Responding to a particularly silly Tim Worstall column trying to take me to task for suggesting that Wal-Mart could pay better wages and sustain a viable business model, Randy Paul punches a thousand holes through Worstall's smug recitation of Costco's differences from Wal-Mart by comparing apples-to-apples, Costco v. Sam's Club (Sam's Club is Wal-Mart's Costco competitor):
According to Walmart's 2005 Annual Report, Sam's Club makes up 13 of their annual sales which, for that year, would be $37,078,860,000. Costco with 212 fewer stores has sales of $51,862,000,000.
Who has the better business model here? Moreover, where would Worstall want to work if he had to choose between the two?
Yowch. That had to hurt. In any case, I should probably say a few words about Worstall's piece. It was called -- I kid you not -- "Wal-Mart and Toddler Economics," and complained that the left was approaching the issue like "whining three-year-olds with all the attendant knowledge of incentives, utopian wishes and economic consequences such a three-year-old might possess."
Better that, I guess, than the Daddy-knows-best complex currently infecting the right. What staggers me is the total paucity of imagination, the apparent belief that whatever Wal-Mart has decided to pay, and do, and decide, is the best of all possible worlds, and we should trust in their wisdom and allow the behemoth to rage not merely unchecked, but entirely unexamined. What's good for Wal-Mart, in this scenario, is good for us. So were there any way to run the company that would better serve the public good, they would surely have implemented it (they're not only benevolent, but omniscient, too).
