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Comment by tracer4201 | Hacker News Reader

Very lengthy article. This part about Walmart made me raise an eyebrow, and I’ll admit, I kept reading to see if the author addresses this further because at that point I felt biased against this article but didn’t want to pass judgement and stop reading prematurely.

>It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime.

I stopped reading half way through. I fundamentally disagree with that statement. A good chunk of Walmart’s workforce were scheduled to work part time hours to avoid receiving any benefits, and of course they were subsidized by the tax payer.

I would know - in the mid 90s, I was one of them! Tencare provided my health coverage, my 6 year old received free lunch, I had reduced rent, and I had assistance for groceries.

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The author's claim is that Walmart is "most successful social welfare system ever implemented" because it saves Americans billions of dollars every year due to the cost savings it provides.

Your claim is that this is wrong because Walmart intentionally structures their employees hours so that they do not need to pay for certain benefits.

I don't think the two claims are mutually exclusive. While I might not go as far as to say that Walmart is the most successful social welfare system every, I have not problem saying that Walmart has meaningfully improved the lives of medium and low income Americans over the last 40 years.

You left off "without costing taxpayers a dime" in your quote. It may have been a net positive, but they specifically structured their compensation plan for their employees to extract a maximum value from the social welfare system. Even if Walmart employed more people than the smaller stores they replaced, if even 1 employee of Walmart would have otherwise had a job that provided healthcare, then "not a dime" is overstating things.

The author implied "without costing taxpayers a dime" to mean "without directly receiving tax dollars" which is true. Taking "without costing taxpayers a dime" to mean "ensuring their employee's received no government benefits" is quite a stretch.

> they specifically structured their compensation plan for their employees to extract a maximum value from the social welfare system

While the outcome of Walmart's actions might have been this, I think it much closer to Walmart's goal to say that they worked to minimize the total cost of labor. The two are very different ideas of what Walmart's obligations are.

>Even if Walmart employed more people than the smaller stores they replaced, if even 1 employee of Walmart would have otherwise had a job that provided healthcare, then "not a dime" is overstating things.

This is a really tricky standard. By this standard. Imagine if Walmart employed 50 people, 40 at minimum wage, 10 with full benefits, and drove out of two smaller stores that provided 25 full benefit jobs. There is a net loss of 15 full benefit jobs, you say this is really bad. But, 25 more people have jobs. This very well could net decrease government welfare to the area.

The details get really tricky and the truth could be one way or another. I personally have no data to inform an opinion one way or another.

Costs to taxpayers also go beyond their employee policies. Walmart was a leader in moving shopping centres outside city limits to avoid paying expensive taxes. By moving tax revenue from retail business away from cities, the tax burden on residents near them has increased. There are many other ways in which they've managed to minimize their taxes, like getting cities to pay for extra roads and infrastructure or receiving special deals, which is arguably how any profit-maximizing business should be expected to act. Ideally, governments should use this data to continually analyze the effectiveness of tax laws and make adjustments to avoid any potential exploitation.

Quick comment before addressing your points: I'm not actually a Walmart hater; I just think TFA overstates the case for them being beneficial.

> The author implied "without costing taxpayers a dime" to mean "without directly receiving tax dollars" which is true. Taking "without costing taxpayers a dime" to mean "ensuring their employee's received no government benefits" is quite a stretch.

I disagree with this characterization of "without costing taxpayers a dime;" I'm willing to forgive opportunity costs, but e.g. moving people from private healthcare to subsidized health care is IMO a direct cost.

Even if I didn't disagree, Walmart has certainly been directly receiving tax dollars in one form or another, as any large corporation will do (see e.g. Amazon's recent attempt to get cities to bid for their presence).

> they specifically structured their compensation plan for their employees to extract a maximum value from the social welfare system

> While the outcome of Walmart's actions might have been this, I think it much closer to Walmart's goal to say that they worked to minimize the total cost of labor. The two are very different ideas of what Walmart's obligations are.

For low-compensation jobs these are roughly the same thing because, once you hit a certain level of compensation, cutting wages must result in either your employees ending up starving to death or beneficiaries of the social welfare system.

>> Even if Walmart employed more people than the smaller stores they replaced, if even 1 employee of Walmart would have otherwise had a job that provided healthcare, then "not a dime" is overstating things.

> This is a really tricky standard. By this standard. Imagine if Walmart employed 50 people, 40 at minimum wage, 10 with full benefits, and drove out of two smaller stores that provided 25 full benefit jobs. There is a net loss of 15 full benefit jobs, you say this is really bad. But, 25 more people have jobs. This very well could net decrease government welfare to the area.

> The details get really tricky and the truth could be one way or another. I personally have no data to inform an opinion one way or another.

I agree, though my intuition is that more people will be beneficiaries of government services post-walmart. This does not necessarily imply walmart is a net-cost though as if walmart sufficiently drives down the cost of living to everyone, then the total cost of the services could potentially go down.

I'm thinking it's a net cost though just because walmart has little effect on two of the biggest costs for low earners: healthcare and housing.

> Tencare provided my health coverage, my 6 year old received free lunch, I had reduced rent, and I had assistance for groceries.

What does that have to do with Walmart? Was anyone else offering you a job? Walmart didn't make you poor, they offered you and other people like you a lifeline.

> A good chunk of Walmart’s workforce were scheduled to work part time hours to avoid receiving any benefits

Not great but not terrible - how many competing offers do Walmart employees have exactly? And again, how is this Walmart's fault?

I lived in a town in the 90's that was host to a new Walmart that everyone thought would decimate the town. 25 years later and the town is larger and more robust than it ever was when I lived there. The only businesses it seemingly hurt, was the struggling and very lame department store across the street.

