Poverty and Bigboxes

Poor people can shove it. Is that the message that is sent, implicitly, in all of the hand-wringing over big-box retailers like Wal-Mart? I picture the typical beardo-the-weirdo professorial types and tofurkey Leftists standing outside the Wal-Mart entryway, waving signs and handing pamphlets to low-income families who might be there to buy baby formula or a coat for Junior.

There are trade-friendly alternatives! Try Wild Oats Market, or any one of the retailers in the upscale shopping center down the highway!

Is this the message to people who shop on price alone? Aren't the folks who earn minimum wage screwed twice, since they are not only poor, but they should pay extra for economic correctness? Oops, I just said the word "wage" - and this makes many Lefties leap from their chairs and start flapping their arms, since wages are part of the cha-cha dance of economic justice-related issues that don't quite hang together unless you accept, unquestioningly, the core principle that capitalism is a depraved system that exists for the sole purpose of benefiting the wealthy on the backs of the poor.

Sigh. This is where centrism makes for longer blog posts.

I'm not enamored with Wal-Mart, as longtime readers know already, because of it's ability to distort markets and destroy tightly-knit communities. Anybody who knows dink about true conservatism can recognize it in those very concerns. But I have more respect for unapologetic socialism than I do for people who universally and bitterly resent the market-driven creation of wealth. It's alarming to me that these critics are rarely people with first-hand knowledge of capitalism, and the ironies are too insufferable when career university types, 19-year old students and Greens think they've got all the answers about job creation and helping the poor.

UPDATE: The Dean finds all of this outrageous. My response here.