By Nathan Barton
Does WalMart collect $2.6 billion a year in corporate welfare from the government? Well, according to Freedom Force, the mega-corp does. That is, IF you buy the logic of Michael Snyder, who calculates how full-time employees of WalMart collect an average of $5,815 a year ($420,000 per store) in welfare benefits because they aren’t able to make it on WalMart’s poor salaries. (Now, I admit that Mr. Snyder took a lot of his “facts” from a Bloomberg article, not exactly the best source for someone who loves liberty. But then, nobody forced him to use that source, or fail to check it out.)
Now, there is no doubt that WalMart makes a LOT of money. And has a lot of employees. Some get minimum wage (currently $7.25), and some get a lot more. There is a movement to double the minimum to $15/hour (for among others fast-food workers and Walmart). There are supposedly 1.2 million WM workers in the US (according to Freedom Force and Bloomberg, but WalMart claims 1.3 million), so the argument goes that if every WalMart worker gets another $6,000 a year, $6.978, call it $7 billion, comes out of WM’s $17 billion in annual profits: shucks, less than half. Except that “Freedom Force” can’t use a calculator or do the math, because $7.2 is a LOT more than the 2.6 they claim. And for the average, “full-time worker” (getting 30 hours per week of work as defined by the Fuehrer and ObummerCare), their base pay is now $11,310 (if they just get minimum wage), and this would increase it to $17,310 ($11.10 per hour). (Except that an enemy claims that the average low-end WalMart employee was already getting $22,000/year in 2013.) Continue reading
The Price of Liberty 
Libertarian Commentary on the News, #14-53A: Slow weekend
By Nathan Barton
The end of 2014 approaches, and the beginning of a new, and hopefully better, year for the world. For the weekend between Christmas 2014 and New Year’s 2015, things seem to be pretty slow. At least news-wise. I noticed this when stopping to eat lunch in Alliance Nebraska today (Sunday): the local newspaper (the Times-Herald) main front page story was concerning the benefit of microorganisms in soil, and the second lead story was the local sugar production numbers from Great Western Sugar. And goats eating Christmas trees. Clearly not a “if it bleeds, it leads” sort of place right now.
Nationally and even worldwide, it seems much the same. Yes, another Malaysian jet has disappeared over the water someplace, and no one can find it yet. And there is still fighting and killing across much of the planet. And the UN small arms control treaty went into effect on Christmas Eve (the US did NOT sign it). And stock and commodity prices wobbled, as usual, during holiday sessions. But Congress is NOT in session… always a good thing. And of course, the Fuehrer is spending millions of taxpayer dollars a day enjoying his “homeland” White House in Hawai’i. But there are a few things going on: Continue reading →