From where I live in Virginia it takes me 15 minutes to get to WalMart, which is in Maryland.....it is less than an hour drive to the Maryland/Delaware line from there.
But it will certainly rile voters on the Eastern Shore in Maryland who realized that their part of the state, which really needs the economic development, got screwed out of hundreds of jobs because the damned Dem politicians enthralled to the Big Labor bosses, decided to tweak Wal-Mart's nose.
And there are few of those Dems or big labor for that matter, on the Shore. In fact Somersett County, where the DC was supposed to be located, has one of the highest, unemployment rates in Maryland.
...you're right, it really isn't about government vs. business, but rather government vs. consumer, since in either case, consumers lose.
I'm in full agreement with you both on that point.
Not to beat this thing to death, but everything the government does is like this. Increasing the minimum wage is probably not as significant as requiring health insurance. Places like Chicago or Maryland can get away with doing it, so long as the costs can be passed on, which usually means either that on balance, competing jurisdictions are no more business friendly than they are, or that the affected industries don't really have meaningful competition in neighboring jurisdictions in any event, possibly because of the convenience factor.
That's just one more reason why a federalist system works better than a unified government. If they could impose their policies on the entire nation, then there would be no competition to bring them back to earth. On the other hand, if every jurisdiction agrees that the benefits of a policy outweigh its costs, then there is no problem with businesses fleeing the jurisdiction to avoid the policy because all jurisdictions will have the same policy.