Who's the Biggest Welfare Queen? Wal-Mart!

[gblowfish]

They force their employees to live off federal assistance in many, many ways. Flame away, neocons:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13...ZSJi8.facebook

Good news everyone, after more than thirty years of searching by the news media, Ronald Reagan’s infamous “Welfare Queen” has finally been found. She lives in Bentonville, Arkansas.

“She has eighty names, thirty addresses,” Reagan warned during his 1976 run for President about a nameless, Cadillac-driving woman who’s conning the social safety net. He added: “She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.” In total, Reagan said, “Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”

For more than thirty years, Republicans have used the existence of this “Welfare Queen” to justify their attacks on public spending and prove that the “welfare state” has run amok. Yet, her identity has never been revealed. After decades of searching, the best and brightest minds in the field of journalism were never able to discover who’s behind the wheel of the “Welfare Queen’s” Cadillac, or if she even existed.

That is until now.

We now realize our mistake. In our search for this “Welfare Queen,” we were looking for actual people when we should have been looking for corporate people. We should have been looking at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is the largest private employer and brought in more revenue in 2011 than any other company in the nation. Wal-Mart pocketed a not-too-shabby $16.4 billion in profits that same year and the six Wal-Mart heirs, the Walton family, own roughly $100 billion in wealth, which is more than 40% of Americans combined.

But, despite making all of this money, Wal-Mart’s business model hinges on mooching from the government. It hinges on being the biggest “Welfare Queen” in the United States.

Because of the “everyday low wages” that the retail giant pays its employees, our government has to step in and provide public assistance to Wal-Mart workers just so they can survive…which is why the Wal-Mart workforce represents the largest recipient of federal aid in the nation.
A Wal-Mart worker makes on average 31% less than a worker for any other large retailer, and requires 39% more in public assistance.

A recent study by UC Berkeley found that Wal-Mart’s low wages are costing the state of California alone $86 million a year to provide public assistance like food stamps and healthcare to the retailer’s 44,000 low-wage employees in the state. The state spends nearly $2,000 every single year on each Wal-Mart employee who can’t afford basic essentials like housing, food, and healthcare with their Wal-Mart paycheck.

In total, it’s estimated that Walmart stores loot more than $2.6 billion every single year from the federal government in the form of tax-payer funded public assistance to their employees. That includes more than one billion in healthcare costs associated with Medicaid, and $225 million in free or reduced-price lunches for school children of Wal-Mart employees.

And now, as reported by the Huffington Post, Wal-Mart is planning to loot even more from us taxpayers, as the giant corporation adopts a new healthcare policy that will deny insurance for any employees working fewer than 30 hours a week.

Wal-Mart routinely forces their workers into part-time schedules, working fewer than 30 hours a week, so many will lose their health insurance under this new policy. When asked for comment by the Huffington Post on how many workers will be affected, Wal-Mart declined to answer.

Make no mistake about it, while it may be individual Wal-Mart employees who are collecting government benefits, the corporation itself benefits tremendously.

If the government didn’t step in to provide food assistance, Wal-Mart couldn’t operate with a team of emaciated workers unable to lift ballets of canned foods or count back the correct change at the checkout lanes.

If the government didn’t step in to provide health insurance, then Walmart stores would be a breeding ground for infectious diseases since their employees can’t afford to see a doctor on their own.

If the government didn’t step in to provide school-lunch assistance, then parents who work at Wal-Mart may have less money to put gas in their car and may not even make it in to work.

How can a business succeed with a sickly, tired, tardy, or altogether absent workforce? It can’t.

And while most businesses understanding that a healthy, happy, productive workforce is good for business, Wal-Mart hasn’t. Instead, Wal-Mart, with its enormous fortune, has shifted this responsibility onto taxpayers like you and me. They are, indeed, among the biggest of the big welfare queens in America.

The only difference is Walmart actually exists and Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” doesn’t.

With the help of “Welfare Queen” argument, Conservatives have targeted individual Americans who rely on public assistance as irresponsible and argued that it’s time to end the “handouts.”

But in reality, it’s time we target the actual institutions of irresponsibility in America – Wal-Mart and the other corporate giants who don’t give enough of a damn about their workers to pay them a living wage stick us with the bill for their well-being.

If a corporation can’t afford to pay its employees enough that each worker can afford basic essentials like healthcare, food, and housing, then that corporation – no matter how big or small it is – shouldn’t be allowed to do business.

No more corporate Welfare Queens in America!

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by Ugly Duck

Arithmetic, me bucko. Look at the numbers. Wages are at record lows... so low that the employees are on welfare & are subsidized by taxpayers & money borrowed from China. Meanwhile, profits are at record highs. You can't look at those two factors and see any relationship at all?

Bill Clinton explaining the importance of simple arithmetic:

No shit. Payroll is an expense. The lower you can keep payroll while maintaining productivity the better your business. I have a buddy whose consulting firm does nothing but tell businesses how to reduce/replace their headcount.

What I'm laughing at is you saying "they'd just have to take a little bit less profit" as if that's a sane option.

BTW I didn't watch the Clinton video you posted but I hope it mentions him being lucky enough to be around for the dotcom boom and strong economic climate and being luckier still to have gotten out before the housing bubble he helped create burst all over the place.

