Whole Paycheck

Well, I suppose I must say something in defense of Whole Foods. The usual liberal subjects are outraged--OUTRAGED!--that CEO John Mackey wrote a boilerplate defense of so-called market reforms for the WSJ, and are threatening a boycott. Shall we simply note that John Mackey has, thus far at least, delivered health insurance and a living wage to more people than Barack Obama and a 60-seat Democratic Senate majority? In fact, as a national solution, HSAs and high-deductible plans make no sense at all, since they fuck the distribution of resources by removing everyone young and healthy from the risk pool. But it is every private American's right to hold crackpot opinions and to write about them in the Journal.

I will say this, though. Pittsburgh's thriving young artist scene and its thriving young cycling community gain living wages and health care by working for Whole Foods. Whole Foods, like any major grocery chain, depends on a far-flung network of global suppliers, but it also does more than any other grocery store, including locally owned stores and chains, to support regional agriculture. Pittsburgh has a large community of Somali refugees and a large contingent of Sudanese "Lost Boys," whom Whole Foods likewise employs. Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood has seen something of a renaissance since Whole Foods came to that formerly blighted community, and although some of that has been unwanted gentrification, much of it has benefited the extant businesses and residents of that community. Indeed, second only to the pierced-and-tattooed set, our Whole Foods most prominently employs young blacks from nearby neighborhoods. At a living wage. With health insurance.

Whole Foods likewise employs many older people--an aunt of mine, for instance, long-since laid off by US Airways--who would otherwise subsist only on a fixed income. Dignity, respect, a living wage, and health insurance. These are not niceties, nor mere slogans of a half-assed political non-movement that prefers to believe a lousy piece of Shepherd Fairey graphic propaganda than the evidence of its own eyes.

Of course, you cannot save a nation by having everyone work at an expensive grocery chain, but here you have what is quite simply one of the most admirable large companies in America, and liberals are pissed because the bossman wrote a glorified letter to the editor with which they disagree? Dear Progressivism, kindly fuck yourselves to death! Your one saving grace is your total, utter, and absolute fecklessness, which doomed your bullshit boycott before it began.