MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has been pounding on Walmart all morning, suggesting they Walmart employees aren’t paid enough and emphasizing these ‘grass roots’ protests at Walmarts on Black Friday. Problem is these protests are made up mostly of activists who simply want to unionize Walmart.
But what caught my attention was when former CNBC host Carmen Wong Ulrich argued that taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart’s growth because so many of their employees are on public assistance. In other words, if Walmart would stop being selfish with their bounty and simply pay their employees a living wage, taxpayers would save money:
One of the biggest ideas I hope that people can understand is that we are all subsidizing Walmart’s growth and income and money and we are supporting it because so many Walmart employees are on public assistance. How does America feel about the fact that we are paying or co-paying Walmart employees? I think we would like to not do that.
Look I’m going to bottom line this for you. When you accept a job at Walmart (or anywhere else for that matter), you agree to the salary that goes along with that job. If you don’t like the salary then don’t take the job. Find something else that pays better. It’s that simple.
As to the ridiculous claim by Ulrich that we are subsidizing Walmart (don’t you love how liberals think?), I’ll just say that if Walmart were forced to start paying this $25k/year ‘living wage’ to all their entry-level employees, there would be less entry-level employees and probably less Walmarts. Thus taxpayers would be paying more for people to live on public assistance.
Seriously, can’t we learn anything from Detroit?