Posted on 12/29/2014 4:17:19 AM PST by HomerBohn
Should the federal government be spending billions of dollars to pump up Wal-Mart’s profits?
I know that question sounds really bizarre, but unfortunately this is essentially what is happening. Because Wal-Mart does not pay them enough money, hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees enroll in Medicaid, food stamps and other social welfare programs.
Even though Wal-Mart makes enormous profits, they refuse to properly take care of their employees so the federal government has to do it. And of course this is not just a Wal-Mart problem. There are hundreds of other major corporations doing exactly the same thing. And they will keep on doing it as long as they can because relying on the federal government to take care of their employees allows them to make much larger profits.
This gives these companies an enormous competitive advantage and it distorts the marketplace. If you love the free enterprise system, you should be aghast at this. Our big corporations have become the biggest “welfare queens” of all, and Wal-Mart is near the top of that list.
Does your local Wal-Mart store seem like it needs help from the federal government?
Of course not.
Wal-Marts all over the nation were absolutely packed this holiday season, but according to a recent Bloomberg article, the average amount of welfare that Wal-Mart employees receive from the government each year breaks down to about $420,000 per store…
Wal-Mart’s low wages have led to full-time employees seeking public assistance. These are not the 47 percent, lazy, unmotivated bums. Rather, these are people working physical, often difficult jobs. They receive $2.66 billion in government help each year (including $1 billion in healthcare assistance). That works out to about $5,815 per worker. And about $420,000 per store.
Does that make you angry?
It should.
Today, Wal-Mart employs approximately 1.2 million people in the United States, and it makes a yearly profit of about 17 billion dollars.
So why does it need 2.6 billion dollars of help from the U.S. government?
Wal-Mart is a colossal money-making behemoth. Just consider the following numbers…
The size of Wal-Mart is sometimes difficult to visualize. To put it into some context, consider the following: 100 million U.S. shoppers patronize Wal-Mart stores every week. Wal-Mart has twice the number employees of the U.S. Postal Service, a larger global computer network than the Pentagon, and the world’s largest fleet of trucks. Americans spend about $36 million dollars per hour at the stores. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other company in the world, capturing one of every four dollars spent on food in the U.S. The average American family of four spends over $4,000 a year there. Each week, it has 200 million customers at more than 10,400 stores in 27 countries. If the company were an independent country, it would be the 25th largest economy in the world.
Wal-Mart does well enough to be able to pay their workers a livable wage.
And yet they refuse to do it.
Shame on them.
Meanwhile, the six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the poorest one-third of all Americans combined.
This reminds me of something that I read in the fifth chapter of James the other day…
Come now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasures for the last days. Indeed the wages that you kept back by fraud from the laborers who harvested your fields are crying, and the cries of those who harvested have entered into the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have lived in pleasure on the earth and have been wayward. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
But we continue to reward this behavior, don’t we?
100 million of us continue to visit Wal-Mart every single week, and we continue to fill up our shopping carts with cheap products that are made outside this country.
We refuse to support American workers and American businesses, and this is a recipe for utter disaster. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “National Economic Suicide: The U.S. Trade Deficit With China Just Hit A New Record High“.
The truth is that we cannot consume our way to prosperity. When we consume far more wealth than we produce, we pile up debt and we become poorer as a nation.
And as a country we have become exceedingly cold-hearted toward our workers. If you truly love free markets and capitalism, you should be encouraging big companies to pay their workers properly. Instead, we are moving closer and closer to the slave labor model employed by China and other communist nations with each passing day. Sadly, I am becoming increasingly convinced that many prominent “pro-business” voices in America today are actually closet communists. They seem to want everything to be made in China and for American workers to be paid just like Chinese workers.
At this point, the U.S. middle class is well on the way to being destroyed. As I have written about previously, 40 percent of all American workers now make less than what a minimum wage worker made back in 1968 after you account for inflation.
How is the middle class supposed to survive in such an environment?
And for any “pro-business” people that want to defend Wal-Mart, do you actually like paying suffocating taxes to support all of the people that are being forced on to the safety net?
What is our society going to look like as millions more Americans become dependent on the federal government each year? Government dependence is already at an all-time record high. How much worse do things have to get before we admit that we have a real problem?
Unfortunately, it looks like our problems are only going to accelerate in 2015. Thanks to the stunning decline in the price of oil, we are starting to lose good paying jobs in the energy industry…
One company caught in the industry downturn is Hercules Offshore Inc. The Houston-based firm is laying off 324 employees, roughly 15% of its workforce, because oil companies aren’t renewing contracts for its offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico while crude prices are depressed.
