Blumner attacks Wal-Mart (again)

Sometimes I think that St. Petersburg Times editorial columnist Robyn "Blumñata" Blumner has a board-game style spinner that she uses to choose her editorial topic for the week. Instead of categories like "$1000," "Bankrupt" or "Lose a Turn" as you get with Wheel of Fortune, the Blumner wheel would feature "President Bush," "Abortion" and perhaps "Wal-Mart."

If the spinner gets caught in-between, we get an editorial on the wonders of buckwheat groats or Robyn's parents. Last week we got Wal-Mart.

What's wrong with Wal-Mart, you might wonder? Well pull up a chair, you poor slob, and let Blumñata explain it to you.

Always low-price Wal-Mart is also always low wage, low benefits and low ethics when it comes to its workers, here and abroad.

Are we supposed to be upset about low wages or benefits? Is Wal-Mart paying below minimum wage in the United States? Low ethics sure sounds bad. But it doesn't sound that bad without any concrete example.

The company that insiders claim encouraged employees to seek taxpayer-funded health care for the poor is back in the news. This time the retail giant is accused of encouraging its store managers and department supervisors to vote Republican come November.

What???!!! Well, if they're doing that, then revoke their not-for-profit status right away!

Oh, wait. Wal-Mart isn't a not-for-profit operation. So what is Blumñata's problem?

If those employees do so they'd be committing electoral hara-kiri. It is hard to fathom an act more inimical to their economic interests.

Is it hard to fathom that voting would be an act significantly inimical to their economic interests? Seriously?

Wouldn't we have to be as economically cluesless as, say, Blumñata herself in order to believe that? The unspoken premise seems to be that Wal-mart is morally responsible for paying its employees enough to ensure that they sit comfortably in the midst of a prosperous middle class. Any notion the company might have of providing low-cost goods to consumers should be set aside or at least dropped way down on the list of priorities--otherwise achieving the Blumneriffic goal of universal well-being may prove nigh well impossible.

The anti-capitalist droning continued:

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart made it clear in mandatory meetings around the country that a Democratic victory would be a disaster for its anti-union business model.

If a company is interested in establishing itself as a low price leader, chances are that it can't afford unionized workers. Modern unions result in such lovely innovations as idle worker work areas and extravagant union benefits.

Let us readily concede that labor unions have helped achieve some benefits for society on the whole over time. Let us regard with suspicion the suggestion that labor unions have provided a benefit on balance over time.

What is it about the Democrats that make Wal-Mart so desperate that it risks its not-for-profit status? Blumner touches on the issue without giving the reader any truly useful information:

The focus of the meetings was legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow employees to unionize without a formal union election if more than 50 percent sign certification cards. Sen. Barack Obama is a co-sponsor of the measure while Sen. John McCain opposes it — a fact that Wal-Mart drove home to its supervisors.

Of course, Wal-Mart is right about the Employee Free Choice Act making it easier for employees to unionize. The measure is designed short-circuit the campaign of intense antiunion intimidation and coercion that so many employers unleash in the months leading up to a union election.

In a wild twist of coincidence, the same measure that is designed to short-circuit the supposed "campaign of intense antiunion intimidation and coercion" makes it exceptionally easy for unions to employ methods of intimidation and coercion. The signed certification card is a form of voting, but not the type of voting that democracies tend to treasure. Democracies favor anonymous voting precisely because of the otherwise risk of intimidation and coercion. Power Line featured a nice post on the "Employee Free Choice Act" last year.

Blumñata thus apparently favors a law that will allow unions to form based on potentially coercive public voting. And the unions, to her undoubted delight, will use union dues from Republicans and Democrats alike to fund Democratic candidates. And that's the way things ought to be in Blumner's eyes. After all, the Repubicans in the union are supposedly too stupid to know which candidates will serve their economic self-interest.

See where this leads?

I'm reminded of the quotation listed as an all-time political favorite recently at Power Line:
"If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul."

Once again, Robyn Blumner proves that she knows next to nothing about economics and that she is willing to sacrifice informing readers for the sake of indoctrinating them with her empty-headed leftist views.

Raise wages at Wal-Mart and the prices rise. Rising prices probably mean decreased sales and a decreased market share--less demand for Wal-Mart stores, and less demand for Wal-Mart labor. Bottom line: Lost jobs.

Ideologues like Blumner can't seem to wrap their minds around the implications, unless they're just blatantly dishonest about it. Take, for example, Blumner's complaint about Wal-Mart advising employees to take advantage of government assistance programs (for which the employees are legally qualified, I might add). These are the kinds of programs that Blumner favors in order to distribute income more equally. Yet even though she sees the Wal-Mart employees as just the sort who need the assistance she's still outraged that Wal-Mart dares to recommend the program!

It apparently doesn't matter how much Wal-Mart pays in taxes. Blumner advocates a form of class envy and class warfare regardless.

Addendum:

Blumner seems to suffer a milder case of the same type of thinking that infects the advocates of the two day work week. They claim to be serious.

These nutcases advocate decreasing the work week to two eight hour days. Worried about income if you only put in eight hours of work per week? Don't sweat it. According to this plan you'll be paid the same as you were for forty hours. Everyone supposedly gets more money, and since leisure activity generates economic activity the economy will keep right on humming.

They claim to be serious.

These characters seem to have absolutely no clue that money represents labor and the value we place on labor. If you pay the same amount for less labor across the board, the market will adjust until your 16 hour pay under the two day work week is worth the same as the 16 hour pay you would have made working part-time, assuming equal productivity.

Minimum wage laws have a similar overall effect (encouraging inflation and the loss of jobs).

Wal-Mart knows how it works. Robyn Blumner apparently does not.