As a former employee of public relations agency Fleishman-Hillard, I am not unfamiliar with union-backed corporate campaigns ... especially those against Wal-Mart.

And because I love a bargain, I was a regular Wal-Mart shopper ... until recently.

So why did I change my shopping habits?

Was it Frontline's report "Is Wal-Mart Good for America?"

Was it the recently released but intellectually-dishonest movie WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price?

Was it the continously sticky and trash-strewn lower parking lot at Wal-Mart's store at 300 West and 1300 South in Salt Lake City?

No, it was the minimum wage. More precisely, it was Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr.'s recent call for an increase in the federal minimum wage. (PDF file)

Lew Rockwell does an excellent job explaining why the Wal-Mart CEO's support of increasing the minimum wage is another example of how Wal-Mart is following in the steps of Big Businesses that have worked to impose higher costs on smaller competitors by using political tools.

So does Tim Kane.

Reasonable libertarians can disagree about whether the statement by Wal-Mart's CEO warrants a boycott.

After all, Mr. Scott is not the only corporate head calling for an increase in the minimum wage. Nor is Wal-Mart alone in availing itself of other forms of corporate welfare, such as eminent domain and Medicaid.

However, Wal-Mart has been the beneficiary of a significant amount of support from principled free-marketers who defended the company's right to import goods from overseas, and open stores in places where special interests attempted to use government coercion to keep Wal-Mart out.

The Wal-Mart CEO's call for increasing the minimum wage is a betrayal of that support, as well as free market principles. So I'm doing my small part to make sure that Wal-Mart pays a price for that betrayal.

At $5.15 per hour, the minimum wage is so low it's almost as if it doesn't exist. And because the average American wage is well above the federal minimum wage (PDF file), one almost has to try to work at the minimum wage, although a small percentage of Americans manage to do that.

Yet despite the presence of low wages, increases in productivity and consumption show that the standard of living for Americans continues to improve.

So, Mr. Scott, good luck in your effort to appease the collectivists (whose theories always lead to corporate statism in practice).

If you change your mind about the minimum wage, let the world know and I'll shop at Wal-Mart again.

Who knows? Maybe you'll have cleaned up the parking lot by then.

Yours in liberty,

Rob Latham, Chair

Libertarian Party of Utah