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You don't understand. The amount of taxes Walmart pays in the US is equivalent to or more than the money those "studies" claims are having to be spent on Walmart employees.
So Walmart don't contribute much to Uncle Sam then.
"Many of the workers in Walmart end up getting Medicaid, they get food stamps, they get affordable housing paid for by the taxpayers of this country while the Walton family remains the wealthiest family in America. If that is not obscene, I don’t know what is."
- Senator Bernie Sanders
So the USA has welfare for the rich.
50 years ago the USAs biggest employer was GM. Workers made the equiv of $50/hr. Today Walmart is the biggest employer with an average wage of $8/hr.
"The richest 400 Americans are worth more than the poorest 150 million Americans combined and those in the bottom 60 percent only hold 1.7 percent of the nation's wealth.
- Senator Bernie Sanders
Robert Walton is the 11th richest man on the planet and the chairman of Walmart, the world's wealthiest corporation. His family runs a charity, the Walton Family Foundation. In the past 23 years he has given not a penny to the charity. Instead he used the charity to avoid $3bn of estate taxes
Have you done some research into lay-off times, pay and times at GM?
Millions of others tax taxes as well, and their taxes are going to pay for welfare to keep employees of Walmat above the poverty line because Walmart are deliberately not paying them enough. Walmart are taking advantage - in short they are welfare bums of the worst type.
Wal Mart also ruins the small communities they move into the small interesting stores end out closing downtown and everything in the town shifts to these disgusting strip malls.
Missed it somehow. Based on data from 2014 or 2013, the average hourly pay rate at Walmart was just over elevent dollard, not eight, and that is including only the workers who are pay hourly, excluding the better paid upper staff or management, meaning a true average wage is likely much higher. It's probably notably better now since four or five years have passed and Walmart recently imposed on itself a minimum pay for starters to eleven dollars.
Regarding small towns, I think what happens is sad, but I don't blame Walmart. The only reason Walmart causes other stores to go out of business like mentioned is because the natives choose of their own free will to financially support Walmart over local businesses like they have supposedly been doing for many years before the arrival of Walmart.
Missed it somehow. Based on data from 2014 or 2013, the average hourly pay rate at Walmart was just over elevent dollard, not eight, and that is including only the workers who are pay hourly, excluding the better paid upper staff or management, meaning a true average wage is likely much higher. It's probably notably better now since four or five years have passed and Walmart recently imposed on itself a minimum pay for starters to eleven dollars.
Regarding small towns, I think what happens is sad, but I don't blame Walmart. The only reason Walmart causes other stores to go out of business like mentioned is because the natives choose of their own free will to financially support Walmart over local businesses like they have supposedly been doing for many years before the arrival of Walmart.
No and no.
You obviously don't understand the whole scope and depth of the disaster that Wal-Mart is, how it reshaped US economy and why.
And most likely, you never lived in PRE Wal-Mart America, so you don't understand how different it was.
See, back in the day, America's claim to "freedom" was making sense somewhat, because it was a leader in the plight of the West to contain the threat, coming from the Soviet Union.
Now Soviet Union was anything but "free" society, chained by Soviet ideology and literally keeping its citizens locked in their country, behind the "iron curtain."
So yes, at that point in time in America, void of any pressures of ideology ( with a notable exception of McCarthyism,) claims of "freedom and democracy" were making sense. But not any longer, after the departure of the Soviet Union from international scene.
American economy was supportive of that "freedom and democracy," starting from the late 60ies-early seventies, and all the way through the eighties, i.e. times of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
America was still an industrial society, offering plethora of jobs to its lower class, and plenty of opportunities to the upper class. The Labor Unions were still going strong, ( assuring the workers rights,) and those who were not interested to work in industrial sector, had plenty of opportunities to work for small-medium business that was plenty. So in spite of the banking business deregulations here and there, it was still OK, and America could still claim its "freedom" thing.
But it all changed in the nineties, on Clinton's watch, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, when America started tightening the screws on its own population, and corporations proceeded with concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands.
Wal-Mart was essential part of this process. It is naive to think that people just "started shopping in Wal-Mart" out of a blue, and that's what made Wal-Mart so big.
Not quite so.
Wal-Mart was around already back in 1962, but it was not the only store that was selling stuff "cheap." There was Target and there was K-Mart too, that opened approximately at the same time.
I am not going to go here into all the details, how Wal-Mart dealt with its suppliers, promising them heaven in terms of sales volume, but cutting the price of their goods to the lowest end, and driving many out of business, since no one would buy any longer their products through other retailers, with higher price.
I am not going to explain how the industrial production has been shifted to China, in order to supply Wal-Mart "for cheap," driving the quality of products down across the line, and destroying the small business in the process. All that you can read in the book. What I DO find however interesting, is that during the initial years of its biggest expansion, this behemoth had Hillary Clinton on board of directors.
"According to former board members, Clinton did not denounce the ‘anti-union’ efforts Tate spearheaded, nor rail for increased employee wages. Donald G. Soderquist, the board’s then vice chairman, has said that not only was Clinton “not a dissenter,” but that “she was a part of those decisions.” Wal-Mart’s stock rose by more than 500% during her tenure and Clinton’s shares were worth nearly $100,000 by 1992."
