Typhoid Maryland infects free markets

There is a very good posting by TCS today that tries to explain how self-defeating laws like the recent Maryland initiative requiring Wal-Mart [and Wal-Mart alone] to provide 8% of its payroll on health care.

Liberals live in a cartoon world of victims and villains and the TCS author Arnold Kling gently explains the facts of economics to the emotion-based “disturbed” and “troubled” legislators who enacted the punitive legislation:

In the liberal morality tale, Wal-Mart is a villain, and its workers are victims. However, Wal-Mart workers themselves feel lucky to be able to work there. What low-skilled workers need are more Wal-Marts. More Wal-Marts would increase employment for low-skilled workers, and ultimately this could drive up wages for such workers.
Maryland liberals believe that there is something wrong with free markets if Wal-Mart workers do not have enough health insurance. However, if Wal-Mart workers want health insurance badly enough, eventually the market will find a way to provide it. Ironically, one of the initiatives to try to reduce health care costs, which is the key to affordable health insurance, comes from Wal-Mart, which is experimenting with in-store clinics. If Wal-Mart is driven out of Maryland, the state will never be able to take advantage of its health care clinics.
In a NYT piece on the Wal-Mart law, legislators were quoted as saying that one of their goals is to prevent Wal-Mart from taking advantage of the availability of Medicaid for its workers. A more straightforward approach would be to tighten the eligibility standards for Medicaid so that those making as much income as Wal-Mart provides its workers would be ineligible. Of course, such eligibility standards would apply to workers at other firms, not just the hated Wal-Mart.
The law requires Wal-Mart to spend 8 percent of its payroll on health care, whether or not this is enough to keep its workers from needing to rely on Medicaid. If Wal-Mart came up with a way to provide outstanding health care to its workers for 6 percent of its payroll, it would be in violation of the law unless it found a way to waste the other 2 percent on unnecessary health care. Conversely, if Wal-Mart offers a really lousy health plan, it would be in compliance with the law as long as it spent 8 percent.
If the Wal-Mart law is for the benefit of Wal-Mart workers, then why is it that they are not the ones rejoicing over its passage? Why does the law specify a spending percentage, which would seem to be of greater interest to Wal-Mart's competitors? Why did the pressure for the law come from people who do not work at Wal-Mart?
Liberals see the market as an arena in which evil corporations inflict their greed on innocent victims. I wish you would see that motives matter less than consequences. I wish you could see that greed is at work when laws are passed that regulate markets, because regulations always produce winners and losers. I wish you could see that those winners and losers are often not who you think they are. I wish you could see that competitive behavior and free choice are forces that operate in the market as a check against greed. Finally, I wish you could see that greed is most difficult to restrain when it is exercised through the medium of government.

Basically, Kling understands that the brand of Democrats made in Maryland would like to turn the state into a nanny-government. And that the Democratic elites are out of touch with the actual work-force in Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart has become a target of the Left in the MSM and the Dem political machines because Wal-Mart is a poster-boy example of how capitalism works better than the syndicalist and socialist models the left and far-right keep trying to foist on the free market.

Actually, Kling does not mention that since Wal-Mart is a “corporate person” and the law specifically targets Wal-Mart and only Wal-Mart, the constitutional injunction against a Bill of Attainder, a law passed against a specific “person” might apply. Maybe there is a court precedent, but I’m sure Wal-Mart has its legal team looking closely at the Maryland law.

Kling’s thoughtful piece will predictably draw unsympathetic responses, if it is even perused by, the usual suspects on the left. But it should remind all thoughtful citizens that governmental greed and incompetence have proved a much greater threat to personal freedom and well-being almost everywhere the government interferes in mass markets.