re: For those of y'all who hate Walmart, read these facts and savor them

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quote:
Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15.

Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of 400 national and state-level progressive groups, made this estimate using data from a 2013 study by Democratic Staff of the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce.



“The study estimated the cost to Wisconsin’s taxpayers of Walmart’s low wages and benefits, which often force workers to rely on various public assistance programs,” reads the report, available in full here.

“It found that a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.”


I'm sure you're a big fan of welfare programs. Right?

LINK

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There are some baked-in assumptions to that study that are a nice sleight of hand, but for starters, the idea that Walmart will employee the same number of workers at higher wage levels is incorrect.

For most of these people, it's either work at Walmart, or no job. The number that Walmart will absorb into its work force shrinks as entry level labor pricing increases. That is indisputable. You could raise the entry level wage at WM to $15/hour, and we'd still have roughly the same, if not more, expenditures on welfare for that same group of people; it would just be allocated differently.