I’m really glad that Kevin Brancato has written this post on how the city of Los Angeles is going to try to keep WalMart from building within the city limits. I also absolutely love his opening two sentences:
In contrast to The Washington Post, T&B believes that people living inside the City of Los Angeles have diverse and conflicting voices; it is the ruling class who has the power and desire to tell Wal-Mart to get lost. In particular, it is the city government that wants to ban Wal-Mart Supercenters; we have little idea what the people outside of government actually want.
Amen, brother! After lobbing a well-deserved flame at economists who will sell their credentials, he follows up with a truism if ever I heard one:
This calls for a reminder: Governments are not populated by truth-seekers.
Kevin’s done a great job of skewering the whole thing, and I recommend his post to you without reservation. I think he’s right, that if LA succeeds in keeping out Wal-Mart, the neighboring communities will benefit, because the Wal-Marts will get built there, and Angelenos will shop there. Either way, high-cost competitors with Wal-Mart will be facing competition. If LA wants to cut off their tax revenue nose to spite their union-sycophantic face, then they should not be surprised when Angelenos shop elsewhere.