I don't understand. It's not about what is or isn't "Walmart's fault", it is about Walmart structuring their employment in such a way as to funnel labor costs onto taxpayers.

My comment was specifically about the last line of his post. His economic situation was not caused by Walmart. Walmart is a lifeline to many, many Americans. Both consumers and their employees.

While I don't agree with them using "part time workers" to avoid paying benefits, no one is forcing these people to work at Walmart.

Furthermore, the author of the article is claiming that Walmart has helped Americans by saving them billions on the goods they purchase. The user I"m replying to is claiming they've cost Americans billions in taxes because of how they structure their employee compensation. Both are right but I'd tilt the balance of "good" towards Walmart. In a world without Walmart, these people would have LESS employment opportunities and we'd all pay more for the goods we purchase from traditional regional/local stores.

Walmart is a creator, it's easy to criticize creators while we all sit on the sidelines doing nothing.

> no one is forcing these people to work at Walmart.

Except for, you know, starvation and homelessness. We need to get past the idea that people on the low-end of income choose their jobs. You take whatever happens to be open at the time.

If we took the billions in taxes that Walmart causes and put it toward those higher prices at other grocery stores and welfare would we have a net-benefit or loss?

> We need to get past the idea that people on the low-end of income choose their jobs.

It seems this is never accounted for in peoples' simplistic supply and demand view of employment opportunities. Let's be charitable and assume there are better employment options out there than Walmart for a given subset of their employees. Let's say they have unused salesmanship skills that could potentially earn them $80k a year at something like a car dealership that requires no additional education.

Now we're talking about commission-based income, or perhaps an extra two weeks without a paycheck just to switch jobs. How many low income people can afford to miss a paycheck? It's not just the lack of alternate opportunities... it's also the lock-in of having no savings after basic necessities are paid for.

It is much more complicated than that. Ultimately Walmart can either give two people jobs that help them live their lives with some government assistance, or give one person a full-time job while the other person goes homeless (or more likely fully reliant on government assistance). And note that the person who got the full-time job in the latter scenario would no doubt have to work a very tiring, mind numbing job on a full-time basis, and would struggle to be as productive as two part time workers who only have to do that work a few days a week and are therefore not as worn out.

Additionally, if Walmart was to require full-time hours from employees it would remove a large pool of workers who would otherwise benefit from having a work opportunity. Older people, students, and others that can't work full-time would not be able to get a job. And all those excluded people would now be jobless and once again relying on government assistance.

If the local economy is so bad that Walmart is your only job option then that area is going to be a tax dollar sink either way, taking more back from government assistance than it generates in tax revenue, as many small towns do. At least if Walmart hires more part time people it gives a larger number of the locals some control over their lives instead of leaving them fully dependent on assistance.

If the choice is to work for Walmart and earn some money, but not enough to support your yourself and your family entirely, or not work anywhere, then the existence of Walmart seems to save the government having to provide 100% of your support instead of just some of it? It seems your argument is that if you are homeless and starving, that you are less of a cost to the government than if you are working for part of your support?

Another argument could be made that if Walmart did not exist, then another employer or group of employers would exist that would hire the same number of workers and give them more hours/benefits. However, such an argument would require significant analysis to demonstrate. From what I have seen, other, smaller businesses are as bad or worse than Walmart when it comes to those things.

>it is about Walmart structuring their employment in such a way as to funnel labor costs onto taxpayers.

I am having a really hard time thinking about the situation and agreeing with your implied premise that Walmart should employee people if and only if they pay them enough to remove them from all government benefits (or even healthcare). Does Walmart purposefully structure employment so they don't have to provide healthcare? Undeniably! It saves them tons of money! I have a hard time thinking of this as an immoral act that you imply it is.

Why is it wrong for them to do it?

The meat of the article is past that point.

I just skipped the Walmart section. The Amazon section is pretty solid and mostly unrelated. I feel like this would be better in 3 parts, the the discussion of Ads as a 3rd part.

"A good chunk of Walmart’s workforce were scheduled to work part time hours to avoid receiving any benefits, and of course they were subsidized by the tax payer.

I would know - in the mid 90s, I was one of them! Tencare provided my health coverage, my 6 year old received free lunch, I had reduced rent, and I had assistance for groceries. "

There must be a typo - apparently Walmart did not stop you from receiving benefits.

The GP is saying that Walmart avoided providing these benefits, instead paying it's employees so little money that they qualified for welfare, which is paid by th taxpayer, not Walmart. Since you are anyway subsidizing Walmart, might as well shop there.

I encourage you to commit to reading things you disagree with instead of abandoning them.

There's nothing wrong with nope-ing out once it becomes clear something's arguing in bad faith or is fundamentally flawed in a way that undermines its point. There's basically unlimited material to read and very limited time to do so in this world.

It’s true that it’s not wrong to stop reading anything. However, it’s not possible to determine bad faith or fundamental flaws in one sentence. And it’s not an axiom that limited time means we should stick to what makes us nod our heads.

Following the same reasoning, it could be argued that slavery was also a very efficient way to save money "for everyday Americans". Similarly the land grabbing from native Americans when the colonists arrived could be defined as "very efficient for everyday Americans".

You just need a very narrow definition of "everyday Americans". That, and not giving a damn about anyone else.

I was also very disgusted by this and could not continue reading.

The article doesn't seem to be referring to Walmart's employees as the beneficiaries of its welfare system. The argument to me says that customers of Walmart benefited from the reduced costs brought about by the innovations as if it were a welfare system built outside of government.

That said...yeah, that's a bit too pro-capitalistic monstrosities for my tastes.

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