Picking Up the Tab for Low Wages

[G_j]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/opinion/picking-up-the-tab-for-low-wages.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0&referrer=

Picking Up the Tab for Low Wages
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
MAY 1, 2015

It is hard to overstate the extent to which work no longer results in a decent paycheck and a rising standard of living in this country. The portion of the economic pie that goes to working people is currently near the smallest on record, in data going back to 1947. Similarly, the gap between worker pay and labor productivity has widened since the 1970s. In a healthy economy, wages and productivity would rise in tandem, but in recent decades, productivity gains have flowed increasingly to executive compensation and shareholder returns, rather than wages.

These dynamics are not inevitable. Low-wage employers, in particular, pay low wages because they can and the main reason they can is that Congress has failed, over decades, to adequately update the minimum wage and other labor standards, including rules for overtime pay, employee benefits and union organizing.

That failure has had deep and perverse repercussions, extending beyond harming low-wage workers. As a recent report in The Times by Patricia Cohen explained, when work does not pay workers enough to get by, they are forced to rely on public assistance programs, mainly Medicaid, food stamps and low-earner tax credits.

Nearly three-fourths of the people helped by public aid for the poor are members of families headed by someone who works, according to a new study by the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California. It estimates that state and federal governments spend more than $150 billion a year on such aid.

...more...

[Octafish]

1. Walmart Economic Model.

Make a mint for the owners by retailing the cheapest stuff made on the planet. Let the taxpayers pick up the food stamps and Medicaid tab.

[BlueJazz]

2. First time in my life I've put a sticker on my bumper: "Shop at Wal-Mart ? You'll be working there"

[Octafish]

3. Report: Walmart Workers Cost Taxpayers $6.2 Billion In Public Assistance

Clare O'Connor
Forbes, April 15, 2014

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.”

Americans for Tax Fairness then took the mid-point of that range ($4,415) and multiplied it by Walmart’s approximately 1.4 million workers to come up with an estimate of the overall taxpayers’ bill for the Bentonville, Ark.-based big box giant’s staffers.

CONTINUED...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/

Getting Walmart on top of the heap was Buy Partisan.

[G_j]

4. yep

which means that much more money in their pockets.

[Octafish]

5. Two Administrations were key in making Walmart what it is.

Both men, future presidents, are in this photo.

Kennebunkport, July 30, 1983: Bill Clinton, George Bush & George Wallace



Wallace and his third wife, the former Lisa Taylor, meet with Vice President George Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton at a lobster bake at Bush's residence at Kennebunkport, Maine, July 30, 1983. The third Mrs. Wallace, whom the governor married in 1981, was 30 years his junior and half of a country-western singing duo, Mona and Lisa, who had performed during his campaign in 1968.

CREDIT: AP/Birmingham Post

SOURCE: http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/george-wallace/13/

When Walmart Went to Mexico