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The idea of employees receiving food stamps seems like a clear case of manipulating the system. But I think there is more nuance than the 20%/$14B numbers describe.

Imagine a single mom who wants to be home when her kids get home from school. She's working part time, and not making enough to feed her family. Who is responsible for her shortfall?

In a community where Walmart is a big employer, many people may work part time and one consequence of that is that more people have jobs. Walmart benefits from that but so do those employees, even when they don't make enough to eat well.

Sure, the system can obviously be manipulated. Yes, people (and company leaders) make bad choices. Who decides who pays?

I woukd also add that it's hardly reasonable or desirable to dump on employers the responsibility of providing wellfare assistance. If the people, collectively, don't want to provide that service through state institutions, why should they dump that responsibility on someone who thought it would be a good idea to creatr jobs in a town?

> Who decides who pays?

In the short term elected representatives. In the long-term their voters as they re-elect them, or not, to office.

That $14B in SNAP benefits is because Walmart is a significant market share grocer and people who receive SNAP benefits buy food at Walmart with those benefits.

I'm not sure how that makes Walmart a villain in the current discussion. Target takes in about $5B revenue from sales under SNAP, Aldi about $4.5B, and Kroger just under $4B. Companies who serve SNAP recipients should be lauded not vilified, IMO. They're serving a generally underserved constituency.

Nobody is upset that Wal-Mart sells food to SNAP beneficiaries. What people are upset over is the fact that so many of Wal-Mart's employees need to go on public assistance because the company refuses to pay them enough to live on.

Trying to pretend this is about Wal-Mart selling food, and not the wages they pay is incredibly dishonest.

> Nobody is upset that Wal-Mart sells food to SNAP beneficiaries.

Literally the post to which I replied complained about "simultaneously are the beneficiary of 20% (or $14B) in taxpayer funded food stamps annually there is a problem". It seems that someone is upset about that.

Look at the root cause of why. Parent comment nailed it.

No. They are benefitting because they are having their labor subsidized by taxpayers because they don't pay enough.

Again, pretending the reason people are upset is because they're selling food, and not because Wal-Mart is requiring you and I to subsidize their labor costs, is incredibly dishonest.

> They are benefitting because they are having their labor subsidized by taxpayers because they don't pay enough.

That's not a labor subsidy, and if it was the simple fix would be to make employed people categorically ineligible for federal benefits—we don't do that, because we know it's not a wage subsidy, and all the hyperventilating about it being a wage subsidy is (at least on the part of public officials and other people that know anything about policy) dishonest grandstanding.

(Now, work requirements in benefit programs do make them wage subsidies, because then the threat is “work at whatever job will have you or lose public benefits in addition to the marginal benefit of pay”; that's easily solved by removing such requirements.)

It is a labor subsidy, because Wal-Mart is not having to pay their workers a living wage because they can simply tell their workers to sign up for public assistance. I don't care about the nit-picky "Is it a direct labor subsidy or is it a wage subsidy" arguments; Wal-Mart benefits because they can pay lower wages and tell their employees to get public assistance. That's the story in its entirety. Wal-Mart is big enough, they can pay a living wage; they don't need my help.

> It is a labor subsidy,

No, it's not, it's an anti-subsidy, because money is taken away from workers for getting paid by an employer, increasing the amount an employer needs to pay.

> because Wal-Mart is not having to pay their workers a living wage

WalMart wouldn't have to pay a living wage without it, either. Public assistance programs (aside from work requirements and the cost of lost benefits from failure to comply) actually increase market clearing wages, they don't decrease them.

> because they can simply tell their workers to sign up for public assistance

The people involved can sign up for public assistance with or without working for WalMart; further, they lose benefits due to mean testing based on outside income, which means WalMart has to give them >$1 of take home pay to get labor they would be willing to trade for $1 of net income increase.

> What people are upset over is the fact that so many of Wal-Mart's employees need to go on public assistance because the company refuses to pay them enough to live on.

