The Wal-Mart Law

From Arnold Kling on TCS Daily, on Maryland's new law dictating the amount of money spent by large employers (read: Wal-Mart) on healthcare coverage. He wrote this as the start of a series of essays written for liberals by a libertarian/conservative:

The law requires Wal-Mart to spend 8 percent of its payroll on health care, whether or not this is enough to keep its workers from needing to rely on Medicaid. If Wal-Mart came up with a way to provide outstanding health care to its workers for 6 percent of its payroll, it would be in violation of the law unless it found a way to waste the other 2 percent on unnecessary health care. Conversely, if Wal-Mart offers a really lousy health plan, it would be in compliance with the law as long as it spent 8 percent.

If the Wal-Mart law is for the benefit of Wal-Mart workers, then why is it that they are not the ones rejoicing over its passage? Why does the law specify a spending percentage, which would seem to be of greater interest to Wal-Mart's competitors? Why did the pressure for the law come from people who do not work at Wal-Mart?

Liberals see the market as an arena in which evil corporations inflict their greed on innocent victims. I wish you would see that motives matter less than consequences. I wish you could see that greed is at work when laws are passed that regulate markets, because regulations always produce winners and losers. I wish you could see that those winners and losers are often not who you think they are. I wish you could see that competitive behavior and free choice are forces that operate in the market as a check against greed. Finally, I wish you could see that greed is most difficult to restrain when it is exercised through the medium of government.

I wonder if those who rejoiced in the passage of Maryland's law -- and who, I'm relatively certain, gave little or no thought to Kling's questions in that piece -- would be equally in favor of proposals around the country to dedicate at least 65 percent of school funds to the classroom? I haven't done a serious amount of research into the latter proposal, but it seems that the main argument by opponents is summed up in this story in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times:

Some critics say they see a high-stakes gimmick -- an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all formula that could force districts to cut everything from librarians and guidance counselors to janitors and bus drivers.

A high-stakes gimmick. An arbitrary, one-size-fits-all formula that could force cuts. Hmmm. Why is it OK to impose such a gimmick on the company liberals love to hate (Wal-Mart), but it's not an appropriate remedy for the funding problems that plague the liberals' sacred cow (public education)?