People that think minimum wage increases prices must really hate that huge CEO salaries.People that think wage increases won't increase prices aren't thinking.... Or have actually looked at the empirical data. Which disagrees with you.
When your model doesn't match the real world, your model is the one that's wrong. By definition.
There are lots of factors that underly costs. More consumers means more sales, so you can make it up on volume. With higher gross revenue, you may be able to get a better deal from your suppliers or invest in better equipment. Higher wages can mean less turnover and lower recruitment and training costs. It can even lower health and safety costs. Et cetera.
Your Empirical model said nothing about prices, only about employment. Even then a 10% increase in wages resulted in a 1% decrease in employment. Seattle is talking about a 55+% increase in the minimum wage and the US is talking about a 40% increase.
Except that those price models are not based upon things that the average low income wage earner buys. They aren't affected by the cost of fast food, food, cheap clothes. Those indexes are based upon "durable goods" TVs, computers, appliances, cars, furniture, etc. Things made by people not earning the minimum wage (at least in the US). Raising the minimum wage doesn't raise the cost of a car, refrigerator, or sofa, it does raise the cost of a fast food burger, food in your grocery store, and what Wal*mart is charging for clothes.
Lie number four: Increasing the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. So we shouldn’t raise it.
In fact, studies show that increases in the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of people who will spend it – resulting in more jobs, and counteracting any negative employment effects of an increase in the minimum.
Three of my colleagues here at the University of California at Berkeley — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich – have compared adjacent counties and communities across the United States, some with higher minimum wages than others but similar in every other way.
They found no loss of jobs in those with the higher minimums.
Rober Reich: 4 Biggest right-wing lies about inequality.Lie number four: Increasing the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. So we shouldn’t raise it.
In fact, studies show that increases in the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of people who will spend it – resulting in more jobs, and counteracting any negative employment effects of an increase in the minimum.
Three of my colleagues here at the University of California at Berkeley — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich – have compared adjacent counties and communities across the United States, some with higher minimum wages than others but similar in every other way.
They found no loss of jobs in those with the higher minimums.
Effects of the $10.10 Option on Employment and Income
Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent, CBO projects (see the table below). As with any such estimates, however, the actual losses could be smaller or larger; in CBO’s assessment, there is about a two-thirds chance that the effect would be in the range between a very slight reduction in employment and a reduction in employment of 1.0 million workers.
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Yeah, estimate vs. actual data. Guess which one is more reliable.
Time to use presidential authority to push through a fourty five dollar wage increase...
Woo! Go dingo! Start those flame wars!
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Yeah, estimate vs. actual data. Guess which one is more reliable.
Nonpartisan group or left wing political commentator.
Remember that a good mathematician can make the numbers say whatever he wants.
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Don't be silly, CEOs earn those huge salaries, often by reducing workforce and keeping wages low. They must deserve them, because the free market has given them to them.
That and they were smart enough to figure out they could borrow money from the government at 0% and lend it back to the government at 4%. That takes talent!
Yeah, estimate vs. actual data. Guess which one is more reliable.Nonpartisan group or left wing political commentator.
Remember that a good mathematician can make the numbers say whatever he wants.
Reading comprehension? Reich is referring to a study done by university professors, not his own opinion.
Also, if you think Robert Reich is just a "left wing political commentator" you should do some basic research.I hope you can see the irony in using your last sentence to try and discredit one group of "mathematician[s]."
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Yeah, estimate vs. actual data. Guess which one is more reliable.Nonpartisan group or left wing political commentator.
Remember that a good mathematician can make the numbers say whatever he wants.
Reading comprehension? Reich is referring to a study done by university professors, not his own opinion.
Also, if you think Robert Reich is just a "left wing political commentator" you should do some basic research.I hope you can see the irony in using your last sentence to try and discredit one group of "mathematician[s]."
Given the current general bias amongst university professors, the left wing still stands. And stating that a good mathematician can make the numbers say what ever he wants them too, is not discrediting one group of "mathematicians" it is a simple fact.
No Robert Reich isn't just a left wing political commentator, but I never said that was all that he is.
