danielle-mertina:

lastoneout:

poorrichardjr:

“The next time you drive into a Walmart parking lot, pause for a second to note that this Walmart–like the more than five thousand other Walmarts across the country– cost taxpayers about $1 million in direct subsidies to the employees who don’t earn enough money to pay for an apartment, buy food, or get even the most basic health care for their children. In total, Walmart benefits from more than $7 billion in subsidies each year from taxpayers like you. Those “low, low prices” are made possible by low, low wages–and by the taxes you pay to keep those workers alive on their low, low pay. Every year, employers like retailers and fast-food outlets pay wages that are so low that the rest of America ponies up a collective $153 billion to subsidize their workers. That’s $153 billion every year.”

— Elizabeth Warren, The Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class

(via danielle-mertina)

(Completely true Walmart is shitty and shady af but please make sure we don’t end up shaming people who can’t afford to shop anywhere else.)

This isn’t about people who shop at Walmart (many of whom are Walmart workers themselves).

It is about how the government doesn’t require Walmart the company to pay their workers a living wage and so you have millions of full-time workers who don’t make enough $ to survive.

This argument is transferable to basically every major retail or fast food corporation in the U.S.