There was plenty of talk about jobs, poverty and wages at last week's City Council hearing on making large Baltimore retailers pay workers a minimum of $10.59 an hour. But hardly anybody mentioned tax revenue.

This was very strange. Less than a month ago, a very large shortage of tax revenue caused the same council members to adopt one of the most painful budgets in years. One would think they would have remembered.

Along with manufacturers and wholesalers, big retailers are the most important tax-paying companies in a city that, let's face it, doesn't have enough of them. Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke's "living wage" proposal gives them another reason to do business — and pay property taxes — outside of Baltimore.

Supporters see the retail wage proposal as the descendant of Baltimore's living-wage requirement for city contractors, promoted by Clarke in the 1990s and the inspiration for more than a hundred similar measures across the country.

But there's a big difference. City contractors can't take their business elsewhere if they don't want to pay the higher wage. Retailers can. So can shoppers.

No one can say for sure that Safeway, Best Buy and Walmart would be deterred by a living wage, which died in committee last week but has a good chance of revival. Numerous retailers would probably stay in the city and simply pass on the increased cost to shoppers.

After San Francisco and Santa Fe, N.M., raised the minimum wage for all workers in 2003, there was little overall change among big retailers in those towns, a study from the University of California at Berkeley says.

But that study didn't — and couldn't — show how many stores would have moved to those cities without the wage increase. It flunks basic science by making no attempt to check whether similar cities without the higher wage were seeing retail growth.

Anyway, Baltimore is not San Francisco or Santa Fe. Baltimore's crime is worse. Its pockets of poverty are deeper. It's a more difficult place to run a store. And as nice as it sounds to legislate a substantial pay increase for retail workers, the measure runs a substantial risk of hurting economic development in the city.

Baltimore is already really expensive for retailers, a factor that has impeded growth for years. Now, on top of the higher costs that city stores pay for theft, security, higher taxes and employee turnover, the City Council is talking about adding another burden.

Grocers and discounters such as Walmart, which is bringing a store to Baltimore's Remington section, operate on very thin profit margins. Even if the living wage doesn't cause them to shut down existing Baltimore stores, it could stop them from opening new ones.

When Chicago considered a higher minimum wage for major retailers four years ago, Walmart threatened to concentrate on developing suburban stores and luring shoppers from the city. Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed the measure.

The chain, which says it pays an average of $11.46 an hour to Maryland hourly workers, hasn't exactly warmed to Baltimore's proposal, either.

"It's unfair to impose the mandate on some businesses and not others," said Walmart spokesman Steve Restivo. "This proposal in Baltimore would only further slow growth and development in the city."

But if Baltimore passes a living wage bill, don't be surprised if Walmart pulls out of the Remington project, if only as a warning to other cities that might be tempted to try similar measures.

Is that heartless and culpable when what's at stake is only a couple of dollars per hour for some employees? Maybe. But motives mean little in love, war, business and politics.

Opportunities and consequences are what matter. The writ of Mary Pat Clarke and City Council extends only to the Baltimore border. It's hard to save the world with a $10.59 wage when somebody is paying $7.25 a couple of miles away.

There are about 16,000 retail jobs in Baltimore, Clarke pointed out. But many already pay more than the proposed wage. Many others would be exempt because the stores are too small. The raise would probably make a difference for a few thousand people at most.

What Clarke neglected to note is that, a decade ago, Baltimore had 26,000 retail jobs. Now she wants to throw another disincentive on this rapidly disappearing sector.

Enforcing the wage, meanwhile, would cost the city an extra $160,000 a year for extra inspectors, Sheldon Shugarman, director of the city Wage Commission, told council members.

Coincidentally, that's about what the Highlandtown shopping center anchored by Santoni's Super Market pays in annual property tax. Santoni's itself pays $77,000 of that, said owner Rob Santoni, a leading opponent of the living-wage measure.

This money, and millions in similar taxes paid by other retailers, helps keep a struggling city afloat. This is the money that prevented Baltimore's budget crisis from being even worse than it was. This the money that the living-wage bill threatens — a risk far greater than any of the potential benefits.