And I will stand by a nonpartisan group, as opposed to something posted on a left or right wing blog.
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Given the current general bias amongst university professors, the left wing still stands.
Would that be the bias toward data? :P
Seriously, though...I've never heard a decent explanation for the "left-wing bias" in higher education. Anyone care to enumerate the incentives purported to drive this alleged bias? The same goes for the "liberal media." How can corporate-owned media organizations, which explicitly exist to generate profit, be biased towards the left? It's patently absurd.
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Reality? That liberally biased nutjob....
Given the current general bias amongst university professors, the left wing still stands.Would that be the bias toward data? :P
Seriously, though...I've never heard a decent explanation for the "left-wing bias" in higher education. Anyone care to enumerate the incentives purported to drive this alleged bias?
Same goes for the media. How can a corporate-owned media organizations, which explicitly exist to generate profit, be biased towards the left? It's patently absurd.
So then you would agree that FoxNews isn't biased?
A couple of highlights:
In a 1996 poll of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers, 61% identified themselves as Democrats, 15% as Republicans.
In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, media professionals were nearly 7 times likelier to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.
In a 2007 Pew Research Center study of journalists and news executives, the ratio was 4 liberals for each conservative.
How to Identify Liberal Media Bias an interesting little
Contrast the media's treatment of ethical charges against Ed Meese when he was Attorney General and Jim Wright when he was Speaker of the House (and second-in-line for the presidency). The MRC compared the number of stories about Meese in January and February 1988 and stories about Wright between January 1987 and February 1988. The media covered charges against Meese in 17 times as many stories in just one-seventh the time. The nightly newscasts on ABC, NBC, and CBS carried 26 reports of charges against Meese in just two months, compared to zero stories about Wright in 14 months.
As it turned out, none of the charges against Meese were sustained, while the charges against Wright drove him from office in disgrace. Anti-Meese charges were considered news, regardless of whether the charges were justified, but accusations against Wright (mostly by Congressman Newt Gingrich of Georgia) were ignored month after month -- until the liberal group Common Cause joined in the criticism.
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Given the current general bias amongst university professors, the left wing still stands.Would that be the bias toward data? :P
Seriously, though...I've never heard a decent explanation for the "left-wing bias" in higher education. Anyone care to enumerate the incentives purported to drive this alleged bias? The same goes for the "liberal media." How can corporate-owned media organizations, which explicitly exist to generate profit, be biased towards the left? It's patently absurd.
The bias is that university professors tend to be able to look at information objectively, make informed comments, and discount or disregard superfluous talking points. This is generally in opposition to so-called right wing positions.
Thus, academia is consistently in opposition to "the right" and therefore "leans left."
Given the current general bias amongst university professors, the left wing still stands.Would that be the bias toward data? :P
Seriously, though...I've never heard a decent explanation for the "left-wing bias" in higher education. Anyone care to enumerate the incentives purported to drive this alleged bias?
Same goes for the media. How can a corporate-owned media organizations, which explicitly exist to generate profit, be biased towards the left? It's patently absurd.
So then you would agree that FoxNews isn't biased?
A couple of highlights:
In a 1996 poll of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers, 61% identified themselves as Democrats, 15% as Republicans.
In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, media professionals were nearly 7 times likelier to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.
In a 2007 Pew Research Center study of journalists and news executives, the ratio was 4 liberals for each conservative.
How to Identify Liberal Media Bias an interesting little
...Contrast the media's treatment of ethical charges against Ed Meese when he was Attorney General and Jim Wright when he was Speaker of the House (and second-in-line for the presidency). The MRC compared the number of stories about Meese in January and February 1988 and stories about Wright between January 1987 and February 1988. The media covered charges against Meese in 17 times as many stories in just one-seventh the time. The nightly newscasts on ABC, NBC, and CBS carried 26 reports of charges against Meese in just two months, compared to zero stories about Wright in 14 months.
As it turned out, none of the charges against
That has nothing to do with a left/right bias. Unless you intend to assert that Jim Freeking Wright was a liberal.
