Walmart is THE Money Sucking Leech

Or, Subsidy is a Four Letter Word

I do not shop at Walmart, I haven't spent a dime there in close to 20 years. And yet my money is STILL going to help bridge the gap between how much they pay and the services Walmart employees and their families need and use.

Walmart is the largest corporation on the planet. It is owned by the wealthiest family on the planet and yet I, not the wealthiest anything anywhere, am being forced to help pay for the services that Walmart has weaseled out of.

At best, this unethical, unseemly and unsustainable. At its worst, this is a codified business decision to maximize profits for as long as possible until the whole shithouse falls down around their ears.

Walmart CAN pay a living wage but they will not until they are forced to do so. This is, coincidentally, a strong argument against libertarian "ideals" of letting the free market sort everything out. The free market sorted out Walmart and we are still paying the price today, you, me, every single one of us is paying Walmart to exist.

I'd like to cancel that payment, now and into the future. If Walmart cannot stand on its own feet without my subsidies then they do not deserve to be in business.

How Wal-Mart Steals From Us All

Walmart's Executive Bonuses Cost Taxpayers Millions

This new report, co-published by IPS and Americans for Tax Fairness, reveals that taxpayers (note, NOT Walmart customers exclusively, we are all being forced to pay their executive bonuses) also subsidize much of the cost of Walmart’s executive pay.

Key report findings: 

• Walmart reduced its federal tax bills by an estimated $104 million over the past six years by exploiting a tax loophole that allowed eight top executives to pocket more than $298 million in “performance pay” that was fully tax deductible.  That sum would have been enough to cover the cost of free school lunches for 33,000 children for those six years.

• Michael T. Duke, Walmart’s recently retired President & CEO and currently Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, pocketed nearly $116 million in exercised stock options and other “performance pay” during the period 2009-2014. That translates into a taxpayer subsidy for Walmart of more than $40 million—enough to cover the average cost of food stamps for 4,200 people for those six years.

• Taxpayers would save $50 billion over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, if Congress closed this perverse “performance pay” loophole by capping the tax deduction at $1 million for each employee’s total compensation, with no exceptions for performance pay.

Full report: PDF

Full report with year by year data breakdown: PDF