Wal-Mart’s Fault?
Do Taxpayers Subsidize Wal-Mart
By Daniel Muniz

While sifting through my local newspaper, The San Antonio Express-News, I found this interesting quote from a state representative in my hometown:

“One of the richest companies in the world also has more employees enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program than any other Texas employer. That means taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart, said state Rep Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio. The numbers don't lie. It's a problem," he said.

Rep Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio

I love it when Liberals look at a problem and then determine that the “only” one way solve it is by higher taxes and more government coercion. Perhaps state representative Castro can be enlightened by another quote from British statesman Benjamin Disraeli:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Yes, the numbers do not lie but liars do and Castro is one of the liars because he is only willing to take a part of the statistic out of context and then spin his own Liberal solution to it without bothering to examine the rest of the facts. Unsurprisingly, many politicians are like the guy who is front of the forest fire and then wonders who planted the trees. That is, putting all your effort into trying to solve the wrong problem.

First of all, our healthcare system is the forest fire. Right now it is broken so the cost of getting most medical services is outrageously expensive. As a result, the price of insurance to cover the cost of healthcare is also outrageously expensive. Consequently, it is useless to blame Wal-Mart and other companies because they are not the ones who created the high prices of insurance and the runaway costs of healthcare.
 

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And even when employers do offer insurance, they are simply not able to foot the entire bill for premiums because of the shameful price-gouging. At a previous place I worked at, my health insurance plan for full family coverage that an employee had to pay was almost $1000 a month and that happened to be at a state education agency!

Health insurance is astronomically expensive because healthcare itself has been in the grips of hyper-inflation for the past couple of decades. Even the prices charged by a hospital for simple procedures are costly. An insurance company simply passes that expense on to its purchasers. In addition, lawyers have also plundered the healthcare industry through excessive frivolous lawsuit. The huge expense that doctors pay for malpractice insurance affects everybody but lawyers don’t care because they want a piece of their pie.

But do Liberal politicians really care about making healthcare and health insurance more affordable to everyone? Are they really concerned about finding ways to slash the absurd costs so that they are reasonable?

Nope! It is still Wal-Mart’s fault and they aren’t going to bother to even attempt to examine the massive problems facing healthcare. If hyper-inflation could be tamed, liabilities alleviated with tort-reform, and more free market incentives introduced to insurance coverage instead of draconian governmental regulations, then it would be far easier for more employers to offer insurance to their workers. But Liberals like Joaquin Castro don’t care about fixing the “real” problems since they are trying to score a political bull’s eye instead of solving the problems of real working Americans.

And by the way, this state representative is also an attorney and like many other Liberals, his election campaigns are propped up by trial lawyers so there is not much incentive for him to fix the healthcare crisis.

Next, many of the Wal-Mart positions that Castro and other Liberals often point to are low skilled part time jobs.

Somehow, there is this notion that a job stocking shelves and mopping the floors for 20 hours a week still ought to be worth an annual salary of $50,000 along with a full benefits package. Now whose fault is it if you are working at a repetitious, low paying, dead-end job with little chance of advancement? Is it the employer’s fault or the government’s fault? And does any responsibility lie with the worker to obtain better skills so that he can make himself more marketable for better paying jobs?

Interestingly, Joaquin Castro is quite a success story. He graduated from Stanford and he also has a law degree from Harvard and is part of a law firm with his twin brother. Yet he goes through absolutely no effort to encourage low wage workers to learn better skills so that they can become more marketable. Instead, it is as if Castro and other Liberals almost want poor people to stay poor and to stick with their low paying jobs.

My mother toiled around in plenty of low paying jobs because after all, she only had limited education. However, as a middle aged woman, she got her GED and then with the help of my father, she went to college to earn two college degrees. Now my parents enjoy a comfortable home in the suburbs and a relaxed retirement.

But then again, it is easier to blame someone else instead of solving a problem yourself. I am glad my parents never subscribed to that philosophy because if they did, they would still be living in the barrio.

Finally but most importantly, Liberals love to imply that Wal-Mart is being subsidized by taxpayers. Is Wal-Mart really getting a check from state and local governments? Or is it the low skilled workers who are filing for governmental assistance?

That is an important distinction to make because it is the taxpayer who is subsidizing low paid workers instead of putting giant retailers on corporate welfare. It is not the other way around as Castro insists but that important fact doesn’t stop Liberals from claiming that Wal-Mart is socking it to us.

Wages and benefits are set by the economic laws of supply and demand. If you want a better paying job with more generous benefits, then you are going to have to have the kinds of skills for a job that is in demand. That is a reality that cannot be solved by wishful thinking.

And if people are so upset with the high price of healthcare and health insurance, then they got to vent their anger at the source of the problem instead of blaming a company like Wal-Mart who has nothing to do with it.

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COMMENTS FROM READERS

Excellent and well thought out commentary. Since taking office, Joaquin Castro has spent his time trying to figure out how to drum up press not for the issues, but for himself. Instead Castro should have been representing the people of the district and at least trying to solve real problems with honest resolutions. I am quite sure that his narcissistic House performance coupled with his propensity for fabrications and half-truths--will be his undoing. -Anne