Wal-Mart Sucks (the system dry)
June 9th, 2007 by Eric
Since day one in the life of the phenomenon that is Progressive Wednesday, we have chosen to provide you with a running count in our sidebar of just how much money Wal-Mart costs the taxpayers each year. As of this post on June 6, Wal-Mart’s total United States taxpayer burden is almost $4 billion and will average roughly $8 billion over the year. That could fund the occupation of Iraq for two months, though I can think of a few better ways to spend that moolah. The problems with Wal-Mart go a lot further than this though. In fact, our very first Wednesday topic ever was dedicated to the negative social and economic impact Wal-Mart’s business practices have on our great nation. You can and should check it out here.
This hasn’t gotten nearly as much press as it should. I can only assume that this is because the news stations don’t want to seem too “lefty,” too anti-Wal-Mart. It seems to me that not reporting about this would give them a “righty” bias. But, setting that bit of irony aside for the moment, I’m happy to report, the Buffalo News has broken the silence.
This is bit of a hot topic in Western New York; Wal-Mart is trying to open a Super Center in the city of North Tonawanda. Fortunately, they have faced a lot of resistance. Here’s why. According to the Buffalo News:
Next time you shop at Wal-Mart… chances are good — about 1 in 10 — you will run into a man or woman on Medicaid or some other public health care program.
More than half of (Wal-Mart’s) workers either go without health insurance or get it through another source. And of those, about 1 in 5 receives benefits from Medicaid, Medicare, the military or other state programs funded by taxpayers.
How much does this cost John Q. and Suzie Taxpayer? Try a cool $61 mil. The best thing (and by “best,” I mean worst) is that they don’t even try to polish this terd; these are Wal-Mart’s own numbers. And those numbers have proven to be, yep, you guessed it, conservative. Actual numbers show that more than 13% of employees are on publicly funded programs, not the ten percent that they are admitting to.
But it don’t stop there, Daddy-O. This is the one that really frosts my American-made cookies:
A leaked internal memo in 2005 revealed that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million employees remain uninsured or on Medicaid.
Again, that’s from the horse’s mouth. We can squabble over how important that extra one penny savings is, or how many local businesses go under when Wally Word rolls into town like the Halliburton float in the Iraq Liberation Day parade, but let’s all hold hands and agree that this is unacceptable.
So boycott, boycott, and boycott some more. Boycott every day. Maybe twice a day. Besides, those made-in-the-USA socks are not only more comfortable physically, it’s more comfortable mentally knowing that kids in China didn’t put more sweat into them than your feet are, all for a measly 10 cents a day.
Share This
Add this to your favorites