I find it hard to believe that none of the liberal commentators breathlessly celebrating Wal-Mart's "capitulation" on national health care have even entertained the most parsimonious explanation: that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition. Yet somehow, this appears nowhere in any of the analysis. These are the explanations that they found more plausible:
1. Wal-Mart wants to change its image, which is better accomplished by securing a massive regulatory mandate than by, say, insuring more employees, or setting up a happy-face charitable foundation.
2. Wal-Mart wants to make its voice heard in the process, which is better accomplished this way than by paying lobbyists. Also, Wal-Mart is hoping that the federal government will deliver health-care cost control, which is something the company that gave us $4 prescription drugs couldn't hope to do on its own. Controlling health care costs is, of course, a big worry for a company that I'm told does not insure many of its employees.
3. Wal-Mart is flummoxed by unpredictable health care costs for all the workers it apparently isn't covering. Because if there's one thing that we've learned over the years, it's that when the government gets involved, health care costs become totally predictible.
Also not considered: Wal-Mart cut a deal with the SEIU in exchange for the SEIU leaving it alone.
Yet, even in liberal academic literature, it is a commonplace that regulations disproportionately benefit several types of firms:
a) Incumbents
b) Market leaders
c) Firms with the most employees
Regulation has a very high fixed cost for compliance; the larger the firm, the more dollars/employees over which to amortize the fixed cost. Meanwhile, market leaders have disproportionate bargaining power, and tend to get better rates from suppliers than smaller competitors. Finally, a high fixed cost means either that it's harder to initially enter the market, or (if there are exemptions for the smallest firms) harder to grow.
On the other side, there is regulatory capture. Wal-Mart is always going to have a seat at the table when employer mandates are discussed, because Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private employer. Target and Macy's probably won't have a seat at the table. So Wal-Mart can influence the rules in ways that benefit Wal-Mart at the expense of the competition. This is partly because the regulators often cycle into jobs at the firms they regulate, but also simply because the regulator's attention is finite, so being consistently at the table allows you to shape their views over time. Again, this isn't some kind of crazy right-wing analysis; regulatory capture was first diagnosed by a Marxist historian named Gabriel Kolko.
All of which is to say, Bootleggers and Baptists should be required reading in all schools. When you find strange bedfellows in politics, don't look for a surprising outbreak of spontaneous virtue: looking for the hidden conspiracy.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
It's all about Target: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/01/wal-mart-supports-employer-mandate/
Also not considered: Wal-Mart cut a deal with the SEIU in exchange for the SEIU leaving it alone.
I'm no labor lawyer, but that sounds like something that would get somebody sued. Does labor law really allow corporations to bribe union leadership to go away?
Besides, the UAW or Teamsters or IBEW or IUPAT or somebody could always come in and organize Wal-Mart. They aren't nearly so picky about membership as you might think from the names.
Walmart has already demonstrated willingness to lock-and-walk rather than meet union demands it won't accept -- in one case an entire store, and in another case, all onsite butchering company-wide. So while in theory anyone could unionize a Walmart, odds are high they might lose their job entirely, without recourse, for the effort.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-13.htm
"I find it hard to believe that none of the liberal commentators breathlessly celebrating Wal-Mart's "capitulation" on national health care have even entertained the most parsimonious explanation: that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition. Yet somehow, this appears nowhere in any of the analysis."
Uh, Megan...literally every liberal commentator I read who mentioned this today also mentioned the very obvious reason why they were doing it. And I haven't heard #1 or #3 mentioned anywhere at all other than right here. You must read a wildly different section of liberal blogs than I do. The reaction I read pretty much everywhere was of the "well, that's very cynical of them, and they obviously haven't had a change of heart on their principles, but if that's what it takes to get Blanche Lincoln on board then great" type.
Adam:
Look at whom she linked to. Tomasky and TNR. How many of the "liberals" that she so often defames reads either of them? Very few. So her idea of "liberals" is very different indeed. Even if the blog owners didn't specifically state the reasons, any of the reasons Megan brought up were likewise listed in the comments section of most of them.
...yeah. Due respect, but Ms. McArdle's area of expertise is explicitly not liberal thought or thinkers. Why write about them and then get spanked by members of the community?
When government expands authority, rent seekers beat a path to its door
conservatives are concerned about big govenment having too much power over citizens
liberals are concerned about big business having too much power over citizens
imagine the fun when big government and big business get together!
Throw in Big Labor and you have Canada.
