Who Pays Wal-Mart's Employees?

Does this make sense to you?

Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and many other corporations readily admit that they don't pay enough and/or offer enough hours for the majority of their employees to get by without public assistance. Capitalistic thinkers say this is just good business practice that helps boost profits.

Depending on an outside entity to pay employees so the company can increase profits isn't Capitalism. It's a form of Socialism some call Corporatism. An aspect of socialism is that a portion of revenue is used by the government to provide benefits for all members of the society. Some use the negative sounding term "redistribution of wealth", implying that rich people have their supposedly hard earned money taken from them by the government and given to undeserving poor people as some sort of free ride.

Right now, here is what we have: Wal-Mart, as an example, posted yearly profits of $17.6 billion. At the same time, Wal-Mart employees collected $2.66 billion in public assistance last year. What that means that American tax payers gave Wal-Mart $2.66 billion towards that $17.6 billion in profits, WITHOUT HAVING ANY MERCHANDISE TO SHOW FOR IT. That's right, everyone who pays taxes is giving FREE MONEY to Wal-Mart, along with McDonald's, and every other corporation which reaps big profits while most of its employees collect assistance.

As I understand it, in Capitalism, the idea is that a company survives and profits based on its own ability to compete in the marketplace. If the government is subsidizing over 15% of Wal-Mart's or McDonald's or Starbucks's profits, how does that qualify as Capitalism? It doesn't. The government giving money to corporations in order for them to operate is Socialism, plain and simple.

Yet the response of many Americans (a response programmed into them by the corporate controlled media and equally corporate controlled Republican party) is to blame the workers. “If they don't like working at Wal-Mart (or fill in the blank) they should just find another job”. This is one of the most inane statements I can think of on this subject.

First it infers that those working at places which underpay aren't trying to find better paying jobs. Or, worse, it carries a mentality that the employees of these places are second rate citizens who deserve the jobs they have due to lack of training or motivation to get better jobs. Consider the millions of people who work at these jobs, such an assumption is statistically unsupportable.

The second inanity of the statement is that it's simply a, selfish, cowardly response to an age old problem. From the moment the first “king” who used force of arms started claiming that all the land belonged to him so everyone who worked it had to give him money, there have been self-serving people who have supported such acts for their own benefit.

The “Gentry” has always benefited from supporting the class system which funnels a disproportionate amount of wealth to the aristocracy. If Wal-Mart, McDonald's et al raised wages, people would have to pay a little more for Levi's, Big Macs and their morning lattes, and “Gentrified” people certainly don't what to have to do that. They work hard for their money (or so they say), apparently harder than the underpaid employees who stock the shelves with Levi's, make the Big Macs and serve the lattes, so they are entitled to lower prices more than the employees are entitled to a decent wage.

The irony is these same people will complain about how high their taxes are and how their tax dollars are being squandered on helping lazy, poor people buy steak with food stamps and get free cell phones. They don't stop to think that their tax dollars are also helping the Walton family buy race horses and multimillion dollar mansions, or McDonald's or Starbucks pay their CEOs over $9200.00 an hour.

So, it doesn't make sense to me that not only do so many corporations depend on the government (meaning the rest of us) to pay their workers with nothing to show for it in return. It also doesn't make sense to me how readily people will come to the defense of the situation. Not that I don't comprehend how and why people do that. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense.

Does it make sense to you?

Thanks to Huffington Post Business Insider  and Daily Kos for information regarding salaries and profits.