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A tale of one city. Not too clever, those Wall Street Journal opinion writers. They neatly ignore relevant facts, as we've seen time and again. Now they're lambasting the city of Chicago because its new pro-living-wage legislation doesn't fit into its antiquated wordview:

Last week the [Chicago] City Council voted 35-14 to impose a hyper-minimum wage on "big-box" retail stores with more than $1 billion of sales. The new law will require the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot to pay every worker -- regardless of experience, education or skill -- a minimum wage of $13 an hour by 2010 ($10 in salary and $3 in health benefits). At least another dozen cities, including Washington, D.C., are considering copy-cat laws.

What's wrong with that? Nothing at all, when you consider that manufacturing growth in Chicago is growing, in contrast to everywhere except China, and also to the fact that Chicago is on its way to become America's greenest city.

No less a global journalistic authority than The Economist recently called Chicago a success story: "a city buzzing with life, humming with prosperity, sparkling with new buildings, new sculptures, new parks, and generally exuding vitality."

"The only issue is how many jobs Chicago will lose," opines the Journal. Chicago will lose some of the shit jobs like Wal-Mart greeter, no doubt, but higher-end jobs will fill the void. That's the point. Chicago's quality of life is rising, so that makes it more in demand and therefore it is a more expensive place to live and work (and staff) than your typical Wal-Mart red state exurban hellhole.

The economic evidence speaks for itself. Old-school business editorialists, take note — you are the dying dinosaurs.

{ 9:45 AM }

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