From Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek, reprinting his letter to The Washington Post,
Rep. Frank and Mr. Dionne
ought to study recent research by the University of Chicago’s Christian
Broda and John Romalis. These scholars find that official measures of
income distribution – which do show increasing inequality in recent
years – greatly overstate inequality because they fail to account for
the differential impacts of trade and big-box retailing on the
purchasing power of the poor relative to that of the rich.
Data
from 1994 through 2005 show that trade with China along with the
retailing efficiencies of Wal-Mart have lowered the prices of the goods
that poor people buy much more than they’ve lowered the prices of the
goods that rich people buy.
Evil Wal-Mart! Evil globalization! There should be a law…!
Paul says
It is true that Wal-Mart provides a lower cost option for purchasing many items and ultimately influences everything most people purchase. But they don’t seem to value human capital as much as this site extols. And they can be predatory with regard to suppliers — remember the Rubbermaid saga. Be very careful when you dance with a devil. It can be very enjoyable in the short term but have some really bad consequences.