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So then you would agree that FoxNews isn't biased?
No I wouldn't. Nor is that a corollary of what I said.
I believe that in a world where profits come first, people are going to air what sells. Whether the result is "biased" or not I cannot say, but as a liberal (or progressive, if you prefer), my opinion is that the Republican party is peddling fear and divisiveness, which sell very well indeed. But I know that others have said the same of the Democratic party.
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In a 1996 poll of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers, 61% identified themselves as Democrats, 15% as Republicans.
In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, media professionals were nearly 7 times likelier to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.
In a 2007 Pew Research Center study of journalists and news executives, the ratio was 4 liberals for each conservative.
That means nothing and doesn't indicate bias in any way, shape, or form. One's personal opinions don't come into play when you are writing a news story, unless you're working for an explicitly biased organization, such as Fox or MSNBC. Moreover, you'll be fired as a journalist for being biased in your reporting.
If your thesis is "all news is biased, therefore journalists with political leanings will skew stories to fit their ideology" I find it lacking as someone who has done extensive coursework, and had some real world experience, in journalism. If ANYTHING, the trend is to overcompensate for one's own bias by including un or under-evidenced talking points that run contrary to the individual journalist's findings to be published in the piece, i.e. false equivalency.
The desire to seem fair and balanced, even in the face of overwhelming evidence for a singular rational conclusion, is the achilles' heel of journalism, not overt political bias.
That has nothing to do with a left/right bias. Unless you intend to assert that Jim Freeking Wright was a liberal.
He was a Democrat, which is on the Left and covering him would hurt the Left, no matter his voting record.
So then you would agree that FoxNews isn't biased?No I wouldn't. Nor is that a corollary of what I said.
I believe that in a world where profits come first, people are going to air what sells. Whether the result is "biased" or not I cannot say, but as a liberal (or progressive, if you prefer), my opinion is that the Republican party is peddling fear and divisiveness, which sell very well indeed. But I know that others have said the same of the Democratic party.
But if FoxNews is in the business of making money, like CNN, MSNBC, and the others, then it shouldn't be biased either. FoxNews is in the business of making money.
What is patently absurd is to say that all media isn't biased, either right or left. Unless you can get a media company made of people that have no political, economic, cultural, or other opinions, there will be bias.
Divisiveness, would you mean an "us vs. them" sort of thing? Like "stick it to the rich" or affirmative action or religious freedoms. The Democratic is as much or more about divisiveness and fear as the Republicans.
That has nothing to do with a left/right bias. Unless you intend to assert that Jim Freeking Wright was a liberal.He was a Democrat, which is on the Left and covering him would hurt the Left, no matter his voting record.
Democrat did not mean leftist in Texas in 1988. The lack of super-common understanding of dynamics in party politics pretty well invalidates all points you would try to make in the topic.
"Journalistic objectivity" is a pretty recent invention, history of journalism-wise. Wikipedia says it didn't even get invented until the 1890s, but most commentators I've read, surprise, surprise, tie it to the rise of World War I-era Committee on Public Information and its government propaganda. They also tend to regard the drive towards "objectivity" as a method of the stooges and media whores of the plutocracy to attain ideological hegemony or "manufacture consent" in the words of one of our more curmudgeonly celebirty leftists. (Jim Wright? [Cries])
Before that, most newspapers were unapologetically partisan. My favorite ones still are.
Man, Al Gore, Ed Meese, the OTD is stuck in the past!!!!
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Makes me wanna listen to some spoken word Jello Biafra albums about the PMRC or something.
And stating that a good mathematician can make the numbers say what ever he wants them too, is not discrediting one group of "mathematicians" it is a simple fact.
That one flew way over your head. You obviously missed that your attempt to discredit one group with that statement can be turned around to discredit the group you trust.
No Robert Reich isn't just a left wing political commentator, but I never said that was all that he is.
It is, however, what you chose to describe him as, which also clearly shows your bias and attempt to dismiss him as "nothing more" than a political commentator.
And I will stand by a nonpartisan group, as opposed to something posted on a left or right wing blog.
