“Blue Light Special”: Walmart To Pass More Of Its Costs On To Taxpayers
The nation’s largest private employer, Walmart, has announced that beginning in 2013 it will begin drastically reducing the number of new hires who receive health insurance coverage, according to The Huffington Post.
The retail giant surprised many by supporting the drive for universal health care in 2007 and then the employer mandate in 2009.
However, its planned policy of not offering new employees health insurance if their hours dip below 30 a week indicates that they intend to take advantage of Obamacare’s new obligation to provide coverage for those who cannot afford it. And with several Republican governors promising to deny the funds for Medicaid expansion, the new policy could lead to a swift increase in the uninsured.
In several states, Walmart tops the list of employers whose employees seek government-funded health care and food assistance for their families, forcing taxpayers to subsidize its low prices and low wages.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich points out that despite the incredible wealth of Walmart’s primary stockholders, the Walton family, its employees earn wages that may not even keep them out of poverty.
“The average Walmart employee earns $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits,” Reich wrote in one of his recent columns encouraging the retail giant’s employees to organize. Across the country a small percentage of Walmart’s employees walked out on Black Friday, protesting the company’s alleged retaliation against workers who speak out for better working conditions.
“Organizing makes economic sense,” Reich wrote.
In 2006, Walmart responded to criticism by greatly expanding the number of employees to whom it offered health insurance. They reduced the number receiving coverage in 2011.
“This is another example of a tremendous government subsidy to Walmart via its workers,” Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara told The Huffington Post.
This change in policy will push the number of employees without benefits closer to one half.
Critics have said that Walmart provides a huge benefit to poor consumers by multiplying the value of food stamps with its low prices. But to Doug Henwood, that argument misses the central problem with the impact that Walmart has had on our economy:
And, yeah, it’s nice that Walmart has been able to provide a working class facing at best stagnant wages with lots of cheap stuff, but Walmart has itself had no small effect on dragging average wages down. It’s not just that they’ve been an inspiring business model for the rest for corporate sector, impressed by the chain’s growth and profitability. That’s led to endless rounds of outsourcing and speedup. But also by lowering the cost of reproduction of the working class, to use the old language, they’ve made it easier for employers to keep a lid on wages.
Add into the equation that taxpayers are subsidizing the costs of these wages and you have a formula for a permanent underclass underwritten by a government that can do little else than providing basic health care and sustenance.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, December 3, 2012
“Snake Oil Salesmen”: ALEC’s Worthless Recommendations For Prosperity In The States
For most of its history ALEC has operated in the background, but its influence recently drew the spotlight when its promotion of “Stand Your Ground” laws came to light in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Faced with the potential of consumer boycotts, corporate sponsors such as McDonald’s and Pepsi withdrew their support. Henceforth, the organization announced, it would concentrate on state economic policy.
State legislators who might look to the organization for leadership on economic policies should be wary of following ALEC’s lead in this arena. A startlingly candid report, “Selling Snake Oil to the States,” just released by the Iowa Policy Project and the Washington-based Good Jobs First, shows that ALEC’s recommendations for producing economic growth in the states are essentially worthless.
This is a strong claim, but the researchers support their conclusion neatly by putting under the microscope the implicit predictions in the 2007 edition of Rich States, Poor States, the volume written by economist Arthur Laffer and the source of the ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index.
In brief, the authors take ALEC’s 2007 ranking of states based upon the states’ adherence to its recommendations, and seeing whether indeed the states that were predicted to prosper were doing so five years later.
None of ALEC’s predictors of economic growth—elimination or reduction of progressive taxation, reduced commitments to public services, tightening of social safety net programs, or reduced union influence—showed any relationship to economic prosperity.
In fact, if anything the ALEC formula for prosperity had an inverse relationship. As the authors put it:
…states that were rated higher on ALEC’s Economic Outlook Ranking in 2007…have actually been doing worse economically in the years since, while the less a state conformed with ALEC’s policies the better off it was.
Looking at median family income specifically:
Once again, actual results are the opposite of the ALEC claim. The more a state’s policies mirrored the ALEC low-tax/regressive taxation/limited government agenda, the lower the median family income; this is true for every year from 2007 through 2011; Figure 5 below shows the results just for 2011. The relationship is not only negative each year, it also became worse over time: the better a state did on the ALEC Outlook Ranking, the more family income declined from 2007 to 2011. The correlation, -.30, is statistically significant.
