Government Can Learn From Wal-Mart

Actually, a more fitting title would be "Government Can Learn From (insert private corporation here, except maybe Enron, Tyco, or Worldcom)". However, it just turns out that Wal-Mart is the best at what it does; it keeps prices lower than competitors and improves the lives of its customers. This is what Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, believes. In his column yesterday, he wrote:

Wal-Mart does what government intervention can't: It drives down prices and makes life better -- in New Orleans and, soon, in Chicago.

The company opened a store last month in Evergreen Park (where I was born), after the City Council refused to allow it inside the city limits. Some 25,000 people applied for the store's 325 jobs, which suggests Wal-Mart is popular with employees as well as consumers.

Let me get this straight, a company that gets flak from state governments for not spending enough on employee healthcare and from unions and their lap-dog activist groups (see WakeUpWalMart) for not treating their employees like they oughtta be (you know, make lots of money and get lots of benefits for doing a job that plenty thousands of other local people are willing to do for less money and fewer benefits).

The opponents of Wal-Mart must have received failing grades in freshman economics, because they obviously never learned that competitive enterprise equals lower prices and improved well-being for the community. If Wal-Mart did not run so efficiently and provide high-quality products, they wouldn't turn such a large profit (although their profit margin is nothing to write home about). There would be fewer customers and employees would be less content, both of which equal greater costs (the former through decreased sales, the latter through decreased productivity).

I could argue for hours on the beneficence of Wal-Mart and the impact it has on the retail sector. However, I have come to realize that trying to convince leftist activists that Wal-Mart is good is like trying to convince people the sky is not blue. It is useless to try to change those that cannot be changed. Oh well, maybe evolution will kick in and weed them out ... *** sarcasm ***