Paid Enough to Buy the Product

In the past several years, a virtual industry has been created in bashing Wal-Mart. From leftist church groups to the AFL-CIO to the Chronicles, Wal-Mart has been the favorite whipping boy of people on all sides of the political spectrum. Thus, it was no surprise when I recently received an emailed article from the quasi-Marxist Sojourners magazine not only attacking Wal-Mart for the usual set of "sins" that the critics claim, but also a new transgression: Wal-Mart's business practices, on net, make our economy worse off and leave us poorer.

In its latest example of Wal-Mart bashing (Sojourners gives its readers the links to anti-Wal-Mart websites and pathologically publishes attacks on the retail giant), David Batstone and David Chandler compare the company unfavorably with another giant, Ford Motor Company, or at least the Ford of the early 20th Century. Before going into detail about the contrasts that Batstone and Chandler make, however, let me say that their choice of comparison is odd, considering that Ford was the premier target of leftists of his day and socialists considered him to be the worst "reactionary" on the industrial scene in that era.

William Anderson