Well….have been thinking about this for a while now…how do we solve the problem of each every Walmart store’s low wages being subsidized to the tune of almost a million dollars a year in Medicaid and food stamps? I know that people say that if the employees don’t want to work there, they should go find better jobs…but that is a just nonsense, many of the employees at Walmart have no other choices for work since Walmart drove the businesses they used to work for into the ground. So, let’s just get past that…and you know that every dime of the Walmart tax, as I call it, is going into the pockets of the Walton family and the upper management of the company; the worst kind of corporate welfare. So my idea is to make companies like Walmart and many in the restaurant industry pay their fair share is to fine them the difference between what they pay their employees and the amount that makes them eligible for benefits….if they want to pay someone 10 dollars an hour and the poverty wage calculates to at least 15…then we fine them 5 dollars for every hour that they force people to work for less…we need to take the incentive away for Walmart to leech off the rest of the country and make them pay the real cost of their labor…after all you and I subsidize each and every store to the tune of almost a million dollars a year…take that away and we take away the power these thugs have to suppress wages across the US…and I’m sure we never agreed to pay this “Walmart tax”…geez…
Tag Archives: Walmart
Walmart the “welfare queen”….
Well…was doing a little reading this morning and came on an interesting article in the WAPO that really opened my eyes to how much of Walmart’s profits are due to them offloading employee costs to you and me in the form of government subsidies to their workers. In the last year alone, driven by the low pay and benefits that Walmart workers get, you and I gave the company almost 2.6 billion dollars of our tax money since many of their workers make so little that they qualify for food stamps, medicaid, and other subsidies for the working poor…and this money that they don’t pay goes straight into the pockets of the owners, making Walmart one of the biggest corporate welfare queens in the US…no wonder they can out compete others in retail. When you break this subsidy down, Walmart gets almost 460,000 dollars in subsides per store, an amount that I’ll bet others will now start to look at and take out of their workers as well and will continue the downward spiral in wages that Walmart started. The big problem here is that not one of the people running companies like Walmart, Papa John’s, and others think there is anything wrong with offloading costs to the general public while railing against the “welfare state” and the dependency that they perceive people have…the only reason that these folks have their companies and their riches is the same workers that they seem to hate so much…and the only reason they have to take advantage of government subsidies is the slave wages that these companies pay…so, I salute the protesters at Walmarts across the country…keep up the good work!
A good sign…
Well…I have been heartened with the small labor uprising that has been focused on the labor abuser Walmart…and the press is starting to take the whole meme of the abuse of workers that makes the owning class filthy rich seriously…I mean, how can Walmart justify constantly squeezing it’s workers when they made 9 billion dollars in profit last year? Even if they gave every one of their workers good health insurance, it would only cost them about a half a billion dollars of that profit….or maybe they could pay a living wage? I think the Occupy movement has done this country a favor by highlighting the income inequality that is getting worse…and, any time you can piss off the ole Rushbag…he went off on his show today that all those of us on the left do is take, take, take…basically saying that it just tough crap that his class has control of everything and winning the election should be enough for us and to quit complaining…I am still laughing at that one….so, keep it up protesters…maybe this time we can start to change the attitudes of Americans and make them understand that rebuilding the middle class will help everyone…even the rich, since if there is more money to spend in the middle class, the owner class will make more money…really easy to understand…
Walmat’s brand of capitalism…
Well…just a short one to talk about the recent revelations that Walmart and it’s managers in Mexico spent 24 million dollars in bribes to allow them to build more stores there…in direct violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices act that prohibits payments of any sort to foreign governments or their agents to gain an economic advantage. But, that’s not even the worst part….while this was going on, Walmart was part of a lobbying group that was working on diluting the law so they wouldn’t be liable for their actions in Mexico. Do you need any other reason to stop shopping at Walmart? Other than the predatory practices that kill local businesses wherever they locate their stores and the fact that they regularly abuse their employees by making them work off clock and not paying overtime pay…and have been found to have insidious policies that discriminate against women and minorities? I have been really trying to work up outrage about this stuff today but I think I’m moving into overload since this kind of crap seems to be what capitalism here in the US has degenerated into…a winner take all battle where there is no sharing of the pie anymore…and that is going to ruin this country…geez…
The one reason that people should be for unions…
Well…I know I said that I wasn’t going to do a political one today but this little thing popped into my head and I had to comment on it…to all of you out there that are in the working class and you are against unions, there is only one reason that you need to be for unions….they force companies to share the bounty of profits with everyone, with the hard workers that make the profits possible, not just the executive officers of the company. One of the reasons for the increasing disparity of income in this country is the decline of union membership over the past thirty years; form 25% down to the paltry 7% we have now.And, one of the worst offenders here in the US is Walmart who viciously opposes unionization of it’s North American workforce but allows it in every other country…well, not allows it but many other countries force them to allow their workers to unionize…or they are not allowed to be in those countries…not a bad idea for here, either…so, you tea partiers that have it in for unions and their members, it is you that is helping these thieves steal what is rightfully yours…..how does that feel you idiots?…..geez….