Wal-Mart -- tremendous benefit to the poor

South End Grounds has an op-ed which ran in the NY Times. The authors, a Harvard business prof and a business consultant, point out that the retail giant saves its customers a great deal of money. Who are those customers?

Wal-Mart's customers tend to be the Americans who need the most help. Our research shows that Wal-Mart operates two-and-a-half times as much selling space per inhabitant in the poorest third of states as in the richest third. And within that poorest third of states, 80 percent of Wal-Mart's square footage is in the 25 percent of ZIP codes with the greatest number of poor households. Without the much-maligned Wal-Mart, the rural poor, in particular, would pay several percentage points more for the food and other merchandise that after housing is their largest household expense.

The fight against Wal-Mart is really a conflict between these poor customers and labor unions and their liberal supporters.