Walmart Fraud Redux

The Daily Record reports on an "unbiased" study, undertaken by the liberal New Jersey Policy Perspective (a crowd which believes firmly that we’re undertaxed and that government is far too small) and released by the AFL-CIO – another disinterested party – finds that Walmart leads the state in the number of employees or dependents receiving state subsidized health care, NJ Family Care.

So, let’s look at the numbers – assuming (which is almost always a mistake) that the newspaper actually got the facts right.

Walmart employs 12,500 people in New Jersey. Of that number, 589 employees and/or their dependents use Family Care. Let’s be generous to the liberals and assume that all 589 such folks work at Walmart, rather than a few hundred employees with a few hundred spouses and kids. That amounts to 4.7% of the Walmart workforce. That number also represents about .4% of the total 160,000 person clientele of Family Care. That is to say, an infinitesimally small number of Walmart employees are on the public health care plan, and they represent a tiny fraction of the total burden.

In a patently fraudulent "response" to this non-problem, the Left proposes to impose a huge tax upon "large employers" equal to the difference between 8% of payroll and the lesser amount that such employer devotes to health benefits. Walmart could, much more cheaply, simply provide full health benefits to these 589 folks, thereby eliminating the pretext for this legislation, but that would not stop the Left, as the purpose is NOT to help people without health insurance, but to prevent competition with high wage union workers competing with Walmart.

In a horrible old movie entitled "Dragon Slayer", a village, oppressed by a dragon, sacrifices virgins thereto in return for the safety of the village. A young virgin, fearing for her life, ventures forth to find a dragon slayer to rid the village of the beast, neglecting, as one reviewer put it, an obvious alternative. Just so, here, the Left neglects an obvious alternative: Walmart might decide to become not a "large employer", purging sufficient employees to come in under the 10,000 limit.

Of course, the Left would then simply amend the Bill – as, in their more honest moments, they admit to be the ultimate goal anyway – to apply to ever smaller employers. Eventually, no one – in New Jersey – will be able to undersell high cost stores. ('Course, they don't have to shop in NJ, a point which the Left either overlooks or -- in another typical example of the Left's long term thinking, akin to the TTF -- simply doesn't care about.)

The first result of such a proposal would be to liberate Walmart customers from the tyranny of low prices – if they shop in New Jersey, which ever larger numbers of them will cease to do – and a certain number of Walmart employees from the tyranny of actually having to show up at work. As we progress further down the socialist slippery slope, the inevitable result will be fewer jobs, less economic growth, and an increase in the disturbing exodus of Americans from New Jersey. Such is ALWAYS the consequence of higher taxes and more oppressive regulations.

Only a complete economic illiterate could support such a proposal.

People capable of escaping such a socialist paradise, will. In fact, they already are. As noted previously, almost 60,000 citizens shook the dust of NJ from the sandals for greener, freer, less expensive, lower taxed (that is to say, virtually anyplace else in America) pastures last year; that number is almost triple the number from a scant four years ago. Citizens are not walking to the exits, they are BOLTING, taking their jobs, incomes, and purchasing power with them.

So, on the fraudulent pretext of helping a paltry 589 people, the Democrats will impose massive tax increases on business and massive price increases upon the already stressed middle class. Refugees will continue to clog the interstates with their moving vans and fill PA cash registers with their purchases. All to prevent consumers from getting a better price than they receive at the local, high cost grocery store down the street. (And, incidentally, don’t let the advocates of this proposal get away with telling you its about the low priced, Chinese-made plastic cups Walmart sells; they’re much more concerned about low priced FOOD, especially meat, because that’s where their union supporters make their living.)

This proposal has precisely nothing to do with getting Walmart employees health insurance and everything to do with jacking up prices to prevent competition with unionized super markets. People simply cannot be permitted to work for less than union scale, nor can stores like Walmart be permitted to sell for less than other stores charge.

If the Left were really concerned about the little guy, would they be pushing a bill which will cost many of them their jobs and jack up the cost of putting food on the table for working class kids?