I keep getting worried that the real point of the debate is being lost by this exclusive focus on Walmart. The problem isn't one company. The problem is an inability for anyone in our mainstream national dialog to recognize the importance of handling distributional outcomes. This is a purely government issue, and it's ludicrous to expect anything other than a government solution to this problem.
We have liberals pissing and moaning about Walmart employees receiving income support from the Federal government, which is exactly what we would want in absence of a higher minimum wage. Walmart's on board, and so are a bunch of other companies. Jesus, Mitt Romney even favors a steadily increasing minimum wage. Why is this not getting done?
Save your outrage for fact that our minimum wage is half the rate it should be, with the ludicrous assumption that it needs to be updated every couple of years by legislation. Just raise the thing to 14 dollars an hour already and index it to inflation. You'll have solved the problem permanently, while addressing a source of about a third of America's growing inequality problem.
And it will prove, definitively, that government call solve things like the "Walmart problem," even when most people didn't realize that it could.
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