Apparently Wal-Mart workers are valuable enough to bring in over $400 billion in sales a year and a $15 billion profit. And equating a 14-year old raking leaves for his neighbor with grown adults trying to work to feed their families is beyond dumb.
If WalMart were forced to pay union wages and be subject to union stupidity, there would be fewer WalMart jobs and the welfare payments to employees who also happen to work at WalMart would increase to $4 billion per year or more. WalMart is providing a public service by creating jobs that non- or low-skilled workers can fill and thus relieve some of the burden those workers place on the public dole.
Sure, Wal-Mart is a wonderful example of the good corporate citizen. If Wal-Mart treated their workers fairly then us taxpayers wouldn't have to subsidize the Walton family fortune.
Finally, receiving public assistance is not just a function of individual income. Cost of living and family size are also factored in. A WalMart wage is fine if you live alone in a small trailer or share an apartment with someone else. It can’t support any luxuries or other family members.
So the issue that needs addressing is why people turn the equation on its head and vilify WalMart for providing jobs to people who might not have them otherwise.
You sound like a character straight out of a Dickens story.
Sorry - I couldn’t get past the first few lines of insults. Generally that indicates to everyone that the person making the insults has nothing but empty rhetoric upon which to base his or her case. That is definitely the case here.
Your first paragraph alone suggests that you’re not even willing to give WalMart a profit margin of 3.75%. I’m not going to even bother fact checking your numbers. If you think there’s many employers willing to provide services and jobs at a lower profit margin, you’ve clearly never been in business or it’s a good thing you got out when you did. The rest of the post is equally unworthy of attention.
Except for the Dickens remark. That was cute.
But there are a number of WalMart employees who actually make decent wages and benefits.
My neice is one of them. It wasn't always this way. When she was in her late 20's, she found herself abandoned by a cad of a husband with four young childen to raise. WalMart hired her as a low wage entry level associate. She had to supplement those meager wages with WIC, Food Stamps and whatever else was available. Unlike a lot of WalMart associates under similar circumstances, she didn't whine and quit. She stuck with it and got promoted to management a step at a time. She now has a decent enough wage and benefit package that she's sending the oldest of the four kids to college.
WalMart offered her that opportunity even if government helped subsidize her in the beginning. Many of the associates she worked with 15 years ago who gave up and quit are now worse off than where she was back then: section 8 housing and waiting for their next government check.
That was their choice, not WalMart's.
Personally, I don't shop Wal-Mart much anymore because the savings for an empty nest couple is just too meager to walk the quarter mile or so from the back of the parking lot to an additional quarter mile or so in the megastore to stand in line for an extra 20 minutes or so to save a couple of bucks. But they've given a lot of people their first job in the workforce and turned more than a few (like my neice) from government dependence to independence.