Smiling Face, Lying Eyes

From the SMWIA presentation (click here for background).

You be the judge…

- If Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China’s 8th largest trading partner, ahead of Britain and Russia (according to the Milwaukee, WI Journal Sentinel).

- Wal-Mart is America’s largest employer with nearly 1.3 million workers.

- At 34 hours per week (full-time at Wal-Mart), the average Wal-Mart associate makes $17,114 per year, well below the poverty level for a family of four.

- 660,000 of Wal-Mart’s employees don’t have health insurance.

- Wal-Mart workers pay $273 a month for the company’s family medical coverage and get fewer benefits than Medicaid; $273 is %19 of their $1426.00 monthly poverty level wage.

- In 11 of the 12 states that disclosed employers who have employees on Medicaid, Wal-Mart tops the list.

- Medicaid spending increased 85% from 1997 through 2004; it went from $159 billion to $295 billion, which is nearly twice the rise of Medicare that insures seniors.

- The percentage of children covered by private insurance fell from 65% in 1999 to 59% in 2004, while those on Medicaid rose from 22% to 29%.

- Medicaid paid by federal and state taxpayers has grown from 34 million people in 1997 to 47 million in 2004. 10 million more people are eligible for Medicaid but have not signed up.

- A U.S. congressional study found that Wal-Mart cost the American taxpayers up to $2.5 billion in public assistance.

This is another example of how outsourcing is impacting the working class of the United States. Not only is Wal-Mart creating low wage and benefit jobs, they are transferring the responsibility of their employees’ health care to the U.S. taxpayer! (from the SMWIA)

Click here, here, and here to find out more, and please try to explain to me once again why, knowing all this, anyone would ever shop at that place.

And here is a link to a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer from yesterday about bringing pressure on these cretins to provide something approximating respectable health insurance to their employees (registration required).