[blaise]

Originally Posted by vailpass

No shit. Payroll is an expense. The lower you can keep payroll while maintaining productivity the better your business. I have a buddy whose consulting firm does nothing but tell businesses how to reduce/replace their headcount.

What I'm laughing at is you saying "they'd just have to take a little bit less profit" as if that's a sane option.

BTW I didn't watch the Clinton video you posted but I hope it mentions him being lucky enough to be around for the dotcom boom and strong economic climate and being luckier still to have gotten out before the housing bubble he helped create burst all over the place.

Ugly Duck has detailed knowledge of Wal Mart's expenses,investments, and future business plans. That's how he/she knows how much Wal Mart can afford to spend on payroll.

[Calcountry]

Originally Posted by HonestChieffan

Anyone ever tip your walmart employees?

Well, when I had to wait in line for 15 minutes behind a chick trying to get her EBT card to go, then when it is finally my turn, the cashier in the other line starts freaking out about a spill of water in the line and she handed me some paper towels.

No, no tip.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by blaise

Ugly Duck has detailed knowledge of Wal Mart's expenses,investments, and future business plans. That's how he/she knows how much Wal Mart can afford to spend on payroll.

Oh, damn. I stand corrected. How was I to know?

[blaise]

I like when you wait in line and the meat starts to thaw and leaves chicken juice on the conveyor belt.

[blaise]

Originally Posted by vailpass

Oh, damn. I stand corrected. How was I to know?

RECORD PROFITS! You know, like RECORD PROFITS AND STUFF!

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by blaise

RECORD PROFITS! You know, like RECORD PROFITS AND STUFF!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by vailpass

My point is you are a whiny bastard with high-maintenance tendencies that place you in the should-have-been-a-chick camp.

Haha. Typical idiot who realizes he was fabricating an argument and was then arguing with himself, so he resorts to the personal attack.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

Haha. Typical idiot who realizes he was fabricating an argument and was then arguing with himself, so he resorts to the personal attack.

There was no argument.
You were citing the fact that two people in this thread don't go to Walmart and erroneously extrapolating that to some sort of significance. As though the world's largest retailer is negatively impacted by your candy ass inability to figure out which aisle your tampons are in.

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by vailpass

There was no argument.
You were citing the fact that two people in this thread don't go to Walmart and erroneously extrapolating that to some sort of significance. As though the world's largest retailer is negatively impacted by your candy ass inability to figure out which aisle your tampons are in.

I know there was no argument. Simply pointing out that people don't go to wal-mart because of the poor service among other things. If you don't accept that then you are just taking an erroneous position because of the position you have put yourself in. Three on the first page alone said they don't go to Wal-mart. Many more in the thread.

And I am not sure where you got the idea that I think they are negatively impacted. Perhaps because you are still an idiot. All I said was people choose not to go there because of service among other things. Or perhaps you could point to where I said anything suggesting some sort of big significance. If not, GTFO.

[aturnis]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

The one thing I do like about the Walmart in my town is now they have 4 full time self checkout kiosks. Works great and no one uses them probably because most people are stupid but that is fine with me.

Way to contribute to America's unemployment problem. I bet you empty your tray in the trash at fast food restaurants too.

Yet these idiots think a supply side economy is the answer. They will all of a sudden create jobs when for the last god knows how many years, they've been looking for creative new ways to get eliminate them... Training you to clean up your own mess, pump your own gas, and now check out your own groceries.

[Bump]

Originally Posted by Ugly Duck

Arithmetic, me bucko. Look at the numbers. Wages are at record lows... so low that the employees are on welfare & are subsidized by taxpayers & money borrowed from China. Meanwhile, profits are at record highs. You can't look at those two factors and see any relationship at all?

Bill Clinton explaining the importance of simple arithmetic:

yes, record profits and all time low wages in relation to today's economy. Those two things shouldn't go together.

That's America today. That's not good. Not good at all.

and here comes blaise or vailpass or some other dumb **** to tell me how stupid I am for saying that.

[BWillie]

Originally Posted by Bump

a wal mart exec makes in an hour, what their average full time employee makes in a year. That's pretty ****ed up.

No it's not. Wal-Mart employees work for a low wage because they aren't skilled and/or complete relatively easy tasks. And it's really not that low, tons and tons of retail places pay much worse than Wal-Mart. Walmart is just the poster boy of hate. I used to be a supervisor at Sam's Club, I was in 22 years old making $12 an hour 7 years ago. Not bad I'd say, and I really should have been paid less because my job was very easy and did not require much skills that are typically valued in the job economy.

[Psyko Tek]

Originally Posted by blaise

I've seen Wal Mart employees that I would say don't have much prospects for employment elsewhere. Elderly, for instance. They also employ some people who are just above the mentally retarded level that would have a difficult time finding employment elsewhere.

I never said it excuses tax breaks.

But when you say, "Capitalism!" in reference to the article, what are you suggesting Wal Mart do? Or were you just sort of yelling, "Capitalism!" for fun?

yes but that isa just management anywhere

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Bump

yes, record profits and all time low wages in relation to today's economy. Those two things shouldn't go together.

That's America today. That's not good. Not good at all.

Correct. No matter what the RWNJ think in the bubble. Record profits for corporations and record low wages for workers is not a recipe for our long term success.

Surely we can all agree that without a strong middle class there can't be a strong America.