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!