And yes, big labor benefits from single payer medical.
Derek
I heard the same sort of blather on NPR this morning. These people are really just rewriting WallMart press releases without putting any thought in at all. Which is funny, since they're the same sorts of people who'll go out and picket if WallMart tries to open a store where they live.
...that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition.
Well, this liberal's first reaction was to look for Wal-Mart's economic interest -- they're obviously pretty good at doing this themselves. I just happen to think this is a case when progressive economic policy happily coincides with the interests of a particular firm.
Government-mandated universal health insurance would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of Wal-Mart's lefty critics (the argument that Wal-Mart treats its employees poorly). This often very vociferous and public criticism surely causes genuine, profit-reducing problems for Wal-Mart, especially with respect to the firm's expansion. Since Wal-Mart's great financial strength will probably enable it to shoulder the burden of any new pay or play tax more easily than most of its competitors, government-imposed UHC with an employer mandate makes sense.
Also, although I haven't seen what kind of rate the proposed pay or play tax is going to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Wal-Mart is also simply calculating that the adoption of such a tax is likely to be cheaper for them in the long run than constantly battling the crushing pressure of health insurance inflation (especially in light of the fact that the other proposal on the table is to penalize firms whose workers access Medicaid). I think government-mandated UHC makes sense for plenty of businesses actually, and I expect the tepidness of business community opposition to ObamaCare is one reason it's going to be more successful than ClintonCare.
Wal-Mart is a private corporation running a private business that provides more retail shelf space and product at the lowest of low prices to primarily North American consumers. As the fortunes of Wal-Mart goes, so goes the American economy.
Retail clerks unions are sham organizations that do nothing for its members or for the economy, except provide income to union officers and union-employed socialists.
Wal-Mart pays those wages and offers those benefits that are required to maintain and grow its place in the business world. It is not and should not be the government's business to impose requirements as to benefits that an employer must provide or (by the way) the wage rate that must be paid. Laws requiring wage and benefit levels will only exacerbate an already sinking economy.
No one is required to work for Wal-Mart or to shop at its stores. But Wal-mart jobs are popular, as are the low prices that millions upon millions of consumers enjoy. This country works (literally) because of our capitalist bent and it is time for the fascists now in control to realize that big brother cannot right this ship.
The Wal-Mart executives who advocate government health insurance need to be fired.
Thomas Sowell quoting Adam Smith:
Recall that GM cut sweet deals with the UAW back when it had more than 50% of the US car market in part to drive Ford and Chrysler to the wall.
The gales of creative destruction continue to blow, and Walmart won't be the dominant retailer forever.
Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market
Is some young upstart company really going to make a dent in Walmart's sales? Is Walmart's market position so precarious that they need mandated health care to compete nowadays?
Take your comment to 1970 and replace "Walmart" with "Sears and Roebuck."
Walmart management is competent and not complacent. Regulation protects the incumbent, they are the incumbent.
Gracious, sometimes one can tell that neither Ms. McArdle nor anyone else commenting on this ever worked as a management consultant.
Another reason, one both more obvious and less nefarious than those mentioned, is that Wal-Mart's managers and owners:
- would like for all of their employees to have health-care
- are prevented from offering it to all of them because of competitive pressures and a well-worn commitment to the bottom-line
- thus support the current initiative for national health-care as a way to level the playing field and allow them - with everyone else - to offer health-care, or to secure health-care for their employees through other means.
Sound good?
I liked Stossel's article: free health care is great, if you live long enough to get it.
Are we supposed to be outraged about Walmart supporting something because it gives them a competitive advantage? Doesn't seem like news to me?
Are we supposed to be outraged because the media failed to pick up on the fact that Walmart is acting in its own interests? That is a legitimate complaint, but after all the other spectacular failures of the business/financial media in the past year this seems like small potatoes.
Are we supposed to be outraged because complex regulations favor big companies over small business? Maybe I am a heathen, but I don't see any inherent value in small businesses. I am certainly not going to oppose otherwise sensible regulation just because it favors big business over small business.
That's because you've never tried to start one. Who are you to say that a side business which generates a few thousand a year is worthless? It's not worthless to the customers. Such a small business has the same compliance costs as one that does $1 million a year. If you hire employees those costs increase dramatically.
I think that national healthcare will enlarge the informal labor economy. It will raise the cost of formal labor, by compliance costs that don't go away no matter how "progressive" the tax scheme is. This will force more people to hire out the back door or go out of business.
