20% of Wal-Mart's workers in Washington state on public assistance

[Selatius]

Wal-Mart must be one of the state's biggest corporate welfare freeloaders there is. Talk about welfare queens!

Here is the biggest part of it:

The report makes for illuminating reading, especially when compared to testimony Wal-Mart gave the state Legislature last week. It turns out 10 percent of the company's in-state workers were on Medicaid in 2004 — twice the rate the company suggested.

Another 10 percent got taxpayer-funded health care for their kids. In total, 3,180 Wal-Mart workers got subsidized care. That's nearly double the number of any other company.

Add the fact that 20 to 25 percent of Wal-Mart workers have no insurance at all. It means nearly half its 16,000 local employees are either uninsured or on state assistance.

Compare that to, say, Costco, which insures nearly 90 percent of its 12,000 local workers — without much help from the government.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002760249&slug=danny25&date=20060125

We've got to end corporate welfare, or it's going to drown us.

The author said it best, "But this isn't about the health-care crisis. It's about corporate welfare. It's about how one of the world's most profitable companies has figured out how to get us to pick up its tab."

[applegrove]

1. What of moral relativism? Why not penalize bad corporations if

you are so neocon?

[Selatius]

2. I don't get what you're saying

Medicaid is suffering enough as it is with Republican tax cutting without having companies like Wal-Mart exacerbating the situation even worse, expediting the erosion of what safety net we do have left. If the US government refuses to transition to a universal health care system, then I think the next best thing would be to force Wal-Mart to give adequate benefits instead of letting them subsidize Wal-Mart's shareholder greed with taxpayer dollars and alleviate pressure off state Medicaid programs.

[applegrove]

3. Sorry. I was not clear. What I mean is that neocons scream liberals

suffer from moral relativism and say - why give health care or help to the poor - all the time? And that we don't attach values to living well (or whatever the way it is they judge). They feel that money is some measure of something - which it is not.

I'm saying why should some companies get corporate welfare when they are bad and take out of the economy. Or if they steal. Or if they lie. Or ignore mining regulations.


I was just asking why if they are so into a rewards system - does a corporation not get penalized when its workers do worse than workers at other places. They seem to be rewarded for a-human behaviour. Or why can we not regulate to make sure those that may have a tendency to not put the health & safety of their workers first - why should they not be up -regulated? Given terms of tough regulations? Why are they being rewarded for undoing regulations when they are bad characters? Why wouldn't corporations be regulated according to the moral laws they break. And have some rights taken away for reasons deemed by Liberals as okay. Why wouldn't you saddle a corporation with "issues" with more and more control & regulations. Why shouldn't they be damned frightened of "taking" out of the system.

I'm not agreeing with their attack on moral relativism. I'm just trying to turn it on its head. If corporations get treated like "persons" under the law - why are neocons not screaming for law and order for corporations (penalties of a monetary sort & regulations) depending on how good a corporate citizen they are. Measure them by jobs and not just the profits they make for their owners. Measure them by what their workers need out of the system to make ends meet.

I'll think about it a little while longer.


But if you can execute a criminal for multiple deaths - why-ever not pull the charter for a corporation that does the same?

It seems to be the rule of law for humans. And these days the moral suasion of churches that don't teach christianity but teach the hatred of humanists=liberals. So the corporations that fund that bad christianity - they get more votes. And then they get power. And then they get wars or deregulation. So lying and fooling and lack of humanity is rewarded in the market (& market interventions & regulations to benefit said few corporations). While humans get penalized when they are working and go for power (unions) or AARP trying to get drug prices down.

Moral relativism says not to judge one group over another. That you cannot say one group is better than another. That all parts of society deserve governance or whatever democracy is doling out. So being against moral relativism for neocons means taking a stand. (and apparently hate that is politically expedient). Except in the market.

Why are corporations allowed another set of "unchristian" rules in this case? Why should there not be a set of rules about what makes a one corporation deserving of rewards & regulations vs. another? And we are not allowed to judge them. Because the market will take care of it? The laws of the jungle? Because the markets require perfect information to work best? Like human beings don't need the best information to work well too? Humans seem to need a type of christianity conceived by trotskyites and funded by oil companies to inform them.

I mean if they want a drag on society to be penalized and feel some pain... 3 serious violations and you are out.

Don't know. Seems to me their anti-moral relativism is actually more morally relative than Liberalism.