And Oakland rejoices.

11,000 people applied for the 400 available positions, and shoppers swamred the store on its opening day. The store received no city subsidies, and still pays its employees an average above the city’s (moronic) “living wage” law, even though it isn’t required to.

It wasn’t without a fight. Only one member of the Oakland city council attended the opening-day festivities. Others fought to keep the store ought, including passing an ordinance pohibiting retail stores of more than 200,000 square feet from opening shop in the city. That ordinance basically meant WalMart couldn’t open one of its “superstores.” WalMart Superstores also host a grocery store, with fresh produce at low prices. Keep the Oakland city council’s ordinance in mind the next time some leftist public health activist complains about how urban populations don’t have access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

Despite the overwhelming show of support from employees, applicants, and shoppers, the usual lineup of WalMart haters lined up with their soundbites.

Here’s one:

Amaha Kassa, executive director of the Oakland-based East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy . . . cited a study released a year ago by UC-Berkeley Institute for Industrial Relations, which said Wal-Mart costs California taxpayers about $86 million a year in public assistance to company workers, including $32 million for health-related services for under-insured employees relying on public health agencies and $54 million for food stamps, as well as subsidized housing and school lunches.

The false assumption here is that because some people who work at Wal-Mart also need public assistance, they wouldn’t be on public assistance if Wal-Mart weren’t around.

More likely, they’d need more public assistance:

For Claudia Garcia, unemployment is worse. She says she left a job in Redwood City because the commute ate up too much of her paycheck. The married mother of one was out of work for two months before taking this new retail job.

“I’d probably still be at home with no money,” she said about life without this new Wal-Mart.

If you hate the idea of a WalMart opening in your neighborhood because it’s unsightly, trashy, or you just hate big corporations, that’s certainly your prerogative. But spare us the canard about opposing WalMart because you care about poor people. Poor people seem to disagree.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 11:13 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.