logoalt Hacker News

furytraderyesterday at 11:12 PM4 repliesview on HN

"We’ve allowed Amazon and Ticketmaster and Walmart to exist and they shouldn’t exist in their present form."

Do you realize that when Walmart moves into a community, prices charged for everyday things overall drop significantly, both at Walmart and their competition, which means that poor families are able to buy more with every dollar.

What do you have against poor people?


Replies

Grombobulousyesterday at 11:21 PM

And the employer with the largest amount of employees using SNAP benefits is…

Walmart is subsidized by the government to the tune of $2,000 per employee due to their low wages: https://rmfu.org/taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-wal-mart/ [1]

They then get to skim the other side of those subsidies, too, since they sell so many items that qualify for SNAP and WIC, as well as being one of the largest if not the largest prescription supplier in the country.

(25% of Walmart employees qualify for Medicaid https://mafainsurance.com/how-many-walmart-employees-are-on-...)

So their employees on SNAP and Medicaid turn right around and spend that money inside Walmart.

> both at Walmart and their competition

What competition? When Walmart comes to town, the competition closes.

[1] Probably a lot higher since this article is about 20 years old

show 2 replies
MiroslavPokornytoday at 1:40 AM

Prices may drop, but wages drop even further and the compound effect of local government subsidies and loses when competition dies means everyone loses because everything in the local area dies.

margalabargalayesterday at 11:50 PM

> What do you have against poor people?

They're probably thinking the same thing as those darn busybodies who outlawed child labor.

ButlerianJihadyesterday at 11:18 PM

> ["poor"] families are able to buy more with every dollar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory