Because if you tax Bob who makes 24 bucks an hour to feed Sam who is making 12 then Sam is in effect working for below market wages because in a functional market Sam would never work for less money than he required to eat.
This arrangement is a transfer of wealth between the middle class and Walmart regardless of whether they opt to shop at Walmart.
In a world where Bob makes $24/hr and Sam doesn’t work (because he won’t take the $12/hr job), Bob’s probably not going to pay less taxes or be better off.
In a world where Walmart didn't post a gross profit of 24.3% for 2020[1], you might have a point.
But in a world where Walmart posted that much profit on it's $559 billion 2020 revenues[2], somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages.
Which they clearly have the money to actually pay for.
Unless Walmart is a break-even business, there is no excuse, period, for them to not be paying a living wage and getting sponsored by the government for it.
>somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages.
How is it a transfer to walmart? The people who get paid the benefit are eligible for it regardless of whether they're employed by walmart or not. Suppose walmart automated their jobs and replaced them with robots, you'll still be on the hook for paying those benefits.
>if they weren't so huge those people might be making living wages working at Bills and Jims and Franklin's sewing shop.
I'm skeptical of this. If anything amazon's push for minimum wage makes me think they're better able to afford the increased cost of labor than their competitors.
Gross profit is profit before paying their employees, so saying they have a gross profit percentage of X is certainly not dispositive (and is close to meaningless) in terms of supporting whether they could pay their employees more than currently.
You need to look at an operating income figure to make such a conclusion. (Or another financial measure that’s “after” labor, but OI is probably the standard one.)
If Walmart makes 1 single cent of profit while having employees on food stamps, then that is the government sponsoring Walmart's profits by allowing it not to pay it's employees a living wage, and banking the difference as "profit".
They are literally taking your tax dollars to do this.
This is the simplest possible economic calculus: a business that doesn't pay full time employees a living wage is getting sponsored by your tax dollars for its profits.
