The Astounding Wal-Mart

Writes Kathleen Day in the Washington Post: “Wal-Mart entered the grocery business in 1988 to compete with established names such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, which had dominated food retailing for decades.

“Today Wal-Mart is America’s biggest grocer, with 16 percent of the U.S. retail food market, and its sales continue to climb, even as dozens of grocery chains struggle.

“Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s decision to jump full-force into toys about 15 years ago has had similar results. Its sales overtook leader Toys R Us Inc. — the inventor of selling toys in big-box discount stores — in 1998. Wal-Mart now has 28 percent of that market. And it’s not just food and toys: Owners of religious bookstores worry about being outpriced by the retailing behemoth. The list of Wal-Mart’s effects on businesses goes on and on.”Rather than being three more reasons to hail this great capitalist success story–lowering food and toy and religious book prices for the poor and working classes who shop at Wal-Mart–it is another reason to hate the company, and try to stop it by regulatory coercion from doing the same to the stodgy world of banking.

The story’s title is, btw, “Piggy Banker?” Not that one could expect the federal house organ to look kindly on success in the market rather than at the point of a gun, government style, nor at a firm that might theaten one of DC’s most beloved pressure groups.

PS: Is Wal-Mart so hated because it successfully holds off the anti-emploper, violence-using groups called unions? Because it promotes world prosperity and peace through trade with China and other developing countries? Because it outcompetes established firms? Because it really helps lower-income people, unlike welfare? Because it is Southern? (The Northern K-Mart and Target seem to gain no such vitriol.)

Anyway: Go Wal-Mart! And thanks to Kent Snyder for the link.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.