What part of "a study done by university professors" did you miss? Just because the link to the study was posted on a left-leaning website doesn't change the data of the study.
In a 1996 poll of 1,037 reporters at 61 newspapers, 61% identified themselves as Democrats, 15% as Republicans.
In a 2001 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, media professionals were nearly 7 times likelier to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.
In a 2007 Pew Research Center study of journalists and news executives, the ratio was 4 liberals for each conservative.
That means nothing and doesn't indicate bias in any way, shape, or form. One's personal opinions don't come into play when you are writing a news story, unless you're working for an explicitly biased organization, such as Fox or MSNBC. Moreover, you'll be fired as a journalist for being biased in your reporting.
If your thesis is "all news is biased, therefore journalists with political leanings will skew stories to fit their ideology" I find it lacking as someone who has done extensive coursework, and had some real world experience, in journalism. If ANYTHING, the trend is to overcompensate for one's own bias by including un or under-evidenced talking points that run contrary to the individual journalist's findings to be published in the piece, i.e. false equivalency.
The desire to seem fair and balanced, even in the face of overwhelming evidence for a singular rational conclusion, is the achilles' heel of journalism, not overt political bias.
So for example a reporter would be fired for sending out a tweet on his news company account with a link to a Presidential Candidates donation page? Peter Hamby or there is the opposite, such as the case with Sharyl Attkisson. She was an investigative reporter for CBS.
Recently, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson announced her resignation from CBS, allegedly because the higher-ups within the company were squelching her hard-hitting reporting on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and the disastrous Obamacare rollout.
Attkisson, in a recent interview with Bill O’Reilly, confirmed the rumors: Liberal bias at CBS did indeed play a huge role in her decision to resign. She said that whenever she got close to breaking beneath the surface on a big scandal, she lost support from those who made the decisions about what to cover.
Neverminding that Sharyl Atkisson is a moron who seems to think vaccines cause autism (spoiler alert: they don't), if I were anywhere near as vile as the right-wing sound machine I'd be quick to point out that she is working on a book to sell about all this.
I'm not sure how providing a donation link is the same as overt bias, but I will agree it was unprofessional. But it was also a tweet so...meh. I'd also like to say I don't consider any of the 24 hour networks to be actual journalism, so my statement stands. :)
I've no doubt there are a lot of individual anecdotes about journalists at big, profit (and thus scandal) driven operations acting out of bias, but that's not the vast majority of journalism that is taking place today.
EDIT: Furthermore, I'd like to distinguish between "liberal bias" and other biases. First off, the so-called liberal bias is really more like a Democratic bias, where Democrats haven't been liberals in decades. More importantly, as John Stewart astutely points out, there's more of a laziness bias in modern broadcast news than political bias; the news tends to just be regurgitated press releases and talking points without much true investigative reporting being done on matters.
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But if FoxNews is in the business of making money, like CNN, MSNBC, and the others, then it shouldn't be biased either. FoxNews is in the business of making money.
I have no idea where you're getting that...I certainly didn't say it.
What is patently absurd is to say that all media isn't biased, either right or left.
Wow, good thing I didn't say that, either. Which posts are your reading, exactly?
Divisiveness, would you mean an "us vs. them" sort of thing? Like "stick it to the rich" or affirmative action or religious freedoms. The Democratic is as much or more about divisiveness and fear as the Republicans.
Certainly there are elements in either party that try to capitalize on fear. Blame the rich. Blame the poor. The gays will get you. The bible-thumpers will get you.
For me, the economics boils down to this: Who is more able to victimize others: The poor and disenfranchised, or the rich and powerful?
There is no such thing as a truly free market -- that would be anarchy. All markets operate under constraints that we as a society create and enforce via government. The only real conversation is what works best for society: Unions and worker's rights, which got us decades of expansion, or "trickle-down," which has been bleeding the middle class for 30 years?
But whatever; I'm not going to change your mind. The best I can hope for is to reduce your reflexive hatred of the "other side."
