The L.A. Times lashes out at 'evil' corporations like Wal-Mart, over low wages paid to employees. The very title of their hit piece speaks of the Wal-Mart "Empire", and laments that "the prices can't be beat, but the wages can". Tugging on heart strings, they deliver the sob story of a worker at a competing grocer.

Kelly Gray, the chief breadwinner for five children, lost her job as a Raley's grocery clerk last December after Wal-Mart expanded into the supermarket business here. California-based Raley's closed all 18 of its stores in the area, laying off 1,400 workers.

Gray earned $14.68 an hour with a pension and family health insurance. Wal-Mart grocery workers typically make less than $9 an hour. [...]

Wal-Mart's penny-pinching extends to its own 1.2 million U.S. employees, none of them unionized. By the company's own admission, a full-time worker might not be able to support a family on a Wal-Mart paycheck.

No mention of a father in this story, just Kelly, trying to eke out a living for her five children at a local grocery store. So who is the guilty party here? The Times vilifies Wal-Mart, which is actually a shot taken at the thrifty American consumer. Market forces for bargain goods have made Wal-Mart very successful. Competitors who have been unable to add value to their own offerings have had to either meet Wal-Marts price point or leave the market entirely, which is what happened to Raley's.

Caught in the price wars, are hard working Americans like Kelly Gray. I'm sure Gray was very good at what she did, but unfortunately for her, her skill set was not so rare that she could dictate a $15 per hour wage. Wal-Mart cannot and should not pay someone $15 an hour to do a job that someone else is willing to do for $9. Even if that worker doesn't do the job as well or as efficiently as Kelly, price conscious American consumers pretty much don't give a damn. Indeed, if you walk into a Wal-Mart you are likely to find trash and clutter in the aisles, half empty shelves, missing price tags, and pallets of merchandise just placed on the floor for shoppers to pick from. People that shop there, for the large part, will put up with the "pig sty" image to get at the bargain basement prices. Personally, I'm not one of them. I shop at Target, where they add the value of cleaner aisles and store personnel that are a lot more competent.

Of course the Times supports unions and "living wages", which would not only keep wages artificially inflated, but would also mean higher prices for customers. Imagine McDonalds charging you $10 for a Big Mac, or the Times raising the price of your newspaper from 50 cents to $3, because every worker in the building is guaranteed a $15 per hour "living wage".

Instead of writing a hit piece against capitalism and the Wal-Marts of the world, the Times ought to be writing a piece about displaced workers who refuse to expand their skill set. If you're still making slide rules in a pocket calculator world, don't blame the rest of us for not buying your slide rules.