What? This isn't a double-turn at all. I'm not defending uncompetitive environments and monopolistic exploitation, I'm asserting Wal-Mart as example uncompetitive environment is, in the general case, nuts.
> Of course, this ignores that many of those poor are the ones in the factories, warehouses, trucks and behind the cash registers.
Not ignoring that fact, NOTWITHSTANDING THAT FACT. No one is better off if one person working minimum wage pay extra money to have another person working minimum wage drive a truck further (and burn more fuel for that matter). Recognize a simple truism: no group gets better off by engaging in waste. (You could make a case that someone-else making substantially more than minimum wage paying extra for that would increase overall well being by paying more for these services, because of diminishing marginal utility of that richer person's wealth, but making groceries cost more is a freakishly regressive sort of way to attempt to redistribute wealth... and wealthy people aren't shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, they're all at Target or Whole Foods...)