That has nothing to do with a left/right bias. Unless you intend to assert that Jim Freeking Wright was a liberal.He was a Democrat, which is on the Left and covering him would hurt the Left, no matter his voting record.Democrat did not mean leftist in Texas in 1988. The lack of super-common understanding of dynamics in party politics pretty well invalidates all points you would try to make in the topic.
Democrat may not have meant leftist in Texas, but it did in Illinois, Washington DC and most everywhere else. The Media wouldn't cover a story that would hurt the Democratic Party. Since he was a Democrat, the media wouldn't cover that story.
For the record, the Democrats in Chicago aren't exactly left either.
But if FoxNews is in the business of making money, like CNN, MSNBC, and the others, then it shouldn't be biased either. FoxNews is in the business of making money.I have no idea where you're getting that...I certainly didn't say it.
What is patently absurd is to say that all media isn't biased, either right or left.Wow, good thing I didn't say that, either. Which posts are your reading, exactly?
Divisiveness, would you mean an "us vs. them" sort of thing? Like "stick it to the rich" or affirmative action or religious freedoms. The Democratic is as much or more about divisiveness and fear as the Republicans.Certainly there are elements in either party that try to capitalize on fear. Blame the rich. Blame the poor. The gays will get you. The bible-thumpers will get you.
For me, the economics boils down to this: Who is more able to victimize others: The poor and disenfranchised, or the rich and powerful?
There is no such thing as a truly free market -- that would be anarchy. All markets operate under constraints that we as a society create and enforce via government. The only real conversation is what works best for society: Unions and worker's rights, which got us decades of expansion, or "trickle-down," which has been bleeding the middle class for 30 years?
But whatever; I'm not going to change your mind. The best I can hope for is to reduce your reflexive hatred of the "other side."
Those would be your posts, which you conveniently edited out.
By the way, I am not on the right or the left I am a centrist. I agree with many Liberal causes and many Conservative causes.
As for whom victimizes whom? The rich people that spend their time telling poor people that they are victims, victimize those people much more than the rich people that run businesses and provide jobs. What is better for someone, providing jobs or telling someone that the rich people owe him money because they are rich?
As for Unions, they can do a great deal of good and a great deal of bad. When they support workers when the company is in the wrong they are doing good, when they support workers when the worker is in the wrong they are doing bad. Unfortunately they often support workers that are in the wrong.
Just to be honest about it, both my parents were Union members. My father was President of his Union for a while. One of my brothers is a union member and was President of it for a while, and both of my sister in laws are union members. When I see Unions doing the right thing I support them, when I see them doing the wrong thing I don't.
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You act like "providing jobs" justifies the existence of the class divide.
I don't need a job. I can't eat a job, or sleep in it, and it won't keep me warm on cold Wisconsin nights. A job is a means to an end, and the idea of "employment" in this fashion, to employer paymasters one never actually meets, is a pretty damned new idea. Remember what the word employ means, it means use. To be employed is to be used. More often than not, to generate profit for someone you've never met who couldn't care less if you died in a gutter.
Regardless, jobs aren't magically granted by rich people, those rich people and entrepreneurs only hire when and if they belief that hire will generate more profit than what it costs to pay a wage. W=MPL and all that. What generates jobs is demand for a product or service, period.
The Democratic party is a centrist party, with a couple of individuals maybe center-left, and the Republican party is radical right. Being in-between those two positions is still hard right.
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Oh, Vod is centrist. Good, me too. I'm a centrist revolutionary communist.
The Democratic party is a centrist party, with a couple of individuals maybe center-left, and the Republican party is radical right. Being in-between those two positions is still hard right.
Just to chime in,... if you think the Democratic party is leftist, that means you don't know what a leftist party looks like. (Look at Germany and the Social Democratic Party if you want to see a center-left party.)
Similarly, if you think American mainstream media is leftist, you've never seen a leftist paper. (The New York Times is extremely centrist, rivalling The (London) Times in its political views. If you want to see a leftist paper, read The Guardian or the Daily Mirror.)
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Oh, Vod is centrist. Good, me too. I'm a centrist revolutionary communist.
