The abandoned Caldor in Flushing, Queens, might have been Wal-Mart’s store #4206, if the city’s leaders weren’t bound and determined to scare the chain away from the five boroughs despite all the evidence that its presence would be a boon for New York. As a high-cost city that’s still home to its fair share of lower-income residents, New York City needs Wal-Mart. According to a visiting scholar at New York University and a former Kerry campaign economic advisor, Jason Furman, Wal-Mart saved American consumers a total of $263 billion in 2004, $2,329 for each household. The effect is more pronounced the lower someone’s income, especially if the local Wal-Mart sells groceries, and can add up to 6.5% of income for earners in the bottom income quintile.

The retailer may drive down wages – there’s still debate on this – but even if it does, the “cost” to workers is significantly less than the benefits; Mr. Furman cites one University of California, Berkeley, study finding that the retailer reduced wages by a total of $4.7 billion in 2000. Mr. Furman’s paper, entitled “Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story,” would be useful for members of the City Council. His analysis of Wal-Mart’s benefits program, which became the target of council legislation last year, points out that Wal-Mart is one of the few retailers that offer health insurance to part-time employees in addition to fulltime staff. Only 60% of all employers offer insurance to full-time workers.

Wal-Mart’s critics are correct that some workers end up on Medicaid, but that fact is deceptive. The percentages of Wal-Mart employees and their children who are on Medicaid are slightly higher than the national averages, but are slightly lower compared to other retail workers. Mr. Furman’s analysis also suggests that Wal-Mart doesn’t foist poorly paid employees onto the taxpayer-funded health program so much as individual employees have the choice of company insurance or Medicaid and choose the latter.

If given the option of choosing $3,000 in additional pay or $3,000 worth of health insurance, the lowest-paid employees will take the money. They won’t pay income tax on it anyway so they don’t benefit from the fact that health benefits are untaxed compensation. Meantime, you can’t buy food with a PPO, while enrolling in the plan could end up costing the employee his or her Medicaid coverage.

Rather than giving even lip service to any of this, the City Council instead has persisted in its irrational and embarrassing anti-Wal-Mart campaign. In response to this week’s rumor, a Democratic Council Member from Flushing, John Liu, denounced the retailer, saying, “Wal-Mart is not welcome in Flushing.” “There is no need that would be satisfied by Wal-Mart coming into downtown Flushing,” he told our David Lombino. We have no doubt that lot of low-income immigrants looking for work in Mr.Liu’s district would disagree, as would many of modest incomes looking for inexpensive places to shop.

Tuesday also witnessed the spectacle of the speaker, Christine Quinn, holding court with corporate representatives before Ms. Quinn’s spokeswoman declared that it would be “absolutely unacceptable” for Wal-Mart to move into the city without seeking council approval first, even if the retailer found a properly zoned site and was legally exempt from obtaining planning permission. When members of the council take that kind of high-handed attitude, the damage to the city is deep and long-lasting.