Peter Schiff nails Wall Street



"This little dog was very happy with his big bone in his mouth walking along. He was walking over a bridge when he happened to look down and saw in the water - another dog with a bigger bone in his mouth. He barked at the dog he saw and dropped his bone into the water"
 
It doesn't sound like a bad thing but when you have multinational corporations doing this like walmart, you see how little they pay in taxes and how little they give back to society. Walmart can still manufacture inside the us and run at a profit, but the nature of capitalism us to pay as little taxes as possible and squeeze every cent out as possible.

The average citizen is taxed the fuck out to pay for infrastructure that protects the multinational corps, who do not pay their fair share of taxes

Walmart hires people, and provides cheap goods. They give back enough.
 
Walmart hires people, and provides cheap goods. They give back enough.

Exactly.

WalMart has saved more families more money than any other organization I can think of - I suppose that when every customer walks out of WalMart saving $15-$20 they would have been better off giving that money to an inefficient mom & pop store?

The funny thing is with the internet the inefficient distribution systems of mom & pop stores were doomed either way.

Wal Mart is a miracle for the poor.
 
Mom & pop live and spend their money in your community. Mom & pop do not get corporate welfare. Only focusing on prices is missing the picture as Walmart has received millions in subsidies from tax payers.

Also, a large amount of Walmart workers are on government entitlement programs that they wouldn't be eligible for if they were paid more. Going by Walmart's own documented estimates, their employees get hundreds of millions of dollars yearly from tax payer funded benefits. Other estimates put the total to be higher than $1.5 billion.
 
The average citizen is taxed the fuck out to pay for infrastructure that protects the multinational corps, who do not pay their fair share of taxes

Last year the Federal govt spent about $3,455,000,000,000

Infrastructure is a tiny fraction of that spending.
 
Mom & pop live and spend their money in your community. Mom & pop do not get corporate welfare. Only focusing on prices is missing the picture as Walmart has received millions in subsidies from tax payers.

Also, a large amount of Walmart workers are on government entitlement programs that they wouldn't be eligible for if they were paid more. Going by Walmart's own documented estimates, their employees get hundreds of millions of dollars yearly from tax payer funded benefits. Other estimates put the total to be higher than $1.5 billion.


and?

Mom & Pop were not giving 401K's to their employees. Mom & Pop were not giving benefits. They were capitalizing on minimum wage / part time / preferred time workers also. Mom & Pop were not saints, they charged the max they could for items. You think the Oleson's cared about the Ingall's?

What other subsidies has Wal Mart enjoyed? I really have no idea.

What tax payer benefits are these people receiving that they would not be receiving without Wal Mart?

No one is forced to work at Wal Mart - people choose to work there. You do not go work for a company, go to their HR office, fill out an application, go to an interview, show up for training, show up each day by force. It is a choice that people make.
 
heh i was gonna write a long post about how walmart is lining the pockets of the chinese and fucking up the us defeceit, then i realised im doing the same 90% of my money comes from the US.

i dont pay any tax to the US, and ironically get fucked by HMRC for money I made outside the country.

btw.. anyone noticed a dip in revenue while the OWS protests were going on?
 
The difference then, is Mom and Pop were members of the middle class and provided jobs domestically (for their workers, suppliers etc), whereas most of the people that work at Walmart are collecting foodstamps because they get paid shit, and the jobs that are created by Walmart are in China which does fuck all for this economy.

Doesn't matter, it can't be undone, but don't for one second think that the $5 saved by shopping at Walmart is more of a benefit than having a middle class.

on the bright side, these peasants that work for walmart might one day make trinkets sell to middle class chinese
 

:hollering:

Mom & Pop were not giving 401K's to their employees. Mom & Pop were not giving benefits.

Some do offer 401K's. Health care costs much more now than before Walmart popped up everywhere, yet even now there are frequently articles about small businesses and health care.


Kaiser researchers have also found over the last decade that small companies offering coverage are much more likely to shoulder the entire premium cost than large companies

For Small Business, Bad News on Health Care Costs Isn't as Bad - NYTimes.com

They were capitalizing on minimum wage / part time / preferred time workers also. Mom & Pop were not saints, they charged the max they could for items. You think the Oleson's cared about the Ingall's?

Unlike the Walton family, the Olesons are spending their money in the same town that the Ingalls live in. The Olesons might buy vegetables to sell in their store from the Ingall farm.

What other subsidies has Wal Mart enjoyed? I really have no idea.

Report says Wal-Mart received $1B in government subsidies. - May. 24, 2004

What tax payer benefits are these people receiving that they would not be receiving without Wal Mart?

There are plenty of mom & pops that pay the same wages as Walmart, but on the average Walmart wages are lower than the jobs that they replace, and this increases the amount of people eligible for entitlements. Medicaid is apparently the big one.

http://www.ihsglobalinsight.com/publicDownload/genericContent/hicks-poverty.pdf

No one is forced to work at Wal Mart - people choose to work there.

People are forced to pay taxes. Walmart benefits from how tax money is used more than the average small business does.
 
and the jobs that are created by Walmart are in China which does fuck all for this economy.

Doesn't matter, it can't be undone, but don't for one second think that the $5 saved by shopping at Walmart is more of a benefit than having a middle class.

We have to look at the whole picture here also though. Saving $5 by buying pants made in China might contribute to the US pants factory closing down. However, one might use that extra $5 to buy a magazine, which helps keep people employed in that field.
 
I saw something about slaughtering a pheasant and started to get hungry. Then all I saw was a bunch of crazy talk and something about Chinese pants. I am so not of this world.
 
Wow. I did take the time to read all of the thoughtfully placed links.

I still cannot see how WalMart is evil. It is a sign of progress. It is an inevitable reality. With the internet, people were not going to pay Mom & Pop for overpriced goods.

The proliferation of Chinese products to the US would have happened either way - you simply would be buying the stuff from different stores. Do we think that Americans like low priced crap because of WalMart or that Americans like WalMart because of low priced crap? And if not WalMart, then Super Target, Super K - it was going to happen.

Also, I know that WalMart was the death to small town downtowns.... but the WalMart's I see have dozens of stores all around them. These are all franchises that are owned by.... Mom & Pop.

Should we be shopping at WalMart? Probably not. I mean why buy products made by Christian prisoners in China, though that may be an incentive to some here. But that is a huge trade argument and I think companies should be taken to the woodshed about supporting these things - but that is not just WalMart - it is everyone.

As for WalMart subsidies - they bring jobs to local communities - sorry but they do. I remember when a town in CA, Temecula, was anti Wal-Mart. So walmart built a store 2 freeway exits North in Murrieta, then one a few exits North of that, then all around Temecula.... now Temecula has a WalMart too.

There are plenty of City Planner's that love WalMart as they come in and completely rejuvenate a blighted area. As an entire commercial center that is modern and the pride of many small towns sprouts up, brings in revenues, and makes the town more modern. City's love it. Big huge new shopping centers with dozens of stores feeding off WalMarts anchor power.