Vive le Galt!
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You act like "providing jobs" justifies the existence of the class divide.
I don't need a job. I can't eat a job, or sleep in it, and it won't keep me warm on cold Wisconsin nights. A job is a means to an end, and the idea of "employment" in this fashion, to employer paymasters one never actually meets, is a pretty damned new idea. Remember what the word employ means, it means use. To be employed is to be used. More often than not, to generate profit for someone you've never met who couldn't care less if you died in a gutter.
Regardless, jobs aren't magically granted by rich people, those rich people and entrepreneurs only hire when and if they belief that hire will generate more profit than what it costs to pay a wage. W=MPL and all that. What generates jobs is demand for a product or service, period.
The Democratic party is a centrist party, with a couple of individuals maybe center-left, and the Republican party is radical right. Being in-between those two positions is still hard right.
Funny, I know my boss (the owner of the company) and see him often. While he isn't in the 1%, he is likely in the top 20%. He owns a business that provides jobs and services in the community. I, who am poor, do not own a business and provide jobs in the community.
No jobs aren't magically granted by rich people, they are created to fill a need. As an example, people needed computers so this college student started building them in his dorm room. Then he convinced his parents to let him build them in his garage. Then he had to hire people to help him build them and ship them out. This kept going and he got rich.
If you don't want to work for someone that you'll never meet, work for a local businessman, or start your own business. Of course if you start your own business and become successful you just might become one of those rich people that you don't seem to like.
Please explain to me this. Why should I, who have a job and earn money to pay for things like food, shelter, and the other things that I have, have to give up some of the money that I earn so that it can be given to someone else that refuses to get a job so he can have food shelter and other things?
Just to be clear, I am poor, I have a minimum wage job. I make enough money that I pay both Federal and State taxes every year. I don't by a few hundred dollars qualify for any assistance from the government, yet a fraction of those taxes I pay are given to someone that isn't willing to get a job.
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What I want to know is: Why should I have to pay taxes to support full-time workers at Wal-Mart?
I want my taxes to support drug-addicted layabouts, not exploited, hard-working proletarians!
$54.40 and a Union or Fight!
For a 6-hour day with no loss in pay!
Make the bosses take the losses!
Vive le Galt!
Well, I'd prefer to shift more of the tax burden to the rich and off of people like you. (Actually, I'd prefer to increase high end marginal taxes and increase the basic deductions, while at the same time increasing pay at the low end and otherwise increasing income equality so that the rich wound up paying a lower share of the burden, though paying a larger percentage of their income.) If I recall correctly, your approach would be to remove the minimum wage, which would quickly lead to your becoming one of those Lucky Duckies who doesn't pay income tax. (At least you oppose raising it. Perhaps you think it's just perfect where it is?)
I would not abolish the minimum wage, nor I am I opposed to it going up. I am opposed to it going up to $10 or $15 an hour. Since the state I live in is talking about raising the minimum wage, my boss expects it to happen and is already figuring out how much he will have to increase prices to cover his increase in expenditures.
OTOH, complaining about benefits for "someone that isn't willing to get a job", in the midst of a jobless recovery from the Great Recession, with unemployment rates still very high is just offensive. All the people who are desperately trying to find work can't. Shall we cut all their benefits too? Leading to a large increase in homelessness, starvation and deaths. Along with a drop in demand which will cause more joblosses.
Since I have a friend, that turned down jobs (because they weren't good enough, although in his field) and have another friend that refuses to get any kind of job and expects the government to pay for him to live. I am talking about people that refuse to work, not people that can't find a job.
If I could set the taxes, I would make it dirt simple. Take your gross income from all sources subtract off 1.5 or 2 times the poverty level for your family and them multiply the remainder by some flat rate. I don't know what the rate numbers would be, but I would eliminate all deductions other than that one based upon the poverty rate. If you make less than amount you pay no taxes, if you make more you pay taxes. Any 10 year old could do your taxes.
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What I want to know is: Why should I have to pay taxes to support full-time workers at Wal-Mart?