“It’s been breathtaking,” said Jim Noe, executive vice president of Hercules, which was founded in 2004. “We’ve never seen this glut of supply and dislocation in oil markets. So we’re not surprised to see a significant decline in demand for our services.”
These are jobs that we cannot afford to lose.
Since the end of the last recession, the energy industry has been the leading creator of good paying jobs in America.
But now as the U.S. energy boom goes bust, it might lead the way in job losses.
In order to have a middle class, we have got to have middle class jobs.
Unfortunately, those kinds of jobs are disappearing and the entire U.S. economy is moving toward the Wal-Mart model.
In the end, we will all pay a great price for such foolishness.
Seriously, why do I feel inclined to find the writer of this piece and beat the piss out of him?
I guess I am just intolerant of Communists. Oh well.
You nailed it. The problem isn’t WalMart as much as it is the Santa Claus government.
I would gladly pay more for a product or service here in this country if it meant that no illegal alien was employed in doing so. As far as I am concerned allowing these criminals to infest our society carries and inestimable consequence that will devastate this country. Allowed to continue, the America that was will no longer be. Just another third world sh!thole, IMO.
The reason the left hates WalMart so much is because WalMart serves the poor better than government does. The consumer is always the “forgotten man” in the attacks on WalMart. The problem with their argument is simple, raise wages raise prices, and this harms the consumer, in this case the poorest of consumers.
The writer so misunderstands the responsibilities of governments and business.
First Government does not have the responsibility to see that I make enough money to eat, only that the the country will be protected from those that would make it impossible for me to find a way to support myself.
Second, a business has no responsibilities to its employees except to pay what it agrees to pay them for a given amount of work. If the employee does not want to work for the amount then the employee has no responsibility to continue working there. When a company does not pay enough to attract good workers they either pay more or go out of business, or at least should.
We need to get the government out of our lives. The government should not be worrying about our salaries, our food stamps, our rent payments, our mortgage insurance or so many other items.
This author doesn’t direct his criticism at the root of the problem - socialism. He promotes class warfare. This is situation is the product of social engineers. These companies are not doing anything illegal, they are responding as any for-profit corporation should and now they are villianized.
Because Wal-Mart does not pay them enough money, hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees enroll in Medicaid, food stamps and other social welfare programs.
Oh, sounds like the author is concerned about spending on these social programs. Maybe we shouldn’t have these artificial influences in the marketplace in the first place.
I think Target actually pays lower wages than Wal-Mart.
A few years ago, there was an anti Wal-Mart rally. The group met at a Borders bookstore. The clerks at the Borders store made about $1.00 to $1.50 less than the workers at Wal-Mart.
How does someone making $35,000/yr qualify for handouts anyway?
Including promotions within Wal-Mart
Does the government SNAP program recipient get more value for program dollars spent at Target or Walmart?
Another matter - it isn’t Walmart’s fault if someone chooses part time work while the kids are in school or to retain Social Security benefits or quits in August for fear of losing EITC.
Walmart has many adults who would be above poverty level, too, if only moved from part time to full time, but Obamacare mandates actually hurt in that regard. People who worked 39 hours now work 29 and now get neither health insurance nor enough work from one company to pay the rent.
I don’t shop at Wally World because I think the whole operation is sleazy. But if they paid enough where every employee (full time) was off public assistance and they advertized that fact I would MORE inclined to shop there.
Perhaps Michael Snyder should take a basic economics class and learn the meaning of the term:ROI (return on investment)
I think reading this article made my IQ go down a point.
My 16 year old nephew makes 8.70 an hour. I was actually surprised as I thought he would only get minimum wage. He started 2 months ago. He is doing about 20 hours a week during holidays, but 15 hours during school time. Walmart does pay higher then minimum wage. I just hate all the Walmart Hate.
No, just make it harder to stay on. We do need a system to temporarily assist people.
I just hate all the Walmart Hate.
Silence was the most common response as they spent very little time thinking about what they wanted.
Managing for what you don’t want leaves you wondering around in the wilderness, managing for what you want, gives you a destination.
Maybe that is the difference between hate and love?
You are exactly right. Why would WalMart pay $11 to $15 dollars an hour for a worker when they can hire a Criminal Alien for $7.25?
Who makes 35,000 at Walmart? No one.
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