"Are we supposed to be outraged because complex regulations favor big companies over small business? ...."
The problem is that it installs a barrier to entry and reduces competition. It will be that much harder for the next upstart to come along and revolutionize retail. This decreases the incentive for Walmart to maintain low prices and good service.
In other words, this is anti-antitrust...an alliance between the dominant corporation and big government to protect the status quo at the expense of the consumer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
One inherent value in small business is that most "craft" businesses cannot become large (the only exception I can think of is Apple).
If you need some consultants to build an internal CRUD app or you just need a desk, just hire infosys or buy from Staples. Economies of scale make sense there.
Not every product/service fits that mold. There is a place in the world for 37signals or assorted amish furniture makers.
If you favor big business, you harm the people who wish to produce and consume craft products. That's a bad thing.
virtually all innovative, disruptive businesses start out as small businesses
imagine the premise of some guy in his college dorm room at UT Austin staring a computer company that in a relatively short time drives IBM out of the personal computer business.
Walmart sources much of their inventory from foreign suppliers in developing countries (without socialized healthcare). Walmart's supply chain expertise will run circles around small or regional retailer sourcing domestically. I suspect if this passes we'll see an even larger percentage of Walmart's inventory foreign sourced and not from the EU where they have high social costs implicit in production.
No good shall come from this.
I don't see any inherent value in small businesses.
It's not about small business, it's about the ability of a small business to grow into a large business. If regulations exist to make this harder then the existing firms will become less responsive to consumers, prices will be higher, selection and quality will be worse, etc.
Do you really mean no good will come out of this or do you mean that the opportunity costs will be greater than the benefits of coverage for the people walmart employees?
I can respect someone who thinks that universal health care will have nasty unintended consequences. I disagree but I can see the point of view and how it could happen. Furthermore it is an empirical question that can actually be evaluated.
Personally, I'd rather have a choice of where to shop. While Wal-Mart is fine, it'd be nice if there were still a Target and other options available in case Wal-Mart decided not to carry some particular line of products that I like. I've noticed that the big box stores will standardize their product lines. For example, they'll pick a one or two suppliers of furniture or auto parts or electronics. So if I like those one or two, I'm fine. But if I don't, I'm SOL unless there is a competitor who picked a different one or two suppliers.
Also, if Wal-Mart manages to run Target out of business, they'll be more able to raise prices and/or reduce variety of inventory as there won't be a competitor to go to.
The same thing could happen in other markets. We may end up with Best Buy (or someone) being the only national electronics/computer chain.
This universal health care bill may, in a single bill, cause a bunch of different markets to shrink down to one or two major players and a bunch of tiny upstarts who struggle to keep up. Monopoly/monopsony markets are not good for the customer.
A better way to reform the system would be to eliminate employer supplied health care entirely and make it all direct to the consumer. That would reduce barriers to entry and eliminate the advantage that big firms have over small firms. Everyone would then be responsible for choosing their own plan from the options. If everyone where buying their insurance individually, the individual market wouldn't be so limited.
A better way to reform the system would be to eliminate employer supplied health care entirely and make it all direct to the consumer.
The best feature of employer paid benefits is the risk pooling. Any plan that would get rid of the risk pools is a bad one. I'm fine with taxing employer benefits and moving towards purchasing insurance individually, if we can mimic the risk pooling that many companies provide.
Byrk is right. Direct-to-consumer health care means the people who really need coverage will not be able to get it at all. No insurance company in its right corporate mind is going to touch, for example, a 55-year-old diabetic with early-stage heart disease. Or anyone who has ever had cancer of any kind. Right now those people can get health care through their employer as long as they aren't too sick to work (which is the real problem with the current system).
I have a problem with just tossing out the assumption that all regulation automatically priveleges large businesses over small. The specific effects will vary based on the effect of the speficic regulation's effect on the specific industry and makeup of the businesses within that industry. Yes, usually it will privelege the large over the small but often it will affect different large and small businesses quite differently from each other. FDIC regulations don't really privelege large banks over small until the regulators stupidly stop requiring payments from big banks because they assume they won't have to rescue them any time soon!
Regulations that require a massive internal bureaucracy to manage regardless of size (think SOX) will help large companies and drive small ones out, ones that require actions that scale with business size may do so a lot less. Of course, it's definitely applicable to point out that Wal-Mart is going to be rent-seeking by taking a seat at the table, but it's also not fair to ignore the fact that Wal-Mart is already subject to requirements on health insurance that its competitors large and small are not; getting that corrected isn't as much rent-seeking as seeking relief from the rent others already receive.
