If Wal-Mart gives workers a bad deal, then why did 11,000 people recently apply to work at a new store in Oakland? That's a question that people who today pass for socially conscious have a hard time answering.
So-called "progressives" applaud the New York City officials who have succeeded so far in keeping Wal-Mart out of the five boroughs, complaining about the retail giant's low compensation and rumors of abusive labor practices. Many argue that the world's largest retailer costs taxpayers millions of dollars because many of its low-wage workers have to resort to food stamps and Medicaid to make ends meet.
Yet isn't it ironic that pro-labor types find themselves standing in the way of the poor people who are clamoring to find badly needed jobs?
Of course, it's impossible to convince a liberal that anything he or she does isn't good for poor people. After all, Democrats lose elections sticking up for the little guy, while the Republicans sell out to those big, nasty corporations that only care about their bottom line. It's the good guys versus the corporate greed - enough said, right?
Never mind that allowing Wal-Mart's low-wage, low-price outlets into impoverished urban areas would do wonders for the local communities, who not only need the jobs but, perversely, also overpay for groceries because they don't have access to major suburban retailers.
When poor single mothers in Philadelphia pay nearly 60 percent more for baby diapers than rich people in the area, as a recent Brookings Institution study reports, it's absurd to accuse Wal-Mart of promoting "a race to the bottom." People who work at Wal-Mart are frequently already at the bottom of American society. What they need are jobs and affordable food and diapers, not cumbersome minimum wage laws and anti-Wal-Mart protests by liberal college kids who think they're doing someone a favor.
For pro-labor types at Brown who find all this hard to understand, let me use an analogy to something you might know a little bit more about: hook-ups. Or, more specifically: bad hook-ups.
The comparison between these two consensual relationships isn't difficult to fathom. Just as unskilled workers will agree to labor in appalling conditions in stores or in sweatshops, so too will college kids occasionally shack up with highly undesirable mates after parties or in the SciLi. The details of each of these 'agreements' are sometimes more hideous than our sheltered bourgeois minds can bear.
Now, imagine that UCS observes that the play that students are getting at Brown is nasty, and as progressive members of the college community, they decide they want to lift the least attractive students out of their sexual poverty.
Naturally it would be impossible to set up a hook-up welfare state, given the obvious problem of finding someone willing to provide, well, you know.
But at a very minimum, the Council could pass a kind of sexual minimum wage law: instead of outlawing jobs that pay under $5.15 per hour, the resolution would ban hooking up with anyone who's nastier than, say, a '3' (out of 10). After all, below that, and we're not in hook-up territory anymore: we're talking human rights violations.
This modest proposal might sound absurd, but it's well in the mainstream of liberal thinking on labor protections. Even though both $4 per hour jobs and bad hookups are consented to by their "victims," Democrats believe that there is a cookie-cutter wage that's right for everyone.
The problem with this approach, though, should be obvious.
A law saying that we deserve a basic subsistence level of hotness in our hook-ups wouldn't mean that the unsightly kids suddenly start shacking up with the hotties. Ew, that's gross, remember?
Instead, the law would just make things worse for all the '1's and '2's by making it illegal for people to get with them. Of course, some people might be able to creep up into the 3-4 range by going to the gym or getting a makeover. But the most hopeless cases would find themselves starving in a sexual Somalia.
The example is nutty but the message is serious. Boycotting or outlawing companies that pay poverty-level wages might improve conditions slightly for some workers who probably deserve pay hikes anyway. But for the many workers who simply lack the skills to earn a decent living (say, MCM concentrators), the fight against low wages is a fight against the only jobs that they can reasonably expect to find.
Just remember: when guys are having bad luck with the ladies, don't interfere, just let them take what they can get. The answer, in other words, is free love. And for poor people who desperately need jobs and affordable groceries, the answer, believe it or not, is the free market.
Liberals used to believe in the power of freedom. Now, their zeal for protecting poor people from their own choices has turned them into Marie Antoinette turned on her (severed) head: if they can't earn cake, don't let them eat bread!
So if you really want to give workers a helping hand, drop the 'fair trade' charade and start your own evil, exploitative multinational corporation. No company provides everyday low prices and an honest living for more families than Wal-Mart does.
Nate Goralnik '06 is a teaching assistant for EC 11: "Principles of Economics."
