[Vision2020] Chicken or the Egg, Which Came First, Wal-Mart or Food Stamps?

[Donovan Arnold]

"The statement remains that an employer must pay livable wages, the wages that  keep employees off of welfare."--Tom Hansen
  
  How do you do that without causing inflation which harms those not  currently working, retired, living on fixed income, on SSI, and banks?
  
  How do you think companies pay their workers? They pay through sales on  the product or service. If costs go up, so does the price of bread.  Bread goes up, bread is no longer affordable to the poor. So do you  raise the wages again? No, you work on reducing costs. How do you  reduce costs? You reduce costs through increased productivity. One way  you increase production is by getting people that are not working to  work.
  
 Increasing wages causes inflation. Inflation hurts the  non-working poor, who are unfortunately worse off then the working  poor. 
  
 There is no free lunch. You cannot steal from the  poor to pay the poor and expect conditions to change. Inflation does  not solve the problem. 
  
  Take Care,
  
  Donovan J Arnold
  
  
  
  

Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:              v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}          st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }                    Perhaps you are right, Arnold.   Perhaps a large percentage (maybe even most) of Wal-Mart’s employees  were collecting welfare prior to their employment at Wal-Mart.
    
  The statement remains that an employer must pay livable wages, the wages that  keep employees off of welfare.
     
    Tom Hansen
    Moscow, Idaho
     
            "If not us, who?
  If not now, when?"
  
  - Unknown
    
    
            
---------------------------------
    
    From:  vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Donovan Arnold
  Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006  11:38 AM
  To: DonaldH675 at aol.com;  vision2020 at moscow.com
  Subject: [Vision2020] Chicken or  the Egg, Which Came First,Wal-Mart or Food Stamps?
    
     
        "Certainly the  facts about how many current Walmart employees in Moscow  use the county indigent health care system and how many qualify for  food stamps are relevant information because we all pay for those  services." Don Huskey
  
 Good point. However, how many Wal-Mart  employees were already on Food Stamps, Social Security, Disability, or  a government assisted program BEFORE being hired by Wal-Mart? That is  the question that should be asked.
   
  It  would strike me as odd that someone with skills, experience, an  education and/or the ability to get hired elsewhere would stay at a job  that pays so little they stay on food stamps. 
  
 Wal-Mart also  gets dinged because most companies ! will not hire senior citizens and  the disabled because of medical costs. These people probably are being  underpaid, but cannot get hired elsewhere. It is easy to offer medical  benefits when you weed those people out of your workforce like so many  companies do. 
  
 Which came first for the Wal-mart employee,  the Food Stamps or the job at Wal-Mart? This is fundamental before  accusations are made!
  
  -DJA
  
  DonaldH675 at aol.com  wrote:
        I  just saw on the news (and I missed most of the details because I was  doing other things at the same time) that a state has passed  legislation requiring Walmart to carry health insurance! for it's  workers in that state. Maybe we need to lobby the state to do something  similar. Certainly the facts about how many current Walmart employees  in Moscow  use the county indigent health care system and how many qualify for  food stamps are relevant information because we all pay for those  services. I suspect when all is said and done we'll find that Walmart's  low prices are a sham and that the additional cost of to the public of  supporting the store exceeds the benefits of the low prices. Since I  have not seen any actual analyses I could be wrong.
    
         
    
        Don  Huskey
  
  "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then  you win." Mahatma Gandhi
    
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