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Right, Because We Wouldn't Want Poor People To Have Jobs Or Cheap Goods

By Shawn Macomber on 2.11.09 @ 11:03AM

There are wide swaths of Chicago that look like something out of Mad Max, where people are trying to raise families under very difficult circumstances that should concern us all, but the city leaders apparently have more important things to attend to--like keeping Wal-Mart out of town.

Nothing quite like the compassionate set's principled opposition to real progressive success stories.

View all comments (3) | Leave a comment

saleboter| 2.11.09 @ 11:25AM

Walmart opened 1 block outside Chicago and was flooded with applications for work. Now another city gets all the tax revenue and Chicagoans shop there.

mantis| 2.11.09 @ 3:32PM

There are wide swaths of Chicago that look like barren desert roadways populated by marauding bandits? Which areas of Chicago are you referring to, specifically? I live on the west side and work on the south side of the city, and I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

midge| 2.12.09 @ 5:58PM

as daniel larison, one of the smarter conservatives now out there, responds:

There are large parts of south and west Chicago that suffer from a number of problems, but I have driven around the South Side and between Hyde Park and downtown on surface streets many times over the years and I have yet to see anything that would remind me of Mad Max. Naturally, this remark is being made as part of a complaint that the city won’t permit Wal-Mart to set up shop here, which prompts me to turn John’s question around: wouldn’t it be great if many on the Right could apply to Wal-Mart’s supposed ability to “create” jobs even half of the skepticism that they constantly (and sometimes rightly) apply to the federal government’s?* Pay no attention to the independent, small businesses that Wal-Mart’s arrival may adversely affect, but focus instead on how many low-wage service jobs it will provide–opposition to making your community heavily dependent on one company for its employment and needs must simply be irrational. Just keep the goods cheap and keep ‘em coming! I believe this is the approach to economics and politics that both Bacevich and Deneen find so ruinous.

*On a related note, is Michael Steele kidding when he says that government has never, as the saying goes, created a job? It seems to me that one of our long-standing complaints against all levels of government is that it has been only too good at creating them and preserving them, and one of the reasons that calls for abolishing various departments have become less and less common even on the right is that there are so many people with a vested interest in keeping these sources of employment from disappearing.

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/