The Chicago Area Jobs Map

Members of the Chicago City Council, take a look at the map above. What do you see? You see 44 dots. Every dot is a Wal-Mart in the Chicago area. Every dot is a place where people go to work and draw a paycheck. Every dot produces sales tax revenue. Every dot caters to people who want to buy shoes and socks and TVs and tires and whatever else draws them to Wal-Mart. If we widened this map to take in all of Illinois, there would be 148 dots. If we widened it again to take in all of the U.S., there would be 3,514 dots.

So, aldermen. How's that campaign going to protect Chicagoans from the scourge of working for Wal-Mart?

Construction of the store would create 200 jobs. The store, once it was running, would provide nearly 500 jobs. But the City Council wants none of that, so all the Chicagoans who like to shop at Wal-Mart and all the Chicagoans who would like to work at Wal-Mart have to go to one of those dots on the map. They're all in the suburbs, save the one Wal-Mart that has been allowed to open in Chicago.

Organized labor doesn't like Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart doesn't have union jobs. It just has jobs (with an average hourly wage of $12.05 in Chicago). The aldermen, of course, already have jobs. They get paid $110,556 a year and they figure that as long as they keep the labor unions off their backs, they'll keep making $110,556 a year.

Who says the City Council doesn't generate jobs? If you're one of the 50 aldermen, your unemployment rate is 0 percent. But the unemployment rate for the rest of Chicago is above 10 percent. One in 10 Chicagoans is out of work. Many of the aldermen think that if you're a constituent and you're unemployed you can just go look somewhere else. You want to get a paycheck from Wal-Mart? Go take a hike to one of those dots on the map. Go take a hike to those clueless suburbs.

~Excerpts from today's Chicago Tribune staff editorial