Minnesota: Should Wal-Mart Get Taxpayer Help?
Posted on September 10, 2007 by webteam
The simple answer to that, is, of course it should. We should feel nothing but privileged to help pay for a multi-billion dollar corporation to locate one of its giant, symmetrical, box-tastic stores in our neighborhood…we might as well, since we’re going to end up helping to pay for the healthcare of its employees and their children anyway. Why not go for the whole shabang, right?
Apparently, however, not everyone is so willing to give up their hard earned money to support Lee Scott’s blue-polo crew as I am. Its obvious that Bayard Black, America-hater and proud resident of Mankato “enemy of the Dakota people” Minnesota – a city that shelled out a cool $2 million in taxpayer money so a Wal-Mart distribution center would locate in town – does not feel that Wal-Mart is so deserving of our love…and more importantly, or tax dollar support. HE thinks that a company with over $350 billion in earnings, the largest corporation in the United States, should have to pay its own way.
Whoa, whoa there Bayard! That is crazy talk…C-R-A-Z-Y talk. So what if the House Committee on Education and Workforce found that taxpayers would have to pay $420,750 per year for a hypothetical Wal-Mart store employing 200 people, or $2,103 per employee? I laugh at your “facts” and “statistics” Bayard, if that is your real name. Support your local Wal-Mart…these mom and pop stores I keep seeing Sam Walton advertising for on the TV need all the help we can give them.
With that said, you go Brayard:
Wal-Mart doesn’t deserve taxpayer help [Mankato Free Press]
In late 2005, the Blue Earth County Board of Commissioners introduced a resolution to give Wal-Mart a $2 million subsidy for infrastructure improvement on a new distribution center in the name of increasing the community’s tax base.
What they failed to consider was that the national average wage of a Wal-Mart employee is $8.23 an hour, according to independent expert statistical analysis, which falls below poverty lines, and only 48 percent of Wal-Mart employees receive health care.
What does that mean for the general public?
Wal-Mart lets the government pay for its employees’ health care and other basic needs. Nationally, a 2004 report by the House Committee on Education and Workforce found that taxpayers would have to pay $420,750 per year for a hypothetical Wal-Mart store employing 200 people, or $2,103 per employee.
With over $351 billion in earnings last year, the largest company in the United States for the fifth time in six years could certainly afford to pay their own way.
I don’t recall the Blue Earth County Board of Commissioners offering my wife and me any cash when we opened our business in downtown Mankato. Every tax dollar that goes to Wal-Mart is a tax dollar that could otherwise go to our schools, our healthcare and our environment. Instead, those dollars are going to some of the richest people on earth and whoever is lowest bidder in global manufacturing market.
Wal-Mart was second in campaign contributions in the 2004 federal elections, according to USA Today. It seems as if though their investment has really paid off.
Bayard Black
Mankato
