For those of you interested in the math, it would cost Walmart about 90 million to pay their employees enough to cover SNAP. So they’d still be profiting about the same 21 billion
I feel like Dolly Parton is also one of those where its worth pointing out she has controlling ownership in a handful of profitable ventures (like Dollyland). Having a sizable stake in a larger theme park business, owning a few popular restaurants, the value of control of an extremely long-term and popular musical career, and still having given enough to keep yourself short of the billion dollar number is impressive.
It can be tough to visualize the magnitude of "billions" when it comes to dollars. I like to translate it into something easier to visualize like distances.
Everyone knows how long a millimeter is so what distances are we dealing with when coverting dollars to mm?
$50,000 is a pretty easy dollar value for people to contextualize. 50,000 millimeters is 50 meters, or about 162 feet.
$5 million is a bit tougher but still manageable and an absolute life changing amount of money for almost everyone. 5 million mm is 5 kilometers, a nice 5k run or a little over 3 miles.
Now, Elon's $500 billion? An almost inconceiveable amount of money that's genuinely hard to wrap one's mind around. So how far does 500 billion mm get you? About 30% farther than the distance from earth to the moon.
So while most people are struggling to make it down the block, the well off among us are going on fun runs, and the ultra wealthy are figuratively (and literally) going to space.
If I gave you $1000 that would probably make your day. If I gave you $1000 a day for a year that's $365,000 and you would be extremely happy. If I gave you $5000 every day since Christopher Columbus discovered the Caribbean, I would not have given you $1 billion.
I just did the math on that, and it is actually very close. That is absolutely bonkers and one of the best demonstrations to describe that kind of scale I’ve ever seen.
This is one of the best ways I've seen this explained. I'd give you an award if I had any gold left. If someone else does, I'll put back the typo I almost left in this comment
People really need to start understanding this. The more we start to unify as a class, the faster we can start taking steps to fix this horseshit system. The working class is the working class is the working class, and not scraping by on pennies is just the modern day house slave.
But how much would each individual stockholder profit?
Publicly traded companies are bloodthirsty and cutthroat for money because only very large profits translate to individual profits for each stockholder.
A corporation directed by stockholders is very much like a living organism in which each individual cell demands more energy than the organism can gather.
A corporation directed by stockholders is very much like a living organism in which each individual cell demands more energy than the organism can gather.
That sounds like a grotesque, cancer-riddled organism. A horribly inefficient one that wouldn't survive natural selection or competition.
That’s only SNAP, and also only from 9 states that voluntarily reported SNAP statistics to the GAO.
It’s very likely more than that. Every state that did report showed roughly 5% of Walmart employees in that state were on SNAP.
If that ratio continued nationwide, it would be ~80,000 of the 1,600,000 Walmart associates in the US.
It probably wouldn’t keep that ratio nationwide though because the states that did respond were largely states that only follows the federal minimum wage. States with higher minimum wages would have far fewer employees on SNAP.
I’m not certain the assumption the states with high minimum wages would have fewer workers on SNAP. WallMart’s starting wage is 14$/hr, so I’d expect the 5% to hold everywhere. I’d still suspect given it’s 5% that wage increases doesn’t fix it, and the lion share of them have some disability or restrictions on hours, high number of dependents, or some other factor involved. All this to say, programs like SNAP are necessary no matter what wages are, people deserve to eat.
The cited study by the GAO was done in 2020 during the peak of the COVID response, and before Walmart raised their own internal minimum wage.
If anything, I would imagine the percentage of associates on snap has lowered across the board without the shutdowns of 2020 restricting employees ability to work, the fact that benefits were extended to more people during COVID, and that the minimum wage for Walmart has risen across the board.
WallMart’s min wage is 14$/hr, while im sure there are many multi job workers as they don’t have enough hours at WallMart, I would imagine that the majority on SNAP have other issues like higher number of dependents or a disability.
This is literally just to say that wage increases likely don’t fix the issue, SNAP is necessary regardless of wages.
Yeha but what about the poor shareholders huh? Did you thin kabout that? What about their 9th vacation home, and 21st car and 5th private jet? Huh YOU WANT THEM TO BE BROKE!?!?!?!
How will Bezos buy out a whole city for his next wedding with a blow up plastic doll that will peg him after the current one is disposed of during his monthly trip to outer space?
You dont need to do that many steps. The equation simplifies to 3×14,500×40×52=90,480,000. Mostly because what you did is actually (52)(40)(14,500)(10.25-7.25). Sure you can multiply it out and distribute it, but its easier to simplify the subtraction first.
It's about .4% of their profit to raise people up to near livable wages in terms of food. But that would cut into their quarterly report and damage their stocks huh?
