That insane bargaining power is both strength and weakness. When most people start salivating about the possibilites of single payer, they forget about the things that won't happen as a result of squelching the market, as bad as it is already. They're taking the single biggest problem in the market -- monopoly behavior -- and basing the entire market on that.

Why do you think that Germany, once the "medicine chest" of Europe, is losing its pharmaceutical industry? How many new classes of drugs come from all of Europe vs. the U.S.? Very few. It's the bargaining power that will cause pharmaceutical companies, and others, to cut substantially on their investments.

There would be some initial savings -- OK, a lot of initial savings -- but the market for healthcare would suffer over the long run. It's more than just improving the allocation of the present resources that we need to focus on.

Anderson,

I doubt many would want to get rid of the EITC. I wouldn't. It's a far more efficient mechanism for helping the poor than the minimum wage, without the distortions that come with the minimum wage.

What weâ??re finding out courtesy of the big auto companies is that having employers provide retirement and health benefits is likely not sustainable, especially as we live longer and health costs continue to skyrocket.

And why should it be sustainable if the government provides it?

Wal-Mart pays better than the school district I work for, and my job requires at least two years of college.

It also has better benefits. The family plan for the district I work for is $560 per pay period.

I could probably get all up in arms over these arguments, but the reality is that Wal-Mart isn't the bottom of the barrel, and often the bottom is city and municipal governments.

The problem, as some commenters have pointed to, is the future of such stores in the city. I wrote about it here.

If it's good enough for Walmart, why isn;t $13/hour mandated for restaurant workers (non servers b/c of the tip issue). Or janitors? Or better yet: city employees.

There were lots of people who opposed the entry of Home Depot into San Francisco, but those people were 1) morons, and 2) in the employ of the local hardware store monopoly. Most of the time you hear about "local retailers" complaining, it means they are going to get squeezed out of the market, they will have to lay off their brother and their one other employee, and the other million people who live in the city are going to get more jobs and cheaper goods.

Still, I don't see why Chicago should be prohibited from setting local minimum wages.

The furor died down when someone explained that there was no restriction on opening a grocery store, state oversight was minimal and that if they have found an economic opportunity via an unserviced need, go for it. Some on the left saw the opportunity to do themselves some economic good by doing good.

Needless to say that the economic realities eventually set in and found that higher costs associated with working in a poorer neighbor hood (such as crime) didn't make this such a wonderful opportunity.

As James points out, the impact of this is likely to be for the urban poor to be poorer as they are denied access to jobs and to lower cost consumer goods.

To all the liberals. If you think there is an opportunity to provide 'living wage' jobs and serve the urban masses by paying 2x the minimum wage to employees, go for it. If you succeed, you will be hailed. Of course, you might get seduced away from being a liberal.

At the time I started my business, the Left had taught me that business and capitalism were based on exploitation: exploitation of consumers, workers, society, and the environment. I believed that "profit" was a necessary evil at best, and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole. However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong.

In other words, business is not a zero-sum game with a winner and loser. It is a win, win, win, win game â?? and I really like that. However, I discovered despite my idealism that our customers thought our prices were too high, our employees thought they were underpaid, the vendors would not give us large discounts, the community was forever clamoring for donations, and the government was slapping us with endless fees, licenses, fines, and taxes.

Look at the negotiating power Wal-Mart has: they could come up with some relatively kick-ass health insurance for their lowliest employees, if they wanted to.

(Of course, we're also picking up the tab for the low salaries via the EITC, but I suspect a majority of OTBers would favor abolishing the EITC, so that's not much of an argument.)