Wal-Mart Relies On Taxpayers To Subsidize Low Wages

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/wal-mart-relies-on-taxpayers-to-subsidize-low-wages-2013-6


Diana Huffman holds a sign in support of striking Walmart workers protesting unsafe working conditions and poor wages outside a Walmart store in Pico Rivera, California, October 4, 2012.


***SNIP

According to The Huffington Post, Congressional Democrats released a study Thursday that demonstrated how Wal-Mart’s wages are so low that many of its workers must rely on food stamps and other government aid programs, costing taxpayers as much as $900,0000 at just one Wal-Mart Supercenter in Wisconsin.

The report, “The Low-Wage Drag on Our Economy,” was produced by Democrats with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

It explains that it chose Wisconsin as its state of study because of its data being the most recent, allowing the study to employ the state’s Medicaid data to discern the annual cost taxpayers pay in order to provide the food stamp and publicly subsidized health care programs to those Supercenter workers who require it.

Wal-Mart has long been criticized for its pattern of offering wages that force its workers to take advantage of public-assistance programs. This recent study argues that the criticism is warranted. The company had more workers enrolled in the state’s public health care program in last year’s last quarter than any other employer.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/wal-mart-is-using-taxpayers-to-subsidize-low-wages.html/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WallStCheatSheetCore+(Wall+St.+Cheat+Sheet)&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz2V3gsiLOR

[Orrex]

1. my wife has been making that exact point for years

And it's not just Walmart. Plenty of 9 to 5 jobs leave the employees in need of public assistance of one kind of another.

Such public assistance is an enormous subsidy for corporations.


K/R

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Savvy Businessmen. Right, Obama?!?!

[knitter4democracy]

3. I love the crap line at the end.

People move up the ranks there? Studies have shown that they don't. Try again, sweetie.

[ProSense]

4. Wal-Mart Hires Former Bush Aide as Chief Image Maker

Wal-Mart Hires Former Bush Aide as Chief Image Maker
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022933541

[rickyhall]

5. I live on

10 hours a week at Burger King prepping food, house sitting for rent and foodstamps. I turn in 5 applications a week and I'm 57 with no health insurance. It's a wonderful life until I die. And the rich bastards in Congress call me a taker. F-ck them!

[Igel]

6. I like stats.

"More than any other employer" is a pointless kind of statement.

"California probably has more 13-year-old girls raped than any other state." Almost certainly true. But worded in a way that's pretty much beside the point. It's one of the two largest states. If it's got average rape rates the statement is true, but the statement is intended to make it sound like California has a huge California-specific problem.

The article needs to talk about rates, the category the rates hold for, and why.

Otherwise I get the impression somebody's trying to manipulate me into being outraged. That used to make me outraged, all right. Now it merely makes me indifferent and I assume that there's a reason they don't provide useful and pertinent information.