The most interesting thing I’ve seen recently in political messaging is the idea that WalMart costs taxpayers money by paying so little to their employees that they must seek public assistance to make ends meet.
While this messaging has the advantage of being true, it’s still something that no one was mentioning before.
With as many as 825,000 Walmart workers making less than $25,000 a year and a single Walmart store costing taxpayers nearly $1 million in public assistance, the need for change is clear. Taxpayers should not have to pick up the tab because Walmart refuses to pay workers a living wage.
Historically, I’d call this a conservative meme, but it is being picked up by progressive Democrats in a big way.
I wonder in what other ways Walmart is subsidized by taxpayers? Do they get tax breaks for moving into a town?
Likely where Cabela’s, etc. learned how to play that game.
Yes, Wal-Mart often works out special tax and revenue deals for themselves. These are done in a thousand negotiations with town boards and city councils, so they don’t get the publicity that the recent Washington D.C. minimum wage fight did.
My “favorite” trick of theirs is where they tell a town “We’ll open a store if you provide us a waiver of property taxes and other fees for the first few years of our operation.” The town does it, and the predictable result: Wal-Mart closes their store when the taxes and fees are about to start.
Another public abuse they often force through overmatched local jurisdictions are rewritings of zoning restrictions. A recent episode took place in a City adjacent to mine. Wal-Mart wanted to set up a Superstore in a business space that was zoned for other uses. Despite that, they came within a whisker of shoving the change through; they lost 4-3 at the zoning commission, and lost 4-3 at the City Council when the commission’s decision was appealed.
A couple of months later, the stupid stupid stupid City Chamber of Commerce ran well-financed campaigns against the CC incumbents who voted against the zoning change, and took out one of the seated Councilmembers. That Wal-Mart’s business model involves closing down as many City CoC competitors as possible escaped the attention of these business geniuses.
They ain’t subsidized by me. I never go there, and you shouldn’t either.
If you pay taxes, you are subsidizing them – unfortunately.
But … ObamaCare!
If you pay taxes, you are subsidizing businesses who pay poverty-level wages even if you are boycotting that retailer. Some bright person added up WalMart’s share and showed that the subsidy was substantial and that WalMart was referring its employees to government benefits as part of its “employee benefit” policies.
What progressives know is that a $15/hour minimum wage with no exceptions and taking away exclusions in benefits for part-time work can stop this practice. And mandating overtime for a 20-hour work week on everyone can restore living wages and stimulate the economy.
As for conservative and deadbeat employers: they built that.
The phrase deadbeat employers caught my eye. I like it, I hope it catches on.
Agree!
http://theobamadiary.com/2013/11/29/solidarity-2/#comment-895086
BooMan, where I live (Milwaukee) the coalition of unions and community organizations that is supporting the drive to organize fast food, retail, and WalMart has been hammering on this meme for months. And we’ve been effective with it: we’ve used it a lot in our campaign to get the County Board to pass a “Living Wage” ordinance for low-wage workers employed by private firms that do business with the County. Ordinary people get the issue and why it’s important both on the basis of the subsidy argument (that’s actually the more conservative position) and also on the basis of simple social justice.
The Board will vote on that ordinance in a couple of weeks and we’ll see how the nominal “progressives” on the Board shake out. Here’s one thing we know right now though: the County Executive is a Democrat and it’s a solid guarantee that he’ll veto the ordinance if it passes so the whole deal comes down to whether or not there’s a super-majority willing to stand behind it when they take the override vote. And that’s very much on-the-bubble right now.
The article you link mentions Gwen Moore. She’s the Congressional representative for most of the City of Milwaukee and the fact that she’s on board with this is a credit to her. She’s good people. The fact that all of the other four congresscritters and two senators are on board is a credit to them.
But really: two Senators and five congresscritters get around to supporting WalMart workers on the Friday after Thanksgiving (probably one of the slowest days for news all year) and you see this as picking up the meme “in a big way”? Relative to the level of support for this sort of thing that one usually gets from Democrats it’s “a big way” perhaps but I will fail to be impressed until the Milwaukee County Democratic Party or the D.P. of Wisconsin or the Democrats’ candidate-in-waiting to run against Scott Walker take it up in a big way. Until then it looks to me like nothing but more spin.
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Worst Walmart promo ever. Maybe their losing their mojo.
Wal-Mart’s massive success and wealth is a perfect example of how big business exploit’s workers and government UNregulation.
and nothing is being done by the deadbeats in congress to fix this problem- including the democratic deadbeats.
Unbelievable. I had no Idea that Wal-Mart actually cost money to taxpayers. You’d think that with all the money they make that this wouldn’t be happening. So that means that you can’t NOT give money to Wal-Mart? This is just depressing. I’d been boycotting them for years now but I guess they still made money off of me…
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Massage Trois-Rivieres
Walmart wouldn’t make half as much money if not for all the goodies it gets from governments.