That said, here's another good reason to support some form of public health care system - why should we be forcing employers to get involved like this? Wouldn't every employer be better off without having to get in the health insurance business at all??
I can't be the only one who has actually been to a number of small towns where WalMart does indeed have a monopoly on a number of goods. (sporting goods, toys, music, electronics, etc.). But the real problem is it's monopsony power. WalMart can dictate what a company produces, what it will sell for, where else they can sell the product, what the packaging should look like, how it will ship, and even what software they use to track the shipping.
As an example WalMart dictates the price Levi's sells them jeans, demands Levis tell them what they charge other companies and demands every detail all the way down Levi's own input supply line down to the raw materials. Kraft, Disney, Rubbermaid, Proctor & Gamble, etc. face similar intrusive micromanagement from WalMart.
Coca-Cola makes a Diet Coke sweetened with aspartame and another with Splenda solely because WalMart used their monopsony power to force Coke to develop the Splenda version.
Its not so much the retail side where WalMart drives out competition, it is their utter control of so many supply lines that does it. You can't compete with WalMart if no one will supply your store with products to sell because of their fear of WalMart's wrath (or WalMart's ability to force suppliers to charge higher prices to their competition).
And that's a bad thing? I frankly am seldom able to find diet soda sweetened only with Splenda -- but if I could I'd buy me some.
I think Wal-Mart's monopsony power is exaggerated. As huge as they are, they only absorb a few percentage points of consumer spending in the US. And at any rate, the biggest impact we get from Wal-Mart is the anti-inflationary power they exert on the overall economy. That's a big benefit in my view -- especially to poorer and working class folks.
Isn't Pepsi One all Splenda?
As for the anti-inflationary qualities, as an occasional Wal-Mart shopper, I'm convinced they're false economies. I've simply stopped going there for anything that isn't a large national brand. Everything there is so . . . cheap. From the bicycles to the watches to the purses to the clothing. It all just breaks, crashes, or tears, really fast.
And the clothes and sports equipment don't cost all that much less, too. Either there's just very, very little money in yanking out that huge last bit of quality, or Wal-Mart is just raking in huge profits per-item and only losing out on slippage.
I'll have to check. Thanks for the tip. Every time I've done so in the past, though, I've found that the big soda companies always add aspartame or other sweetners (though there are some smaller labels I've found who do Splenda-only).
Well, I can't say I find Wal-Mart to be a particularly nice shopping experience. I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, but, where I live (Northeast) it seems the Wal-Marts tend to be pretty shabby. I always find sunbelt Wal-Marts -- I'm thinking of Florida, for instance -- to be much cleaner, newer, brighter, larger, nicer stores. I suspect this is largely because up here you're very likely to be shopping in a Wal-Mart that was built forty or fifty years ago to be a Caldor or an Anne and Hope, whereas down south and out west, you often get new construction.
At any rate, I don't buy any durable goods at Wal-Mart myself, either. But I find for things like shaving cream, toothpaste and the like, they're tough to beat (although my local Dollar Tree is even cheaper).
I used to live close to both a Super Target and a Super Walmart (not sure if those are the right terms, but they had the full range of groceries as well as the normal items). The Walmart there was very nice, new, clean and had great deals. I didn't buy fruit there - it looked good but didn't have much flavor (same for Target, though). And I didn't buy much clothing for myself there, but got plenty for my children, and the quality was fine. It's not designer, but as fast as children go through clothes, I don't recall anything falling apart before it was outgrown. It was great to be able to buy groceries, snowpants, toys, paint or deck wash, sheets, sewing supplies and electronics all in one trip.
When I lived in Hong Kong and came back to the US to visit, it was a joy just walking through the new local Super Walmart, where everything was clean, safe and cheap, and the prices were clearly marked.
But since moving to the Chicago suburbs, the closest Walmart is dirty and depressing, although they seem to be currently giving it a face-lift. If that store had been my formative Walmart experience, I'd have a much lower opinion of it.
It's interesting that so many liberals are defending themselves with their understanding that national insurance is beneficial to big business. I wonder whether these are the same liberals who accused NHI opponents of being in thrall to big business, or if they merely sat silently while other liberals/leftists did so.
And I wonder whether Megan's devious enough to have drawn this out intentionally.
