Rigged Economy: Bernie Slams Wallmart As Welfare Recipient, Hillary Silent As Wallmrt Fought Unions

[amborin]

From Daily Kos:

Bernie Sanders used Walmart as the poster company that illustrates what a rigged economy looks like as the company pilfers the taxpayers. He did not mince his words.

"Today in America you have one family, the Walton family, Walmart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40%," said Bernie Sanders. "When I talk about our economy, I use a term called a rigged economy. People like Elizabeth Warren and I use that term. What does that mean, a rigged economy? Let me give you one of many examples. The Walton family, the wealthiest family in America -- they own Walmart. You all know that. It turns out that the Walton family in my view, is the major recipient of public welfare in America. What do I mean by that. What I mean is that the wages they pay their workers are so low that many of their workers, -- they by the way are now the largest private sector employer in America -- that many of their workers are on Medicaid, are on food stamps, or are in subsidized housing which you are paying for in your taxes. Your taxes go to pay for Medicaid, food stamps, and subsidized housing."

Americans must understood that tax cuts and low wages by definition only help the rich. Why? Because ultimately the middle-class pays for the welfare given to the underpaid and the repayment of the debt created.

Another obscenity that is not talked about is the double whammy. By supporting low taxes, the middle-class allows the wealthy the very cash they use to fund deficit spending. The caveat is the wealthy get additional income for the interest we pay them for loaning us the tax cuts we gave them.

In other words, we give them the money in order for them to make a profit from loaning it back to us. It is transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthy. That is what actually occurs. That is what's never spoken about.

Hillary Served on the WALLmart Board

and

Thought it was fine when Bill Clinton cut Welfare payments to the truly needy

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/6/1480842/-Bernie-Sanders-slams-Walmart-as-a-welfare-recipient

AND:

Hillary Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions

BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER and RHONDA SCHWARTZ ABC's The Blotter

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

[leftofcool]

1. Well, let's just take down Walmart by gawd!

Maybe Bernie can break up the big stores while he is breaking up the big banks! K-Mart, Sears, JC Pennys, you're next!

[amborin]

2. Wallmart is almost sui generis with its monopsony power, no comparison with others

Wallmart has been studied to death because of its unique power that no other chain even approximates.

It's a major disruptor.

Here's an old article from DK, but there are tons more, inlcuding current:

Many Americans are at least passing familiar with the 19th-century rise of corporate monopoly power in this country to set prices when selling and the subsequent development of the anti-trust regulations and legislation that came about to limit the power of monopolies. Far fewer Americans, however, know about the flip side of monopoly: monopsony. Put bluntly, a monopolist controls the prices of goods and services it sells. By contrast, a monopsonist controls the prices of goods and services it buys.

Continues below fold

Just as it is in the interest of a well-run capitalist economy to prevent the formation of monopolies, so too it should be the policy of those same economies to prevent the creation of monopsonies. Too much power to set prices when purchasing goods and services will produce the same destabilizing influence as too much power to set prices when selling those same goods and services.

WalMart may be starting to take on the least attractive qualities of both monopolist AND monopsonist. As the sole brick and mortar retailer for consumer staples in many communities across the country and increasingly the globe, WalMart’s ability to set prices is so common sense as to hardly require mentioning. But in many of those same communities, WalMart functions as a monopsonist purchaser . . . of labor. In many communities, WalMart is the only employer of note. Workers either work at WalMart or they don’t work.

If one thinks of a labor union as a voluntary monopoly on labor, meaning the union exerts solitary pricing power for labor for all its members in the various economic contexts in which it operates, it seems clear why labor unions would be desirable from a public policy perspective. Unions’ monopoly power as a seller of labor balances the might of WalMart and other giant monopsonist buyers of labor. I have left for another discussion consideration of WalMart’s monopsonist power as a buyer of products. Much anecdotal testimony exists as to how WalMart can threaten the existence of suppliers who fail to satisfy its pricing targets......

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/26/1258499/-WalMart-Monopsony-Destabilizes-Economies-as-Much-as-Monopoly-Does

more here on why Wallmart is a huge problem:

America is home to some 4,500 Walmart stores, located in every state in the union. The company sells upwards of 40 percent of many individual consumer items in America, and in more than 30 metropolitan areas in America it controls half or more of the grocery business. As a nation this gives us ample experience to assess whether Walmart’s use of monopsony power really has benefited the poor and middle class, especially in the decades since the company grew to be a true national power.

The evidence is damning.

Take Walmart’s effects on jobs and wages. Just as the company’s massive scale allows it to dictate prices for some goods, the fact that the company employs upwards of 1.4 million people gives it the power to drive down wages — through the same power of monopsony — in at least some of America’s local labor markets. Worse is the company’s ability to distort how its suppliers treat their workers. As groups like the United Food and Commercial Workers have shown, when Walmart applies pressure on its suppliers to lower margins, it also takes money from the people who work for those suppliers.

Another problem with Walmart’s use of monopsony power to extract wealth from suppliers is that over time the almost inevitable result of such a practice is to force those suppliers to degrade the products they make, even if this results in lower prices. Charles Fishman in his 2006 book, The Wal-Mart Effect, detailed how Walmart had the power to compel even companies as big as Philips to reduce the quality of their manufactures, in this case its televisions. Or consider the declining quality of Levi’s jeans, which as the journalist Stacy Mitchell illustrated, can be tied to Walmart.

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the dangers of the Walmart model is that, over time, the way the company uses its power tends to drive economic consolidation in those sectors of the economy under its sway. Economies are not static systems. Suppliers, under the sort of sustained economic pressure that a monopsonist tends to apply, will eventually move to relieve that pressure. Often they do so by merging operations with other suppliers until they consolidate sufficient power to resist the predations of the monopsonist.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/29/the-case-for-breaking-up-walmart/

[Armstead]

4. No ....but if Democrats start calling out the behavior of such corproations it would help

[EdwardBernays]

3. She did aot more than that.

She and bill used Walmart jets to help him launch HIS Presidential career... But even more recently the founders grand daughter gave 300k to Hillary's campaign.

And Hillary is against the 15hr wage. Which potentially saves Walmart billions.