Not so breaking news, DUmmies hate Wal Mart.

[RobJohnson]

 

Fri Jan 17, 2014, 12:57 PM

Star Member DonViejo (6,568 posts)

Bernie Sanders rips Walmart: Why should taxpayers subsidize ‘starvation wages’?

   
Source: Raw Story



By Travis Gettys
Friday, January 17, 2014 12:28 EST

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demanded that a panel of experts justify why America’s shrinking middle class should continue to subsidize the nation’s wealthiest family in a heated exchange Thursday during a congressional panel.

The Senate’s lone independent pointed out during the panel on income inequality that more Americans were currently living in poverty than at any point in the nation’s history as the top 1 percent siphoned off 95 percent of all income generated between 2009 and 2012.

“Does anyone on that panel … think that that makes moral sense or economic sense?” Sanders asked. “Does anybody think it makes moral or economic sense that one family, the Walton family, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people?”


He continued his attack on the family that founded Walmart, which drew a formal complaint Wednesday from the National Labor Relations Board accusing the retailer of illegally threatening or punishing employees who considered taking part in strikes to protest working conditions.

“The Walton family is the wealthiest family in America,” Sanders said. “Does anybody on the panel think that they need significant welfare help? And yet it turns out that they are the largest recipient of welfare in America.”

He accused the retailer of paying its employees “starvation wages,” which in turn forced working families into taxpayer-funded social welfare programs to help pay for their medical care, food and housing.

“Do you think the Walton family, worth a hundred billion dollars, is in need of welfare from the middle class of this country, or do you think maybe we should raise the minimum wage so that those workers can earn a living wage and not have to get Medicaid or food stamps?” Sanders asked the panel.

The first panelist, Scott Winship, of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, offered to answer an earlier question, but Sanders insisted that he justify why taxpayers should subsidize Walmart’s wages with welfare.

“I would not use the word welfare, I think it’s stigmatizing,” Winship said, adding that Walmart offered low prices to its customers.


The exchange turned testy, as Sanders continued to insist that Winship answer the question as he’d asked it.

“I think that we should not raise the wage above levels that’s going to cause Walmart to not hire their workers,” Winship said. “The only way that they’re able to have the prices, which benefit low-income people more than people up on the income distribution (scale), is by paying wages that are not as high as you or I might like.”

The next panelist, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, said he did not think taxpayers should subsidize any corporation that failed to pay its workers enough to survive.

“That is corporate welfare of the worst kind,” said Reich, a public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

Reich added that Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, paid its workers an average of $8.80 an hour. By comparison, he said, the nation’s largest employer in 1955 was General Motors, which paid workers an average of $37 an hour in today’s money.

Sanders next asked Aparna Mathur, American Enterprise Institute, to defend Walmart’s labor practices.

“I don’t think we should be subsidizing Walmart, but I think workers have a choice about where they want to work,” Mathur said. “If they’re choosing to work at Walmart, you know, that is their choice and we should not decide for them whether it’s a good choice.”

She defended the use of taxpayer-funded social welfare programs to boost the living conditions of working families.

“These are poverty programs that benefits go directly to workers, (and) if you think that they’re creating jobs and people are able to work and enough benefits to survive, then I think that’s a good thing,” Mathur said.

Melissa Kearney, of the Brookings Institute, echoed Mathur’s comments, pointing out that dozens of candidates applied for each available job when Walmart opened its first location in Washington, D.C.

“I think Walmart is a brilliant innovation and I have no beef with the Walton family,” Kearney said. “It would be great if people could move up the wage distribution faster at Walmart and aspire to management positions and better positions for themselves and their children.”

Watch this video of the panel discussion posted online by Bernie Sanders:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/17/bernie-sanders-rips-walmart-why-should-taxpayers-subsidize-starvation-wages/

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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/17/bernie-sanders-rips-walmart-why-should-taxpayers-subsidize-starvation-wages/ 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014700277

ladywnch (2,619 posts)

5. i LOVE IT.....

now, according to Mathur, we have a 'choice' to work at Walmart.... people make a choice to work for starvation wages.... I didn't realize that!

First they tell us, people are to lazy to work and need to take any job that is available (regardless of whether you can survive on the pay) or they get nothing.... then when it's pointed out that these jobs don't relieve the welfare system because they don't pay a living wage, they have the gall to say it's the worker's 'choice' to be in that position!!!!!

I think, feel, believe that everyone of these SOBs who espouse the BS that Walmart is a model of employment and people can live on minimum wage should be MADE TO LIVE on minimum wage for 1 year to prove their point. No funds from any other sources.....just the minimum wage job paycheck........and not a 40 hour minimum wage job paycheck, a real 30 - 32 hour a week paycheck like folks really get......(almost no one in minimum wage gets 40 hours these days)

When they can prove they can live on those wages for a year.....Then maybe I'll listen to what they have to say.