...but national insurance is beneficial to big business. That's because, in no small part, national insurance is really good policy. That's why every other developed country in the world has a variant on the theme.
The whole point is not that liberals are or are not opposed to big business; it's that big business is so opposed to liberals that they'll even oppose policies which are good for them because they're being proposed by liberals. That class warfare, for whatever reason, is real. The fact that Wal-Mart's execs are smart enough to have figured this out isn't really surprising. They're pretty smart. But the essential dynamic, of right-wing economics having a lot to do with knives, noses, and faces, is still operational.
PM:
"That's because, in no small part, national insurance is really good policy."
It certainly is for politicians and others able to pervert the system. It isn't good for patients, especially those whose illnesses cannot currently be treated.
"That's why every other developed country in the world has a variant on the theme".
Actually, it's every developed country. Roughly half of America is covered by government insurance or healthcare. The idea that we have nothing is so ridiculous anyone basing an argument on it should be ignored.
"big business is so opposed to liberals that they'll even oppose policies which are good for them because they're being proposed by liberals."
Not only is this not the point, it isn't even accurate.
"right-wing economics..." requires the ability to consider the future as well as the current and is therefore more complicated than "if we cut doctor salaries in half we'll save half their salaries." Sadly, simpler thinking like 'more NHI must be better because everyone has it' has the small disadvantage of not being true.
Hehe, thanks for the laugh re: right-wing economics.
Remember, average economics growth under Democratic Presidents is 3.9%, under Repubs, it's 2.9%. Average unemployment is 4.8% under Dems and 6.3% under Repubs. This stuff just doesn't work, and if conservatives actually cared about this country or the people in it, they'd notice. (source.)
But they don't, so they won't. Enjoy the wilderness, and please do try to keep losing elections. Americans are so much better off when you do.
And inflation, and creation of inflationary pressure for the future, has been higher under Democratic presidents. That point and yours ignores who has control of congress, delays in presidencies before there policies can be enacted, and then before they take effect, and external factors which are often larger than which party is in charge.
Its not even as if Democratic or Republican presidencies are largely similar in terms of economic policies. Kennedy cut taxes, Bush I raised them. Nixon imposed wage and price controls (going back to an idea that FDR used). Comparisons between Democratic presidents and Republican presidents might be useful for partisan rhetorical debating points but they aren't very meaningful.
This is all about the Maryland law where the state mandated that employers with 10,000 or more workers in the state must spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on health insurance, or else pay the difference into a state Medicaid fund.
Guess how many companies in Maryland have over 10,000 workers? One: Wal-Mart.
So Wal-Mart would like not to get stuck as the only employer in a Federal mandate, so they would prefer if all businesses have a Federal mandate, not just big ones.
Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition.
Exactly the same reason why Henry Ford adopted the famous, exorbidant, $5 a day wage -- to screw the competition. And it worked!
(Liberals always imagine it was so his assembly line workers could afford to buy his cars, enabling him to then somehow magically bootstrap himself to riches through enlightened liberal generosity to labor. I can't count the number of times I've been told this. About old Henry "Battle of the Overpass" Ford himself, enlightened friend of organized labor!)
The amazing thing about Ford isn't that he adopted his work rules for his own benefit; the amazing thing about Ford is that his competitors all hated working people so much that they would rather lose in the marketplace than pay them.
You gotta stop burying the lede. There are rich people who just want to get ethically richer. These are folks we can definitely work with; they want what decent people want. And then there are rich people who need to keep everyone else poorer. And they're far more common. And they don't care if it makes them poorer to do it.
I dunno, in my career I've never met any business owners who intentionally drove their own businesses down just to make sure their workers stay down. Maybe because the condition is self-correcting -- competition removes such business owners from the pool of business owners pretty quickly.
As to Henry, it may be worthwhile to recap the reality versus the myth. The myth is that he acted with enlightened self interest to improve the lot of the working man with the historic $5 wage -- give the working man the money to live well and buy Ford cars -- and if he did it to help himself, so what, we can all profit together!
Reality is that Henry had one of 400 car companies in the US when he put in the assembly line. That dropped his production time per car from 12.5 hours to 1.5 hours. And that let him drop the price of the Model T from $850 to $290 (by 66%) ... which so exploded demand for it that he went from 1 of 400 car companies to having >50% of the entire US market in one year. There's never been anything else like it.
