U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize Wal*Mart's Profits and Bad Corporate Citizenship

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Barron's (subscription required) via The Unknown Ideal:

How U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize Wal*Mart's High Profits and Bad Corporate Citizenship

Barron's reader Al Connelly lays it out in the September 18 issue's Mailbag:

We should let Wal-Mart be Wal-Mart when Wal-Mart gets its hands out of our pockets. I want Wal-Mart to be in a free market, not get a free ride. We taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart by providing benefits to their employees: We provide Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8 housing assistance, tax credits, and free and reduced-price school lunches. An August 2004 study by the University of Califromia Labor Center estimated that Wal-Mart cost taxpayers $86 million per year and that was just in California.

Federal and state subsidies are helping keep the employees happy enough to not feel the urgency to unionize, and thus unions are kept out of Wal-Mart. So, indirectly, we are subsidizing the Wal-Mart stance against unions. The low wages keep Wal-Mart prices low, driving independent business owners out of business. So we are also paying for destruction of our grassroots business culture.

Wal-Mart prices attract customers to Wal-Mart's foreign-made goods; goods sometimes made in virtually slave-labor conditions. So, our tax dollars are encouraging slave labor and the export of jobs from America.

I will be happy to leave Wal-Mart alone when it pays its workers enough to keep them from taking my tax dollars. At that point, we'll be square. Yes, prices will then be higher at Wal-Mart. That's the free market.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Have No Fear! The Brave Congressional Democrats Are Here!

They'll use every tool at their disposal to ensure that Wal-Mart and the rest of the Predator Class pays their fair share, and treats the average Joe fairly.

As a former Director of Wal-Mart for six years, when they were pioneering their "Always the lowest wages. Always." revolution in retail, Hillary Clinton is leading the charge.

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2. Here's a fairly interesting article about

Hillary's tenure on the Wal*Mart Board fifteen years back.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Interesting! Thank You! (eom)