Thursday, March 27, 2014

Walmart and its government subsidy

Walmart has now admitted that their massive profits also depend on the funding of food stamps and other public assistance programs. In their annual report, filed with the Security and Exchange Commission last week, the retail giant lists factors that could potentially harm future profitability. Listed among items such as "economic conditions" and "consumer confidence," the company writes that changes in taxpayer-funded public assistance programs are also a major threat. The company writes:
“Our business operations are subject to numerous risks, factors and uncertainties, domestically and internationally, which are outside our control ... These factors include ... changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans ...”

This is the acknowledgement of the Walmart chain's reliance on the funding of these programs to sustain a profit.

Walmart Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley said the company didn't anticipate how much the end to such programs as the unemployment benefits extension would affect it. Specifically, reductions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that went into effect on Nov. 1, the first day of the company’s fourth quarter, pose a potential concern. The cuts led to a between $1 and $36 reduction in SNAP benefits per household, or up to $460 a year. Congress is debating reinstating the extension to the program and making the benefits retroactive to Nov. 1, something Walmart would clearly consider beneficial to its growth. This man is the Chief Financial Officer of the biggest corporation on earth and he couldn't anticipate the effect? Why not?

They base their employee salaries on welfare benefits and food stamps. Walmart doesn't pay its employees enough to live on so working the American government must subsidize Walmart workers through state-funded welfare.

 Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the irony of their admission is that Walmart "is the company that has done, perhaps, more than any other corporation to push people into poverty."

 A Penn State study has proven that "when Walmart opens a store, poverty rates are negatively impacted" and that the more stores that have opened in a particular county, the worse it is. "This is a company that everywhere it goes it creates poverty."

In addition to their own worker's low wages, Mitchell explains that Walmart, because of their enormous size and market power, have "held down wages for the whole sector." As a retailer that specifically targets a low-income demographic, Mitchell adds that the "insidious genius" of their business model is that "they have so squeezed American workers ... many feel that their only choice is to shop at Walmart."

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