Cuts to Food Stamps Hurt Walmart's Bottom Line

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/cuts-food-stamps-hurt-walmarts-bottom-line



Walmart may be regretting their non-committal position on food stamp cuts. Now, after the mega-corporate store said it had no position on legislation that would cut billions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP), the name for food stamps, their earnings are taking a hit.

About 20 percent of Walmart’s customers use food stamps. So it’s little surprise that Walmart’s fourth quarter earnings were down, as the National Memo’s Elissa Gomez points out. Bad weather also played a role.

“Walmart caters to lower-income consumers which have been hit disproportionately hard,” Ken Perkins, an analyst for Morningstar, an independent investment research firm, told Reuters.

Walmart could be in for even more pain. The new farm bill passed in Congress cuts food stamps by $1 billion in total.

[BoneDancer]

1. Good.

[spinbaby]

2. Not good

Walmart's profits are down because people can't buy basics anymore. That's not good.

[madokie]

3. As odious as it is

we're stuck with walmart here. One of the reason they're bottom line is hurting is the way they run their stores. In the last year or so they have been running with a skeleton crew. Shelves not stocked, departments not manned. Piss poor check out times with 15 lanes and only 3 or 4 open and a line at each one.

I remember when you could go to walmart and purchase USA made items and you still find a few of those but for the most part its Chinese for everything not clothes and Indian mostly for those. I detest walmart but I also hate driving 30 plus miles to do better or paying a dollar more on a five dollar item for the same shit elsewhere closer. Give me American made and I'd pay two dollars more on that five dollar item. Now that we have a 30 plus MPG auto the thirty plus mile drive isn't looking so bad.

[melm00se]

4. Please keep in mind that

Walmart is a bellweather for retail sales.

the same cuts that are impacting WalMart will also hit the smaller and less well known food stores all the way from WalMart down to the local/neighborhood grocery store/chain (and yes, they do exist).

[Javaman]

5. I could careless about wally world. I care about those poor folks losing their food stamps.

not all people who get food stamps shop at wally world.