Now Henry *had* to hire a lot of workers fast -- which meant he *had* to boost his wage rate a lot. But with the huge, 88% productivity gain he'd obtained, he could easily afford it -- compared to cutting the cost of each car by 7/8ths, merely doubling the wage rate to $5 was cheap. For him. But his competitors who didn't have assembly lines couldn't afford anything like it.
Henry then used the $5 wage as a predatory weapon. He swept up all the best employees from his competitors and fired all his own old employees he did't like.
His competitors who lost all their best workers screamed bloody murder about the $5 wage. But it wasn't that they preferred to cut their own throats to keep their workers down rather than match it -- if this is the myth you are operating on -- it was because they didn't have assembly lines so they couldn't match it.
Now, as to Henry being the kind of enlightened guy you "can definitely work with", you might recall that with the $5 wage came Ford's infamous "Sociologial Department" that operated as his internal secret police force, monitoring every detail of the lives of the workers getting that wage in Henry's company towns. Did they drink? Gamble? Cheat on their wives? Go to church on Sunday? They had to go to church on Sunday! If the answer was wrong, *pffft*, you were gone, goodbye $5. And if the Sociological Department heard rumors of you socializing with any kind of labor organizer ... it would schedule a meeting between you and some guys with baseball bats. Because you'd *betray* the company that gave you that $5 !?!?
Ol' "Battle of the Overpass" Henry was just about the worst thug-hiring, union-busting magnate of his generation, which is saying something. But if he's the kind of enlightened business owner you can work with anytime, more power to you!
Now, as to Herny's 399 competitors, those who could afford to match the $5 wage by putting in their own assembly lines did. Say "General Motors", which in 15 years or so had Ford knocked on the ropes and almost out of business, partly because Alfred Sloan decided cars should be sold in colors other than black, but also in no small part because Sloan decided to focus all his management efforts on building his business, rather than divert as much of them as Henry did into plotting violence against the union.
How Old Henry has attained for himself posthumously such a reputation as being an enlightened friend of labor ... ??? It's one of the mysteries of life.
But wherever he is now, he's gagging at the thought of it.
You mean Ford innovated technologically, then used some of that explosion of value to hire more and better workers? So that both labor and management benefited?
That's pretty much the opposite of what we do now. Wages and productivity have been decoupled for the past ten, twenty years. So yeah, Ford wasn't a nice man. But at least he wasn't as fantastically stupid as our current batch. I'll take what I can get from our oligarchs.
"And then there are rich people who need to keep everyone else poorer. And they're far more common. And they don't care if it makes them poorer to do it."
Actually you've got it reversed. Many liberals want to make rich people poorer, and don't care if they hurt everyone, particularly poor people, in order to do it. Someone has to create wealth, and they generally need incentives to do so because wealth creation involves hard work and risk. Greater overall wealth means more "inequality", because many people aren't able or willing to keep up in terms of wealth creation (or they're handicapped by lack of opportunity, which we as a country should keep working on, but this is far from the only problem).
Those who focus on greater income/wealth equality as an end in itself are advocating hurting everyone, particularly the poor, in order to hurt the rich.
Again, average growth under Repub Presidents is 2.9% and average growth under Dem Presidents is 3.9%. You are simply completely wrong about the results of liberal economic policies.
And, of course, you don't care, because it isn't about whether or not the policies work. It's about worshiping wealth and power, the facts or results be damned.
Again, please keep losing elections; it's the best thing you people can do for America. I suggest relentless sex and bribery scandals.
So much for the small businesses that are being displaced by Wal-Mart ... kind of a backfire/unintended consequence for the activists who were using health coverage as a weapon against Wal-Mart. Kind of funny, actually.
There's another point that no one has raised, which is kind of obvious if you remember the origins of employer-provided health care benefits.
Requiring all employers to provide health care for their employees will not affect the total compensation in employer/employee relationships where there is room to negotiate [once wages have re-equilibriated]. However, employer payments into health care originated as a back-door way to increase compensation in the days of maximum wages. We don't have many wage ceilings any more*, but mandated employer payments into health care would be a back-door way to increase the minimum wage, since employees who have agreed to work for a compensation package that includes the current minimum wage but no health care benefits package will no longer be able to do so.
* although ... have you noticed that government employees get plush benefits packages? Could that have become the custom to avoid having wage tables that look embarassingly high to the voters?
-dk
The cost of covering healthcare is a moving target. WalMart, the SIEU, AT&T and the CWA(communications workers) have had a public alliance for at least a year trying to get the government to set some reasonable rules. America might just get some by 2012, or not.