( I mean Bill Clinton hails from the same state as Wal-Mart, and he was a president of the country during the rapid growth of this corporation, along with some other corporations. I keep on pointing at this lovely couple of "corporate democrats" as a problem of the whole post-Soviet Russia scene, but apparently they are more of a menace than I thought.)
But I digress.
The point I am trying to bring across here, is that from once "free" country, the US eventually turned into the corporate machine, with Wal-Mart being the most representative of what the country currently is.
Factories are shipped elsewhere, small-medium business lays dead on the path of this behemoth, the rest of retail/service business offers same kind of salaries as Wal-Mart in post-industrial America.
It's probably enough to pay for rent and food, so whatever people make in these salaries, goes right back to cover their basic needs, ( if it covers them at all, ) and that's how they live, day in and day out, from paycheck to paycheck from the company, that exploits them to the fullest.
And if they are not happy? Oh, they are always more than welcome to quit, and... get another job in retail or fast food service, because - what else is out there?
And so the grinder goes on, with record amount of profits going in fewer and fewer hands.
Yet the claims of some exclusive "freedom" that Americans keeps on insisting on, are popping here and there, even though today's America is nothing more but production line, finely tuned to serve the interests of corporations.
I mean ideology is not the only thing that makes slaves out of people; money and corporations achieve the same effect, just in a different manner.
How many people in the US, what part of them live their lives in this grinder today, keeping in mind that Wal-Mart ( and the likes) is most likely the biggest employer in the country?
I guess this map gives pretty good idea;
Your post doesn't dispute what I said, only adds some context, sone of which I knew and some of which I didn't. First off, I'd like sources for your first no, which I believed was in response to my claim that the average hourly wage for Walmart is eleven dollars in the mid 2010s and/or higher now. Second off, I'm not sure where the obsession of freedom in that post is coming from. Unless you are saying that Walmart is purposely forcing suppliers to incresse their prices to small businesses in order to make their expenses more expensive, I don't see the dispute. Walmart sets up store in a small town, small businesses are still there. Could the residents not choose to spend money at the small businesses still instead of at the new Walmart? I come from a big city, but I do work a near minimum wage job (well, I make notably more, even compared to my peers, because I do better at tips) but I very often choose to spend more and/or buy less, in terms of quantity not necessarily cost, to support local businesses or products from certain countries.
Your post doesn't dispute what I said, only adds some context, sone of which I knew and some of which I didn't. First off, I'd like sources for your first no, which I believed was in response to my claim that the average hourly wage for Walmart is eleven dollars in the mid 2010s and/or higher now.
That is a no, because Wal-Mart is only PLANNING to raise the hourly wage to 11 dollars in 2018.
"The big-box retailer announced Thursday it will increase its starting wage rate for hourly employees in the U.S. to $11, and expand maternity and parental leave benefits. Currently, Walmart's starting wage is $9 until workers complete a training program. Then, they receive $10."
But even with this increase, they are already lagging way behind the rising COL ( rents first of all and food,) so by now the fast food workers figured out that the living wage should be really $15 an hour.
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Second off, I'm not sure where the obsession of freedom in that post is coming from.
It's not my obsession.
I was addressing the advertising of "freedom" by some Americans while I was at that as well.
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Unless you are saying that Walmart is purposely forcing suppliers to incresse their prices to small businesses in order to make their expenses more expensive, I don't see the dispute.
Because you apparently don't understand the chain reaction that followed with Wal-Mart effect - the industry, the producers, the suppliers, the distribution channels - it all got affected by Wal-Mart practice on a large scale. And no, once people start buying something for lower price at one place, they won't most likely buy the same brand/product elsewhere for a higher price.
The Wal-Mart shrewdly used this approach, but the results became devastating for the country/people who didn't understand the trap.
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Walmart sets up store in a small town, small businesses are still there.
They are NOWHERE in numbers that used to be there in pre-Wal-Mart times.
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Could the residents not choose to spend money at the small businesses still instead of at the new Walmart?
No at this point they can't, because the population that works in Wal-Mart ( and other jobs in service sector in post-industrial America) can't afford to shop anywhere but Wal-Mart. As I've said, it's a vicious circle. And we are talking about "the world's largest private employer" here.
You can't support small business, when the industrial base is gone ( and it has been moved to China in many ways because of Wal-Mart, that was ever demanding the lowest prices from producers, which could be achieved only with lowering the labor cost ( i.e. moving the production elsewhere.)
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I come from a big city, but I do work a near minimum wage job (well, I make notably more, even compared to my peers, because I do better at tips) but I very often choose to spend more and/or buy less, in terms of quantity not necessarily cost, to support local businesses or products from certain countries.
Products "from certain countries?"
Are you telling me you see some merchandise in the US that is NOT made in China?
I'm a reverse immigrant, from the US to Denmark. After almost 23 years, I have no plans to go back except for vacations.
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