Cozy Corner

They're not the only ones. The AFA:

Dear Chris,

Wal-Mart has given its full endorsement to the homosexual agenda and homosexual marriage. Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, will observe LGBT Diversity Week October 9–13. One of the sponsors for the Diversity Week is Wal-Mart.

Wal-mart's big enough to have funny effects on the economy: I'm pretty sure you can't model its transactions with simple values, but have to consider feedback effects. You can't treat a change in the Federal minimum wage as a simple transfer of money from employers to The People, after all---it changes employment incentives on both sides. Jobs are more attractive to take, and less attractive to offer.

Wal-Mart is like that. An important part of the question is whether you can work at Wal-Mart and live the Wal-Mart-buying lifestyle. If you can, then it's a useful component of organizing our society. If you can't, then we should be looking for alternatives or ways of improving this system.

So the Populists keep looking at the wages Wal-Mart pays, and at the ratio of those wages to the income from operating many small businesses instead. They don't look at the horrible efficiency of a zillion tiny businesses and the higher costs associated with them. So they're looking at two levels, a linear approximation to the differential equation modeling Wal-Mart's economic usefulness.

Wal-Mart itself trumpets its low prices. That's a constant approximation, even worse than the Populists!

Engineers can do better: we can look at the profitability of communities heavily influenced by Wal-Mart. Can families shop at Wal-Mart while working two Wal-Mart jobs? Is it easier or harder than working two small-business jobs displaced by Wal-Mart while shopping at similar small businesses?

Here's my guess: most people end up a little better off. They work shorter hours and net a little bit more money. They don't have the risk of small-business failure.
But the very small fraction who made it big don't exist any more in Wal-Mart dominated areas. That small fraction represented most of the upward mobility from those areas. It's not clear how you get mobility in Wal-Mart areas.