‘Poor Wal-Mart just can't seem to catch a break. There they are, the monks of Bentonville - who, according to company legend, share hotel rooms on business trips rather than drive up the price of pantyhose - toiling away to make the good life affordable to the impecunious masses. And what do they get? Nothing but grief. The Democrats are running against Wal-Mart in the fall congressional elections, and not just the wild-eyed progressive ones. Centrist Hillary Clinton returned a $5,000 donation from the company, citing its inadequate health benefits, and Joe Biden just attacked it because he doesn't see "any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people." ……………

…………. Now of course Wal-Mart associates are not a special breed of celibates who have taken a vow of poverty. They are the spouses and live-in grown children of carpenters, home health aides, baggage-handlers and truck drivers. When Wal-Mart workers can't afford health insurance or new school clothes, the whole working class begins to flail.

Furthermore, the Wal-Mart business model increasingly betrays what was once the operating principle of American capitalism, as explained by Henry Ford the First: You've got to pay your workers enough so that they can buy your product; that's what keeps the system going. When the American majority can't buy the very goods they manufacture or sell, that system is cruising for a bruising.’

Wal-Mart Licks Its Wounds