Think about it, Corporations can outsource or not hire full time knowing that taxpayer money will pay for foodstamps,welfare,medicaid,etc.. which means they still make money thanks to government aid.
I was thinking about this yesterday.... Take food stamps for example.. You seldom hear in the news someone has to steal food. No one is stealing packages of hamburger from wall mart to feed their family. In an indirect sense, this is a benefit to Wall Mart. The gov't provides a "food" benefit, one less theft from wall mart, lowers the cost of doing business and effect on profit from loss.(prosecution, security, etc also). In the grand scheme of things, I do think a corp could game the system in the true sense of taking advantage of the gov't benefits..but why not? The corp pays taxes....they didn't write the benefit rules, it's not illegal. Benefits, like taxes, are motivational tools. ----------------- In addition, suppose a retail store generates $100 sq ft, now the fed comes in and says to you, you need to place a 2 sq ft recycling bin in your store to recycle plastic bags. You are deprived of sales per sq ft with zero compensation, The fed just "stole" 2 sq ft of your bought and paid for retail space. Now we have an adverserial relationship between what is mine and what you took. Perhaps, the results are unintended consequences (corp welfare) but no one is asking wall mart's input of social safety nets, which ultimatley are derived from corp profits.
American workers job opportunities and wages go down ===> Wal Marts operating expenses go down. American worker lower wages ===> less money to spend at Wal Mart. Government welfare payments to American worker ====> money to spend at Wal Mart.
The only place a Wall mart employee can afford to shop is at Wall Mart. Fast forward, food inflation, housing, energy costs, etc the Wall Mart employee can only afford to shop at Wall Mart with gov't assistance.Is this Wall Marts fault? What costs can Wall Mart control? Wall Mart cannot control the standard of living in the local where they are located. They don't set property taxes, level of services, etc
Well put. Corporations are simply going to maximize profits within the current system. There may be a few small companies who can survive while following their principles (e.g., a "fair trade" gourmet coffee firm). However, there's no way Wal-Mart could say "We're only going to hire full-time employees who don't need gov't assistance. And we'll no longer accept food stamps, EBT, etc. We're going to take on the welfare state and still try to make a profit." Sure, there are some industries who encourage regulations that push out their competition (Big Pharma/Ag/Banks in particular). In the end, however, they don't actually create or enforce laws. They just have a revolving door influence.
I was talking to my buddy at the body shop after Christmas. We were talking about the high price of kids toys. He said I gotta raise my prices. "Hey, this is America" "You're a douche bag if you ain't making more money" I told him to wait till I leave to raise prices.... ..
I do agree with this to some degree. The service sector, which is now such an enormous part of the US economy, has very low compensation and benefit programs. Many service sector workers are on some form of assistance, even while working in a full time capacity.
Let me ask you this. If the Fed orders you to increase fuel economy of an auto at the expense of an increasing wage for your employee's, Either or, not both. I wonder how Henry Ford's pay model would have survived in today's regulatory environment? Now if we bitch about the union pay scale, who will buy the product? Who can afford a new Ford P/U (mfg list maybe 40k) making 12- 15 dollars an hour?