Originally published at: Bernie Sanders skewers Walmart, the "largest welfare recipient" in the US | Boing Boing
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The man is a National Treasure, FACT!
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Should have been our President.
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Companies should be fined severely if most of their workforce requires public assistance to survive. They are literally stealing from the taxpayers. There is no excuse for forcing the public to support full time employees of a company because they are too cheap to pay living wages/provide necessary benefits.
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To make it even better, the government handles Walmart’s recruiting, forcing welfare recipients to work there on pain of losing all benefits.
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Agreed. I was listening to Bernie and his sentiment was SOOOO heartening!
Here are the Poverty Income Guidelines, if anyone’s interested
Most relief programs kick in at 180% or 200% of those levels, so a family of 4 with 2 full-time working parent’s making $10/hr each would qualify for several programs.
As they should. That’s not enough to live on.
But why should that company be making a profit?
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$15 minimum wage
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The more they debate and drag their feet on the $15 minimum wage the more it starts to feel like it oughta be $25.
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Ten years ago would’ve been the time for $15/hr. Now it needs to be at least $20/hr.
edit: @tenbrook you beat me to it as I was calculating the percentage of take-home pay necessary to pay the average one-bedroom rent at $15/hr. I didn’t post it because it’s utterly depressing.
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@IronEdithKidd Great minds think alike!
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I was in a Walmart in April or May after seeing every small business in the area institute safety measures. Walmart had zero protections out for their checkout stands. No regard for human life. They caved to pressure as it became a rallying point for SEIU which is trying to to unionize their employees. Edit: I just remembered this. At the exact same time they finally did something, they also threw a ton of money into advertisements in which they described their employees as “heroes.”
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It ought to be simpler than that. Person in receipt of benefits has their employer’s taxes increased by amount of benefits paid. (In UK it ought - in principle - to be easy via PAYE.)
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I’ve thought for years now that it ought to start at $15/hr., with yearly COLAs tied to the inflation rate. That way the minimum wage never has to be legislated again; it goes on autopilot.
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I’d like to point out that there are at least two stable equilibria that are each better than what we have now.
- Make it illegal to pay less than a local living wage (and still have public assistance for people who can’t work, or can’t find work).
- Eliminate minimum wage laws and instantiate a UBI sufficient for people to meet their basic needs, and admit that anyone who stops working as a result is making a decision that’s right for them according to their best ability to judge, and is only costing the economy whatever pittance of a wage they would earn in the now-minimum-wage-free workforce.
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I can’t vouch for the veracity this source, but it suggests that if minimum wage were tied to US productivity growth since 1968, it would be $24/hr now.
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I wish I could give more likes to every thread here! I’ve sworn off Walmart and wish Covid didn’t make it so hard to frequent local places more often.
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not sure about walmart, but a lot of companies big and small shave your time just below full-time to avoid having to pay for health insurance. it’s part of why some people have multiple jobs: they can’t get full time employment at one place.
the other trick is hiring “contractors” – which enables places like walmart or krogers whatever to hire undocumented workers and pay even less than peanuts.
the best route around loop holes would ( probably ) be to just tax companies, wall street transactions, and wealth in general. then invest in public healthcare, transportation, education, etc. to help separate people’s direct dependency on corporations.
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one of the demands of the march on washington in 1963 – where mlk gave his “i have a dream” speech – was a $2 dollar minimum wage. that would have been $15 dollars an hour when the 15 minimum wage campaign started.
( and yeah, matched to productivity, the growth of the economy, or the growth of the wealth of the 1% – and it would be much much more now. )
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So it appears this is not the guy that the majority of US workers think should be in charge. Ok then …
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