The authors of the report remind us that the only way to accelerate economic growth is to pursue policies that increase or maintain productivity, such as investing in roads, bridges and schools, and insuring an educated workforce and a healthy population.
One report can hardly be expected fully to turn back the simplistic analysis that ALEC has been promoting for understanding state economic development. But this one should provide a strong counter-weight to the notion that states can prosper by following the low road of tax cuts and limited support for the public sector.
By: Michael Lipsky, The American Prospect, December 3, 2012
“Three Minute Woman”: Jan Brewer Struggles To Draw A Crowd
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer hosted a meeting of the Western Governors Association over the weekend, where she was scheduled to deliver a speech on energy policy. Beforehand, the governor chatted with local TV station KTVK, which asked whether Brewer believes in climate change.
“Everybody has an opinion on it, you know, and I, you know, I probably don’t believe that it’s man made,” she said. “I believe that, you know, that weather elements are controlled maybe by different things.”
Once the interview was over, Brewer asked the local reporter, “Where in the hell did that come from?”
Of course. Because nothing’s more outlandish than asking a governor about climate change before a speech on energy policy.
And how did the speech go? Not well.
Although she was introduced as a political rock star Saturday, Gov. Jan Brewer wasn’t a very big draw.
The Western Governors’ Association held its annual winter meeting in Paradise Valley. But of the 19 governors in the group, only two showed up to see Brewer deliver a brief keynote speech. […]
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) were the two governors who attended the meeting. They are the current vice chairman and chairman of the organization.
Brewer spoke for a grand total of three minutes before leaving the stage.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 3, 2012
“Seriously?”: Mitch McConnell’s Vision Of A Compromise
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), not surprisingly, has no use for President Obama’s $4 trillion reduction/economic stimulus plan. Greg Sargent, however, flags the Republican’s vision of what a bipartisan agreement would look like.
In an interview in his Capitol Hill office, Mr. McConnell said if the White House agrees to changes such as higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and a slowing of cost-of-living increases for programs like Social Security, Republicans would agree to include more tax revenue in the deal, though not from higher tax rates. […]
Mr. McConnell offered his ideas as examples of the structural changes Republicans are looking for. “The nexus for us is: revenue equals genuine entitlement eligibility changes,” Mr. McConnell said.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, there’s a good reason: it’s the blueprint of the plan Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday he could support.
What I hope the political world — policymakers, Sunday show participants, etc. — will consider as we go into the weekend is how truly baffling McConnell’s concept of a “compromise” really is.
Despite an election cycle in which Democrats did very well up and down the ballot, the Senate GOP leader envisions an agreement in which Republicans get the Medicare cuts they want, Republicans get the Social Security cuts they want, and Republicans get the tax rates they want. In exchange, McConnell would give Democrats Mitt Romney’s revenue plan.
Seriously.
Sure, President Obama’s plan isn’t exactly an olive branch, but at least it’s a serious effort to reach the goal Republicans established, and it includes policies the White House would not otherwise seek on their own. McConnell’s approach is based on a model in which Obama was the one who ended up with 206 electoral votes, instead of 332.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said today the talks are at a “stalemate.” I wonder why that is.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 30, 2012
“Seriously? You’re Going To Block A Tax Cut?”: The Only One Relevant Question For Republicans To Ask
The Republicans are trying hard to make it look like they’re the ones driving the Fiscal Cliff negotiations, but Wall Street isn’t buying it.
No matter how many times House Speaker John Boehner says the Democrats’ opening offer is ridiculous, for example, the more clued-in pundits (Politico’s Ben White, for example) and investors stick to their guns:
The Democrats have won. Taxes on the highest earning Americans are going up.
Given the reality of the situation, in fact, the only real question for Republicans is this:
Seriously? You’re going to block a tax cut?
Because if the Republicans really do refuse to come to the table in the next month, that’s exactly what they will be doing.
On January 1, by law, tax rates are going to go up and government spending is going to get cut.
The Republicans can’t stop that from happening by being obstructionist. They can only stop it by compromising.
The Obama Administration’s proposal cuts taxes for all but the highest earning Americans.
If the Republicans “just say no” to that proposal, they will be rejecting a tax cut.
Given that the main economic plank of the Republican party is still cutting taxes, there’s no way they’re going to do that.
So you can go ahead and tune out the many media appearances of John Boehner, et al. This one’s over. There’s no way the Republicans are going to block a tax cut.
By: Henry Blodgett, Business Insider, December 2, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
