Robbing Wal-Mart

Writing today in Townhall, George Will touts the success of Wal-Mart, spouts against big-labor's underhanded means of attacking the huge retailer through legislation because then cannot win conventionally, doubts the statistical implications being forwarded by the anti Wal-Mart crowd, and shouts against state governments all-powerful quest to seek more and more sources of revenue to fund their growing socialist agendas, this time at the expense of a company that lowers local retail prices by nearly 6% every time it opens a new store.

Maryland's new law is, The Washington Post says, "a legislative mugging masquerading as an act of benevolent social engineering.'' And the mugging of profitable businesses may be just beginning. The threshold of 10,000 employees can be lowered by knocking off a zero. Then two. The 8 percent requirement can be raised. It might be raised in Maryland, if, as is possible, Wal-Mart's current policies almost reach it.

This is part of the tawdry drama of state politics as governments grasp for novel sources of money. Forty-eight states are to varying degrees dependent on revenues from gambling. Forty-six states are addicted to their cut, to be paid out over decades, from the $246 billion coerced from the tobacco industry by using the specious argument that smoking costs their governments huge sums. As a result, 46 states have a stake in the long-term profitability of tobacco companies.

Maryland's grasping for Wal-Mart's revenues opens a new chapter in the degeneracy of state governments that are eager to spend more money than they have the nerve to collect straightforwardly in taxes. Fortunately, as labor unions and allied rent-seekers in 30 or so other states contemplate mimicking Maryland, Wal-Mart can contemplate an advantage of federalism.

States engage in "entrepreneurial federalism,'' competing to be especially attractive to businesses. A Wal-Mart distribution center, creating at least 800 jobs, that has been planned for Maryland could be located instead in more hospitable Delaware.

Wal-Mart is successful for a reason. Why would a government attack so fervently one of the brightest success stories of our time? It is really quite simple--the government wants a cut.