February 28, 2005/New York TIMES
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Don't Blame Wal-Mart
By ROBERT B. REICH
Berkeley, Calif. - BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.
This, btw, is exactly the same approach that Jared Diamond has to the question of pollution in Montana. He puts the burden on the "taxpayer" rather than the corporation.
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