Super Size Me

Like Aberdeen, Rapid City might get a Super Wal-Mart. It looks as though the defenders of the status quo have lost here in Aberdeen and we will actually get more jobs and lower prices. Not so in New York City where they have recently defeated Wal-Mart’s attempt to build.  Luckily the people in New York all have excellent jobs and are extremely rich. Or are they? Here is Jay Nordlinger today on Wal-Mart in NYC:

The activists, of course, had no need of Wal-Mart: They didn't need jobs, and they didn't need goods at Wal-Mart prices. They have the fortune to work and shop elsewhere. Wal-Mart is a godsend to the poor and the lower middle class. They generally don't get a say in whether a Wal-Mart goes up. The activists would greatly prefer a vacant lot — with weeds growing between the cracks — to a Wal-Mart, which they deem an unmatchable offense.

Wal-Mart is an all-purpose bogeyman, responsible, in some people's minds, for an array of ills. The anti-Wal-Mart mindset is a kind of religion, like dumb environmentalism, or dumb devotion to gun control, or dumb hatred of the SUV. You can't reason with these people, can't have an honest debate with them: Wal-Mart is simply their devil.

 

At least that takes the pressure off Target and McDonald's.

But I've written a lot about this, and, as I say, I'm Wal-Marted out. I just find it heartbreaking when Wal-Mart is defeated on the basis of economic ignorance and class snobbery. The activists — because they are activists — get their way. And the people who would benefit from Wal-Mart, both as employees and as shoppers: screwed.