Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, and Stephen J.K. Walters, a professor of economics at Loyola College, have an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled Hard Line State: Big Labor’s war on Wal-Mart claims casualties among poor Marylanders. You can read it here.

The following passage really caught my attention:

“Some estimate that as much as a third of the state’s economic activity stems from federal employment and purchases. Over 150,000 Marylanders—six times the population of tiny Somerset—are on the federal (nonmilitary) payroll; they are concentrated in central Maryland, near the nation’s capital. Nearly 268,000 more Marylanders draw checks from state and local government.

“With so many workers in a sector where revenues appear to arrive automatically and inefficiency never leads to bankruptcy, our state’s resulting political culture is quite predictable. Many Marylanders are simply unmindful of the necessities of survival in the private sector: pleasing customers, controlling costs and satisfying shareholders. Thanks to the federal tax dollars collected from the rest of the country and spent in Maryland, the prevailing view of economic reality is inverted: The public sector is seen as the engine of prosperity, with the private one along for the ride.

“Reflecting this culture, our legislators often behave as if business is a problem to be solved. On Jan. 17, they also overrode a gubernatorial veto of a $1-an-hour increase in the state’s minimum wage. Like the health-care mandate, the hike is a job killer—though not in affluent areas of the state, where strong labor demand long ago pushed the going wage above the minimum. In those areas, the law is largely symbolic and enables well-meaning voters and legislators to conclude that they are “doing something for working families.” Safely out of their view, however, at Maryland’s impoverished margins, already weak labor demand will be further diminished.”