I'd rather have my taxes go to someone that is willing to work any job, than someone that refuses to work or work a job that is "below" him.
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I'd rather people who work be able to earn enough to support themselves and not rely on government assistance, especially when they work for employers who receive tax breaks and subsidies to the tune of $7.8 billion/year (claims some group called Americans for Tax Fairness).
[Looks to the left]
Ohmigod, did you see that? Some dude just sold his EBT card for a six pack!
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I'd rather people who work be able to earn enough to support themselves and not rely on government assistance, especially when they work for employers who receive tax breaks and subsidies to the tune of $7.8 billion/year (claims some group called Americans for Tax Fairness).
[Looks to the left]
Ohmigod, did you see that? Some dude just sold his EBT card for a six pack!
Ah yes the old, tax breaks and subsidies for Wal*Mart. Wal*Mart did save about $1 Billion in tax breaks and loopholes, of the Federal Government WON'T close those loopholes and tax breaks.
$70 million in tax breaks by local governments, these are also given to other local businesses for building or expanding within a tax district.
The remaining $6.7 Billion is not money received by Wal*Mart or by the Walton family, it is received by the people working there. By that same logic, the President of the US (whomever it is) gets millions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies, because the government pays for all of his staff. I'm talking about the White House staff, cooks, maids, butlers, etc. all those people that do the stuff that he and his wife used to do or used to pay someone to do.
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The remaining $6.7 Billion is not money received by Wal*Mart or by the Walton family, it is received by the people working there. By that same logic, the President of the US (whomever it is) gets millions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies, because the government pays for all of his staff. I'm talking about the White House staff, cooks, maids, butlers, etc. all those people that do the stuff that he and his wife used to do or used to pay someone to do.
*boggle*
...(head explodes)
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The remaining $6.7 Billion is not money received by Wal*Mart or by the Walton family, it is received by the people working there. By that same logic, the President of the US (whomever it is) gets millions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies, because the government pays for all of his staff. I'm talking about the White House staff, cooks, maids, butlers, etc. all those people that do the stuff that he and his wife used to do or used to pay someone to do.
This is ridiculous.
From Americans for Tax Fairness:
Walmart receives an estimated $6.2 billion annually in mostly federal taxpayer
subsidies. The reason: Walmart pays its employees so little that many of them rely
on food stamps, health care and other taxpayer-funded programs.
So, basically, Wal-mart doesn't pay their employees a living wage, so the people who have jobs can't afford to live on their paychecks and rely on food stamps. But you're opposed to providing food stamps and opposed to mandatory living wages.
And the money saved by Wal*mart not paying employess goes straight into the coffers of Wal*Mart corporate and ultimately to the Walton family and other shareholders.
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So, I found this (Fantastical Nonsense About WalMart, The Waltons And $7.8 Billion In Tax Breaks) which I found to be interesting, and, maybe, a better summation of the "in defense of Wal-Mart" argument.
Way outta my zone, but initial impressions: Wal-Mart saves the various affected American governments tons of money because if the former didn't exist the latter would have to pay even more in welfare benefits.
Which seems to me as a good an example of the need for international proletarian socialist revolution as any I am likely to see today, but I am admittedly partisan.
But, I do want to add that I didn't mean to unfairly pick on Wal-Mart.
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The remaining $6.7 Billion is not money received by Wal*Mart or by the Walton family, it is received by the people working there.
That $6.7b goes to the workers, true.
It goes to the workers, to replace the $6.7b the Walton family witheld from them.
The Walton family get to keep the money they witheld from their workers.
The net result is exactly the same as if the Walmart workers had been paid the correct wage at the correct time, and the tax money had gone directly to the company owners instead.
Therefore, your low wage, working class taxes are going to billionaires, to prop up their bilionaire lifestyle.
Because obviously, you owe them. Somehow.
You cry 'Socialism!' if your taxes support an unemployed person's hand to mouth existence, yet see no contradiction in supporting a billionaire, who refuses to pay their workers correctly.
And they have persuaded you to not only accept this, but to argue for it, and denounce any attempts to correct this.