I’ve always laughed every time Wal-Mart rolls out its newest pitch to fill its coffers — and make the Waltons even wealthier than they already are — by invoking patriotism. Waving the flag and crying “Buy American” has very little to do with helping working Americans. Because it’s still based on low wages for everyone.

Here is the latest iteration of Wal-Mart’s bullshit, via The Wall Street Journal:

For the past nine months, however, Wal-Mart has been trumpeting patriotic promises to stock more U.S.-made goods. Manufacturing means “good middle-class jobs, and that’s exactly what our country needs,” said Bill Simon , chief executive of Wal-Mart’s U.S. arm, in a revival-style speech at a recent supplier meeting in Orlando, where a children’s choir sang the national anthem.

So far, Wal-Mart has announced plans to offer U.S.-made socks, towels, candles and light bulbs, among other things, creating more than 1,200 jobs. On Monday, it will announce that Redman & Associates LLC will open a plant in Rogers, Ark., next year to make battery-powered toy cars. The cars, large enough for children to drive, currently are imported from China. Another Arkansas-based company, Hanna’s Candle Co., says it has doubled its workforce to about 200 people, including temporary workers, in the past year because of an increase in sales to Wal-Mart. [emphasis added]

And what is “middle class”?

The retailer is talking to existing suppliers about where they make products and looking for new U.S.-based suppliers at trade shows. That is how Wal-Mart met Amy Bradley . Ms. Bradley and her husband, Tyler, run a tiny company from their home in Wyndmoor, Pa., that produces a plastic scoop she invented, the Toydozer, to pick up Legos and other toys with tiny pieces that scatter across floors.

The Bradleys assumed it would be too expensive to make in the U.S. and initially had it made in Mexico. But, unhappy with the quality, they checked with local plastic injection-molding companies. To their surprise, the highly automated work could be done more cheaply in the U.S. than at their Mexican contractor, so they switched production to Pendell, Pa. [emphasis added]

Does anyone think that, when it’s cheaper to manufacture in the U.S. than in Mexico, that that is a road to the “middle class” as normal people might define it?