I know it's wrong, but I just want to slap people like these two twitts.....I wanna slap them back to the middle ages where they belong

brett_jv (450 posts)

29. That's not the point ...

Last edited Fri Jan 17, 2014, 03:43 PM - Edit history (1)

The issue here is that the standard right-wing talking point is that 'welfare recipients' are all a bunch of unemployed slacker layabouts. They don't want the general public to consider that many (if not MOST) people who take welfare actually HAVE JOBS, many of them working hard to help enrich the 1% (i.e. Walmart Employees), because it f*cks up their propaganda line. They'd likely prefer that the common vernacular would develop some OTHER name for these underpaid people who receive government assistance ASIDE from 'people on Welfare'. Surprised the person speaking didn't offer a new name for such people, hoping it somehow catches on.

The stupid is strong, the thread is worth reading for a good laugh. If you are on blood pressure medication, take your medication first.

[HawkHogan]

Dummies are mad that they lack the skills and personality necessary to move up the corporate ladder.  They demand 15 dollars an hour for an entry level job that is meant to propel them to a better position. 

[jukin]

However, Walmart does provide better insurance at a cheaper price to their employees than does Obama Care. So they got that going for them.

[RobJohnson]

However, Walmart does provide better insurance at a cheaper price to their employees than does Obama Care. So they got that going for them.

True.

[Sprout]

Dummies are mad that they lack the skills and personality necessary to move up the corporate ladder.  They demand 15 dollars an hour for an entry level job that is meant to propel them to a better position. 

DUmmies are mad that they lack the skills and personality necessary to work at Walmart, much less move up the corporate  ladder.

[JohnnyReb]

Bite the hand that feeds you DUmmies. I read an article the other day that stated that WAL-MART was the third highest income/corporate tax paying company in the U.S....after two of those evil oil companies.

Sell them cheaper clothes and food then pay enough taxes to fund a lot of their freebies and do they appreciate it?......hell no.

[RobJohnson]

Star Member closeupready (20,925 posts)

13. What I can't get: Hillary Clinton was on Walmart's Board of Directors

for how many years (7? 8? 9?), while Bill was governor of Arkansas. Not surprisingly in that light, she has long favored outsourcing of jobs.

I'd like to hear more from her about her thoughts on outsourcing, and why voters should give her gig with Walmart a pass, considering it in the light cast by Sanders here.

The issues regarding overtime and unequal pay for equal work are also concerns

 

[tanstaafl]

ladywnch (2,619 posts)

5. i LOVE IT.....

now, according to Mathur, we have a 'choice' to work at Walmart.... people make a choice to work for starvation wages.... I didn't realize that!

What? wench lady primitive, are you suggesting that ALL Walmart employees were shanghaied off the street and pressed into labor at their stores?

[RobJohnson]

What? wench lady primitive, are you suggesting that ALL Walmart employees were shanghaied off the street and pressed into labor at their stores?

Of course they don't mind that churches are REQUIRED to pay for abortions, and bake shops are FORCED to bake wedding cakes for gay couples.

[RobJohnson]

gwheezie (70 posts)

40. People really don't have a choice about working at walmart
 

or fast food places when you cinsider the scam that "welfare to work" is, it provides a tax deduction for the company to pay wages so low that single moms continue to require tax payer support and not get enough skills to move to better jobs and a steady stream of workers so desperate to get their little bit of food stamps or rent subsidy they are forced to work at these jobs. Give me a break, what form of governmnet is it that sets it up so the working slob pays for the wealthy to get wealthier

.

Poor single moms have to work a few hours to get free rent and food. 

[tanstaafl]

.

gwheezie (70 posts)

40. People really don't have a choice about working at walmart
or fast food places

Poor single moms have to work a few hours to get free rent and food. 

And yet another DUmmie that thinks people are dragged off the street and forced to work at Walmart and Mickey Dees. Like no one, not one single person, has filled out an application and gone through an interview process, no matter how weak or short.
In agreeance with you, RobJ...Wheezing primitive is a LOSER extraordinaire.

[RobJohnson]

Poor single moms have to work a few hours to get free rent and food. 


And yet another DUmmie that thinks people are dragged off the street and forced to work at Walmart and Mickey Dees. Like no one, not one single person, has filled out an application and gone through an interview process, no matter how weak or short.
In agreeance with you, RobJ...Wheezing primitive is a LOSER extraordinaire.

Exactly. Some people actually enjoy working for a living. Others are there to supplement the family's income by working part time. People in my town complain that even entry level jobs are difficult to find due to high unemployment (I thought Obama fixed that) then again a lot of the people that say they want to work, really don't want to.