From Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek, reprinting his letter to The Washington Post,
Rep. Frank and Mr. Dionne ought to study recent research by the University of Chicago's Christian Broda and John Romalis. These scholars find that official measures of income distribution - which do show increasing inequality in recent years - greatly overstate inequality because they fail to account for the differential impacts of trade and big-box retailing on the purchasing power of the poor relative to that of the rich.
Data from 1994 through 2005 show that trade with China along with the retailing efficiencies of Wal-Mart have lowered the prices of the goods that poor people buy much more than they've lowered the prices of the goods that rich people buy.
Evil Wal-Mart! Evil globalization! There should be a law...!