More Research in Support of the Obvious

You have to hand it to Wal-Mart that they seem to be taking an open look at what the real effect is of their race-to-the-bottom approach to wages and benefits. I have a feeling that maybe their marketing department may now reconsider the honesty-is-the-best-policy approach, though:

One study concluded that Wal-Mart's giant grocery and general merchandise Supercenters brought little net gain for local communities in property taxes, sales taxes and employment; instead, the stores merely siphoned sales from existing businesses in the area.

David Neumark, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, found that "residents of a local labor market do indeed earn less following the opening of Wal-Mart stores."

Worse yet, he wrote, is Wal-Mart's influence in the South, where it has its greatest concentration of stores. There, Neumark and his coauthors found, Wal-Mart has decreased retail employment and total employment.

Michael Hicks of the Air Force Institute of Technology and Marshall University found that each employee of Wal-Mart caused "the average state to expend just under $900 a year in Medicaid benefits."

This is outrageous. Clearly the solution is to cut Medicaid benefits.