Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce writes on state and local issues across the country. His work appears in The Washington Post, National Journal, and other publications, including The Charlotte Observer.
He is also, if I may say so, an annoying and self-important twit who’s been selling planning-mentality nostrums and Smart Growth silliness about transportation and land use for many years. But Pierce does occasionally stumble onto something significant, as he did in this column about a new study quantifying the massive subsidies being forked over to Wal-Mart across the country by gullible or corrupt local officials.
(You can see what I mean by the “twit” reference, by the way, in Pierce’s description of a largely obscure but labor union-backed group, Good Jobs First, as “the nation’s leading critic of government subsidies to private businesses” — an entirely false, even laughable, statement.)
The study estimated $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Wal-Mart, which sometimes attracts defense in this space for providing good quality at lower prices and standing up to anti-growth, protectionist interest groups. The piece is, I say this through gritted teeth, will worth a read, despite Pierce’s gratuitous swipes at basic market economics, particularly because one can see Wal-Mart’s bad attempts at spin.
