California's war on Wal-Mart

February 10, 2011 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

Author: Timothy Sandefur

In The Right to Earn A Living, I write about how governments often use regulations and zoning laws to bar Wal-Marts from neighborhoods, at the behest of labor unions that know they can't compete with non-union Wal-Mart. This kind of protectionist zoning kills job creation, raises the cost of living for America's least wealthy citizens, and most offensively, perverts a legal system that's supposed to be about protecting the general public, into a system where politically influential union bosses can use the government to make it illegal to compete with them. AFP California has a new video about a proposal now before the state legislature that would help unions in their campaign against low prices and consumer choice: