Talk Elections

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/07/01/wal-mart-supports-employer-mandate/

A couple of years ago, I shared a cab to the airport with a Wal-Mart lobbyist, who told me that Wal-Mart supports an “employer mandate.”  An employer mandate is a legal requirement that employers provide a government-defined package of health benefits to their workers.  Only Hawaii and Massachusetts have enacted such a law.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  Wal-Mart is a capitalist success story.  At the time of our conversation, this lobbyist was helping Wal-Mart fight off employer-mandate legislation in dozens of states.  Those measures were specifically designed to hurt Wal-Mart, and were underwritten by the unions and union shops that were losing jobs and business to Wal-Mart.

But it all became clear when the lobbyist explained the reason for Wal-Mart’s position: “Target’s health-benefits costs are lower.”

I have no idea what Target’s or Wal-Mart’s health-benefits costs are.  Let’s say that Target spends $5,000 per worker on health benefits and Wal-Mart spends $10,000.  An employer mandate that requires both retail giants to spend $9,000 per worker would have no effect on Wal-Mart.  But it would cripple one of Wal-Mart’s chief competitors.

So yesterday’s news that Wal-Mart is publicly endorsing a “sensible and equitable” employer mandate — i.e., a mandate that hurts Target but not Wal-Mart — didn’t come as a surprise to me.  It merely confirmed what I learned in a cab on the way to the airport: Wal-Mart has gone native.  That great symbol of the benefits of free-market competition now joins its erstwhile enemies among the legions of rent-seeking weasels who would rather run to government for protection than earn their keep by making people’s lives better.


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note the letterhead, strange bedfellows indeed.

relevant politically because Walmart, as a state, has two swing senators in Congress

555+!

You see, this is why the incestuous alliance between right-libertarians and Big Business needs to be obliterated: because Big Business usually manipulates the government to work for it. Business is almost invariably at the root of any governmental expansion; Morgan was a backer of T. Roosevelt's Presidential campaign, and wanted him to forcibly break up Standard Oil to give him the opportunity to begin absorbing the other members of the monopoly.

They're still garbage.

I'm really not a fan of employer funded healthcare.

I wonder if this could have anything to do with restricting market entry to competitors. Hmmm..

Surely Lunar would never post something so deceptive!

uh, I openly pointed out the deception in my topic post, which is from CATO

More specifically, when the SEIU and Walmart lobbying efforts ever agree on something, it's probably best for America if the opposite is done...

random related graph

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Goddamn socialists and redistributionists, liberty means nothing to them!

Of course, Walmart supports this.  What better way to eliminate competition (especially smaller competition).

Excellent point. I think we should try and get away from employer based healthcare.

The notion that there could be any real competition with WalMart, and particularly any 'small' competitors, is truly charmingly, simple-mindedly archaic. 

If all employers are mandated to provide health insurance, Wal Mart will have a significant health insurance economies of scale compared to its smaller rivals.

That's it, we now have proof that an employer mandate is a bad idea. :P

WalMart has rivals?

1.  The topic article prominently features one, Target, what the hell?

2.  That's twice in this thread you've implied that Walmart has no competition.  Every time someone buys something that Walmart sells or could sell at a place other than Walmart, that represents competition.

3.  Even if Walmart has no rivals, it's at least probable that the company wishes to ensure this continues, hence its support of policies that might hurt it but hurt its potential/actual competition relatively more.

Target Corporation. K-Mart.  Every single department store, grocery store, electronics store, etc.

Opebo, you getting caught up in the whole Wal-Mart vs. Uncle Joe's General Store mom&pop thing.  Truth is that there is entire market of corporate retail that competes with Wal-Mart that needs to be eliminated in order for Wal-Mart to own the world.