth. He committed suicide in his forties.

But, as you say, “jobs come and go”.

I don’t mean to be overly dramatic here (I never knew the man, obviously) - I just mean to point out that there are people behind the jobs.

It is certainly true, as you and HP have argued, that the invisible hand of Adam Smith is always at work, and lost jobs, or bad jobs, may ultimately work to the favor of the common good, or even the individual good. But it is just as true, that often in the meantime there are workers that are in real bad shape. Dire straits. Working hard to make ends meet and not being able to. Real, live people.

I’m sure you understand this, and I don’t mean to get all holier-than-thou, but sometimes it seems to me that this is a good thing for us to remember. Myself included.

Jobs come and go.

Henry Ford forced many out of their old jobs: Buggy-whip makers, streetsweepers, blacksmiths, stablekeepers to name a few. Those jobs went away and never returned.

But I suspect most of the displaced went on to better things!

Even on an employment justification you cannot condemn Wal-Mart. For one, Wal-Mart is one of the few stores that opens up in ghettos and areas with high unemployment, see here. I grew up in a high unemployment, high crime area, and I can tell you that companies openning up there are a God sent. What is far more common is for empty lots to remain empty for year after year, leaving many in the community without opportunities that other areas have - available entry level jobs.

Second, while Wal-Mart does run out many small businesses, it also offers a higher average wage (and higher number of jobs) than those small businesses. Remember, it is primarily small businesses that pay the minimum wage. Wal-Mart, on the other hand, pays its employees an average of $10/hour. Significantly higher than those small businesses it runs out.

Thirdly, while Wal-Mart runs out many small businesses, this is not the full picture. It also brings in many complimentary small businesses as well, see here.

Add this on top of the already evident fact that Wal-Mart provides the poor with much needed food and housing essentials at a significant lower price, and you can understand why Wal-Mart is the company that both, hires more blacks and mexicans and has as its customers more blacks and mexicans than any of the other food chains.

Wal-Mart is not the enemy of the poor and minority, Wal-Mart is the friend.

LaurenceB,

Wal-Mart doesn’t just “avoid paying benefits to employees by keeping their hours under 35/week”, it also hires and moves into areas that other big box stores will not go. Maybe that is only possible by keeping costs significantly down, I don’t know. But I do know that if you force Wal-Mart to pay more for its employees than you make things worse both for Wal-Mart, which will be forced to higher less employees, and for the employees themselves (what would you rather have, a higher wage or a lower wage with the remainder being used to pay for something you already had anyway?).

Or worse yet, having them pay for more benefits might mean that moving into some areas, probably those areas that most desperately need it, is not cost effective, thereby leaving those areas with less, not more.

But I have to agree with Mortalez that it is not right for Wal-Mart to avoid paying benefits to employees by keeping their hours under 35/week. That’s just wrong. I could be convinced to boycott Wal-Mart just on those grounds.