The store we love to hate

One of John Ray's readers has some comments on Wal-Mart, and the arguments made by those who hate the company.

The e-mail looks at the question everyone should ask whenever accusations of exploitation arise: "What would they be doing instead?"

According to a report, because Wal-Mart doesn't have top-of-the-line health compensation packages, the taxpayers pick up the tab for health care and other programs to meet these employees' needs. However, if these people weren't working at Wal-Mart, what would they be doing instead?

First, where do they think Wal-Mart gets these apparently exploited and "badly paid" employees? From the ranks elsewhere of better-paid full-time employees with full benefit packages? I haven't heard about any Wal-Mart gangs shanghaiing people and forcing them to work for Wal-Mart, so Wal-Mart's employees must be there voluntarily, presumable [sic] because Wal-Mart offers them better employment opportunities than they had before.

And this, unfortunately, is the case with just about every case where someone is being "exploited". The child in a third-world sweatshop will not return to an air-conditioned school if the sweatshop is closed down. He'll go back to doing harder work for less compensation. Or maybe he'll be sold into slavery or prostitution. (You don't suppose only girls are used as sex toys, do you?)

The only difference is that the children "exploited" by US corporations are visible – the children subject to worse because no corporation is there to offer an alternative are invisible.

And what is the cost to the taxpayers if Wal-Mart employees rely on federally subsidized health care, among other things?

In addition, since these employees must now have better employment opportunities than they had had before, presumably most of them are earning more than they did before, and paying more taxes! In fact, some of these employees may have had no employment before and been surviving entirely on welfare benefits. Therefore, when Wal-Mart employs these people, tax collections go up, use of government-subsidized health care goes down, and welfare benefit payments go down, which is a net benefit to everyone. The only logical conclusion one can draw is that rather than costing "federal taxpayers ... a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees," Wal-Mart's employment of these people reduces the welfare bill the US taxpayers otherwise would pay for these people.

Now go read the rest of it.