If that's the case then I fail to see how a particular employer is responsible for that problem. I mean, if the economy is so depressed in a region that the absolute best some job seekers are able to get is a job that requires them to remain on public assistance then obviously the employer isn't to blame for the region's economy. In fact, that employer is already offering the very best jobs available in that region. Where does it make any sense to go after them instead of doing something to fix the economy and improve the lives and conditions available to those workers?

I think employers like Walmart and Amazon are unique cases.

Again consider the fact that Walmart as a national grocer is able to milk the SNAP program on a national level to the tune of $14B/year.

That enables them to move into a depressed area and set up shop, even at a loss, which in turn allows them to shutter the existing market incumbent(s).

With the mom & pops gone and/or employee owned grocer now gone only Walmart is left.

It’s using tax payer funds to out compete competition, which allows Walmart to further depress wages.

It’s not like this behavior is all theoretical. In practice Walmart takes taxpayer money and turns around and lobbies congress to increase SNAP benefits so they can keep lining their pockets. Walmart takes losses in certain regions to put others out of business to become sole grocer. These losses are in part balanced and paid for by tax payer dollars at the national level.

In many ways Walmart is directly responsible for lack of competition and closed stores, and despite the desperate attempt to say that is free market...it’s not free market when 1 company is subsidized by taxpayer money and the loser isn’t.

You are right effort should be made into improving/fixing the economy and lives of workers...getting rid of corporate welfare for certain businesses is part of that.

> Again consider the fact that Walmart as a national grocer is able to milk the SNAP program on a national level to the tune of $14B/year.

Others in this thread have pointed out that "milk the SNAP" program is a very disingenuous and deceitful statement. SNAP is a wellfare program that subsidizes food purchases and both wallmart and amazon sell groceries, and somehow people like you spin the fact that supermarkets sell groceries to sound like these companies are stealing money from the government at the expense of poor people.

And even then what's your point? Either supermakets sell food to underpriviledged people or they don't, and I really doubt that anyone would advocate that poor people should be barred from supermarkets where regular people shop.

>Others in this thread have pointed out that "milk the SNAP" program is a very disingenuous and deceitful statement. SNAP is a wellfare program that subsidizes food purchases and both wallmart and amazon sell groceries, and somehow people like you spin the fact that supermarkets sell groceries to sound like these companies are stealing money from the government at the expense of poor people.

Walmart is stealing...it’s not like Walmart happens on $14B in SNAP benefits a year. It not a coincidence Walmart has more employees receiving SNAP benefits than any other employer.

Is it not disengenious and deceitful that you are pretending Walmart just so happens to sell groceries and benefit from SNAP in the amount of $14B/year vs acknowledge walmart are one of the largest drivers of the SNAP program?

Nothing about having Walmart reimburse taxpayers for their employees that receive SNAP Bars SNAP recipients from shopping at Walmart, so the point you are making is disengenious and deceitful...as if Walmart had to payback taxpayer funds their employees receive that has anything to do with Walmart revenue from SNAP benefits.

Let’s say there was a major arms dealer who was making $14B/year in government contracts so long as the US War of Terror continued...is there a problem in your mind if that same company successfully lobbied every year to keep the war on terror going and maybe even paid a little of the revenue from US contracts to fund terror groups? You know like a corporation who is benefiting from suppressed wages with corporate welfare, and then lobbying for said corporate welfare and using its power as an employer to surpress wages giving rise to the need for said welfare

IMO, there are two, perhaps three issues:

1. Walmart sells things to SNAP recipients. This is something that is perfectly fine, as I downloaded the MA.csv listing of food vendors who accept SNAP and it seems like it's damn near everyone, including tiny little convenience stores. That's a level playing field, and the fact that Walmart gets money from SNAP is no more interesting than the fact that they get money from American Express. In particular, this is not stealing; this is selling.

