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Walmart is ‘the largest recipient of public aid in the country’

Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) said Monday that he will put mega-retailer Walmart squarely in his sights during the next Congress for the company’s liberal use of public assistance programs to supplement their workers’ wages.

Speaking to Current TV host Cenk Uygur on Monday’s episode of “The Young Turks,” Grayson called Walmart “the largest recipient of public aid in the country,” saying their low wages force workers to take food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid just to get by.

“The taxpayer pays for the earned income credit,” he said. “The taxpayer pays for Medicaid. The taxpayer pays for unemployment insurance when they cut hours down. And the taxpayer pays for other forms of public assistance like food stamps. I think the taxpayer is getting fed up of paying these things when, in fact, Walmart could give every employee its got, even the CEO, a 30 percent raise and still be profitable.”

He added that while the health care mandate in the Affordable Care Act will help, “that’s just the start.”

“In state after state after state, Walmart employees represent the largest group of Medicaid recipients, the largest group of food stamp recipients, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear that burden,” Grayson said. “It should be Walmart. So, we’re going to take that burden and put it where it belongs: on Walmart.”

read more and watch the video at The Raw Story

It goes even further than this, those Walmart employees who make so little that they need to be on foodstamps more than likely spend their foodstamps at Walmart.

In fact, Walmart and other retailers make a killing off of food stamps.

Folks want to complain about people on foodstamps and where their tax money is being spent should take a good hard look at corporations like Walmart who directly benefit from keeping their workers’ wages so low that they need to be on foodstamps to get by. 

We are basically subsidizing Walmart’s profits and in more way than one - first by paying their employees shit so their employees have to use public assistance, then by the profits they make on customers shopping with foodstamps.

Why do we villainize people on public assistance without looking at who is actually benefiting from the fact that people have to be on assistance?  

On judging what people on food stamps buy with “your tax money”

The government does a lot of shit with taxes I don’t agree with, but we aren’t accomplishing anything by judging and stigmatizing people who end up on the “losing” side of capitalism, a “losing” side that must exist under such a system - otherwise you wouldn’t have waiters who serve your food, maids to clean your hotel room or other such low paid workers that provide services to those of us who are able to afford such services.

These people are already stigmatized enough by this “if you’re struggling it’s your own fault” mentality so much of this country has, when the low paid worker is an essential and necessary part of the system we live under.

The least we can do is recognize this and leave the people who are less fortunate than us the hell alone and let them live their lives and go about their business without being judged to the point where they feel uncomfortable going to the freaking grocery store.

Welfare Recipients Are Actually Mostly White And Less Likely Than The Average American To Use Drugs

Here’s a graphic circulating around Facebook AGAIN. I’m sick of it, and I think it is stupid:

Short answer: No, and fuck the people who made this graphic.

Long answer: Let’s learn from what happened in Florida.

Gov. Voldemort Rick Scott (who, not coincidentally, has a financial interest in a drug testing facility; he just transferred legal ownership of it to his WIFE) decided to drug test welfare recipients. This cost taxpayers millions of dollars and lined his wallet, and they found that only 2% of all welfare recipients tested actually tested positive for drugs. Of that 2%, ALL of them had family members who were eligible for welfare, so NO welfare money was saved by attempting to deny it to people on drugs. (I’ll also note that I heard nothing about getting people who tested positive into a rehab, or any concern for innocent minor children who rely on welfare to, you know, not starve.)

Now considering that data exists that has found that 5% of Americans use illegal drugs (that’s the LOWEST percentage I have found; other data puts it at 22 million people, or 9% of the population), that means that, according to the findings in Florida where only 2% of the tested population tested positive, people on welfare are LESS LIKELY to use illegal drugs. In fact, people on welfare are anywhere from 3% to 7% LESS LIKELY to be using illegal drugs than the general population as a whole.

Also, let’s not pretend that there are not “false positives” when drug testing, because there are. Your legal doctor-prescribed medications can show up as opiates or other “illegal” drugs. You can eat a poppyseed bagel and have a false positive. If there is a possibility that a test could be WRONG and deny a family some needed assistance so they can EAT, there is something gravely wrong with the idea.

Also, just as an aside, if you think that people on food assistance are rolling in free Government Cheese Bucks, consider that the average allotment comes out to about a dollar and change per meal. What can you buy to eat for less than two bucks a meal? Think on that. Now imagine doing that forever. Until you are denied benefits, of course.

read more

Okay, an answer to that food stamp question

As of June 2011 there were 45,183,931 people on food stamps.

Of that:

• 35% are white or 15,814,375 white people.
• 22% are African American, or 9,940,264 black people.

The full breakdown is:

35% are White
22% are African American
10% are Hispanic
2% are Asian
4% are Native American
19% are Unknown

Further breakdowns aside from race:

• 49% of all participants are children (17 or younger), and 49% of them live in single-parent households.
• 15% of all participants are elderly (age 60 or over).
• 20% of all participants are non-elderly disabled people.
• The average gross monthly income per food stamp household is $731; The average net income is $336.

All information is from the US Department of Agriculture.