Everyday Low Fuckery

 

 

 

Welp, great job, Democrats. There will be no Saving Money, Living Better for the poorest neighborhoods of our nation’s capitol. The city council passed a law to keep Walmart out through a bill that “requires retailers with corporate sales of more than $1 billion annually and operating in spaces 75,000 square feet or larger to pay workers no less than $12.50 an hour, a 50 percent increase over the $8.25 an hour minimum imposed on everyone else.”

The council was ostensibly trying to help D.C.’s poor. But obviously $8.25 is better than nothing, so that’s a fail. More likely Walmart as an entity violates their sensibilities. Now I hardly blame them there, but government is exactly why Walmart can thrive through such odious business practices. Walmart’s everyday low prices come with a steep cost to taxpayers — the least the council could do is let D.C. residents enjoy them.

Walmart’s crony capitalism means D.C. taxes and screws the entire nation’s poor and middle class in order to give the company advantages. What kind of advantages? Well there’s an entire website devoted to reporting on the kinds of ways our government helps Walmart beat its competitors. You know what makes it easy to close down a mom-and-pop store? Not having to pay property taxes when they do. CNN reported that by 2004 Walmart had received over a billion dollars of your money in subsidies. Thanks government!

Not that it isn’t a two-way street. Government gets what it wants for that money. Matt Lewis wrote a great piece for The Week about how the administration bought Walmart’s compliance on Obamacare and gun control.

If Walmart’s haters want to strike a blow to the retail giant, they need to look to its patron.

But for the D.C. city council to allow D.C.’s poorest to be taxed to help Walmart, while passing laws to keep them from shopping there, all while claiming to be helping — that’s some pretty brazen hypocrisy.