2. Walmart employees being recipients of government support programs. It's fine to object to this, but I don't see it in any way as related to #1. Presumably, you would object to any other employer who doesn't sell food (and therefore doesn't take SNAP) paying their full-time employees at a level that permits them to qualify for and accept SNAP benefits. Could you confirm/deny that?

3. Walmart lobbying for the preservation / expansion of SNAP program. It's also fine to object to this, though I see the case for their lobbying to be much more strongly to preserve the #1 status quo than the #2 status quo.

1. Just because a tiny convenience store can/does accept SNAP that isn’t a level playing field. Go ask that tiny convenience store how much revenue they make from SNAP and how many employees they have on SNAP, if you want to see how unlevel the playing field is, as how large their SNAP lobbying budget is. And the whole idea you equate SNAP with AMerican express, fully demonstrates why our converstation won’t go anywhere, You draw no distinction between a private credit card company and taxpayer funded subsidies.

2. We agree there is a difference between accepting SNAP and having employees on SNAP, but in Walmart’s case they are in fact related and part of the whole picture. After all Walmart leads both categories they make more money directly from SNAP than any other business and they have more employees on SNAP than any other business.

3. Again lobbying for SNAP isn’t a problem, except it is part of the overall picture.

Not sure I can highlight, what is bad corporate behavior anymore than this: Walmart with the left had takes $14B in SNAP annually, with the right hand they push more employees onto SNAP than any other employer, and instead of taking any of the $14B in SNAP revenue and increasing wages to get employees off SNAP or through legislation having to reimburse taxpayers, Almaty is taking those funds to lobby Washington to increase the overall budget of SNAP to increase their taxpayer profits and lower the SNAP eligibility to get more employees on SNAP.

But again you equate Walmart taking SNAP to Walmart taking AmEx, you also believe Walmart should be championed for catering to an underserved segment of society. This conversation can’t really go any further in good faith.

"If that's the case then I fail to see how a particular employer is responsible for that problem."

I fail to see how they're not. Wal-Mart is entirely, 10,000% responsible for how much they pay their workers.

"I mean, if the economy is so depressed in a region that the absolute best some job seekers are able to get is a job that requires them to remain on public assistance then obviously the employer isn't to blame for the region's economy."

That employer, especially when they are one of the largest companies in the nation, is entirely to blame for how much they pay their workers.

"Where does it make any sense to go after them instead of doing something to fix the economy and improve the lives and conditions available to those workers?"

Who says you can't do both? But why on earth does it seem acceptable that the job conditions are based on how good the economy is? Why is it suddenly acceptable to treat your workers like crap if some GDP number goes down by a quarter of a point?

> Wal-Mart is entirely, 10,000% responsible for how much they pay their workers.

Yes, but the public is largely responsible for how little of what they allocate to pay gets to employees, by way of the fact that wages are taxed higher than regular income (because payroll taxes) which in turn is taxed higher than capital gains, which in turn are taxed higher than most unearned generational wealth transfer (thanks to the generous nontaxed allowances for gifts and inheritances.)

Tax income as income and at the same overall tax level, very few WalMart employees would need public assistance and employers would have a lot less incentive to replace employees that must be purchased with supertaxed wages with minimally-tax-burdened capital investments.

Right now, the tax rate on any kind of income varies inversely with the wealth of the people who tend to have that kind of income.

No, I can't agree with that statement. Wal-Mart has lots of smart accountants; they know what the tax burden the average person making their wages would be. While I'm not at all opposed to changing how different categories of income are taxed, I still can't see this as anything but Wal-Mart's fault.

> In general what you are talking about is a Bill of Attainder and it is unconstitutional.

That's highly debatable. Does "attainder" as used in the constitution apply to corporations? To a large extent that depends on whether corporations are persons in the context of that prohibition, but there are other concerns as well. You're assuming that the answer to all such questions can be answered in favor of corporations, but that's hardly settled.