Thoughts on Walmart

Walmart has been a topic of blog discussion at Matthew Yglesias, David Sirota and Resistance. Here are my thoughts:

(1) Walmart is going to pay its employees as little money as possible, like ninety-five percent of the businesses in the U.S. Walmart has no more responsibility here than any other company, but perhaps it's time to raise the minimum wage.

(2) Raising the minimum wage won't affect illegal immigrants who already work for less than the minimum wage, depressing wages for legitimate U.S. citizens. It's time to kick out the illegal immigrants.

(3) Some workers at Walmart qualify for public assistance like food stamps. That has nothing to do with Walmart, it would apply to any business that pays its workers low salaries.

(4) Does Walmart receive various direct tax breaks and subsidies? This is likely. I support tax simplification. If every business paid the same tax rate and no business got any sort of breaks, we'd have a fairer tax system. Why don't the politicians enact this sensible tax reform? Maybe they enjoy and profit from the wheeling and dealing?

(5) Walmart's huge size gives it more bargaining power than smaller businesses, and I did write in my last post that this is how bigger companies actually make greater profit; it has nothing to do with manufacturing economies of scale. Walmart doesn't even manufacture anything. Big companies llike Walmart need to be broken up into smaller companies.

Comments

[Tony Reed]

I don't think that illegal immigrants are the problem here. In fact, in comparison with European countries, US immigration policy and treatment of illegal immigrants who are caught is pretty repressive.

What I can say is that if you want a living wage in the US, the answer is not trusting mindless corporations to give up their good earnings per share ratios. It's not going to happen. Nor is the government going to step in and regulate against their greatest campaign contributors.

Maybe the fact that US workers have such bad minimum working conditions has everything to do with the fact that when I left 10 years ago, union membership was a mere 15% and falling.

Yeah, in the 1950s unions were painted as "red". Yeah, everybody's got a union horror story. But NOBODY else is going to defend workers' rights against huge, faceless economic interests if the workers themselves don't.

So it's not Walmart's problem--it's US worker's problems. They behave like a bunch of sheep.