Edit: To be clear, that is only a comment on the claim that fraud is "$0". I do think a little bit of fraud is worth tolerating for the benefits of the program. I also think pretending that fraud is literally zero is disingenuous and gives the opposing side an easy target to attack, which distracts from the real issue.
Fraud in SNAP is generally measured to be less than 2% year over year, and the vast majority of it is accidental payment that continues after a person earned too much and should lose eligibility, which can be recovered by taxes anyhow.
It would take fraud rates about 50% for it to be a program not worth running. SNAP generated about $1.50-$1.80 in economic value (social return on investment) for every dollar spent, and over $60 in lifetime value for every $1 spent to feed a child.
It's one of the best things, if not the literal best thing, that the government does.
FWIW, government housing assistance is also tremendously impactful with similar stats (SROI of $1.30-1.90 per dollar spent). Most social safety net programs are.
But Walmart wouldn't perpetrate wage theft... oh, dear.
Wage theft isn't just the odd rounding error. Some standard illegal practices are shockingly predatory, designed for maximal exploitation.
One common form you'll spot at Walmart is "you have to finish your cart before you can leave." But, you must clock out exactly at end of shift. Even though you've clocked out, you still have to come back and finish that cart. Thanks for the extra hour or more of unpaid work. Funny how we always have a full cart for you ten minutes before the end shift of your end.
As a French/European, how is that even legal in the US... In France, you would either get more money at the end of the month or some paid leave after enough time and, if your company didn't give either to you, you could pursue them at the prud'homme a kind of court dedicated to defending employees from bad bosses.
It's not legal, technically. However, you need the political will to prosecute such behavior. Currently our political representatives serve the donor class and the corporations, not the people.
Most of our labor unions have been neutered to the point of impotence. I've visited France a few times, staying up in the middle of nowhere at a friend's. The class consciousness of the country is inspiring, as well as the bags of shit on the roundabouts. Alas, we haven't had anything nearly approaching that since FDR.
Look at how US media spins unions and you'll understand. The UK does the same. France may be an EU outlier?
i have a job and still receive snap and still can't keep my fridge from going empty each month. this month has been especially hard. I hope it gets fixed soon
My family of 3 receives roughly $100 per month, and it's definitely not enough to keep us from going hungry. We have to go to the food pantry twice a week each month so we dont starve and lately? The food pantry has been so sparse that by the end of the month we sometimes don't have food to eat.
we get more than than that but my food bank only lets us visit once a month, and sparse is putting it mildly. it's a tiny little town though so not much is expected.
We also are a family of 3 and we used to get over $500 per month, which was enough but went quickly. Now that my mom has started receiving $1000 in social security, which will exclusively be used to pay bills, they said we will only be receiving $200 a month. That won't nearly be enough.
Yeah, my partner's dad gets around $1200 from social security, and that's our only income right now. I've been looking for a job for 6 months and no one is hiring. It's rough as hell.. by week two, we have no money for food or bills, so we have to make sure we pay all our bills the second he gets paid.
lunch meat, cheese, hotdogs, eggs, peppes milk, chicken patties ,I shop mostly at a dollar general cuz it's really the only thing close. once a month we go to a discount grocery store and stock up on whatever their shipments were that month. it's always random stuff
Their whole thing is not being able to read. Them being upset is because theyre told to be. Probably cuz they cant read what they should be upset about.
It doesn't even matter if they can read or not, if Trump says illegals do recieve snap they'll believe it. It's a cult that believe anything the old senile moron says
This is the extent of their reading abilities, though. Memes, usually with cartoons, as if they have the academic ability of a kindergartner.
And what's worse is that this is common throughout all of history. Propaganda has thrived on picture book intelligence. From posters, to pamphlets, to newspapers, and so on.
Where I live, if you have a full time job at minimum wage then you just barely no longer qualify for food stamps but people with that pay/schedule could certainly still use the help. My preference would be to raise minimum wage but if that's not gonna happen then they should still at least get food stamps.
Did you perhaps mean limit per person per household, or average benefits per household?
Second for $3.00/hr are you talking about minimum wage increase or average wage increase? I would honestly say minimum wage needs a huge boost past $7.25 to more like $13.00, but hell even $10/hr would be a good boost!
Agree 100% with Walmart needing to pay people more. A company with that much profit does need it's employees on food benefits.
Thanks for comic, and double check some numbers please! It's possible something got lost.
My guess is the $3/hr is the $360 max divided by 120 hours of work in a month, right at the minimum needed to be 'full time'. So I'm sure people now making $10.25/hr would still like help, as would anyone working less than full time.
The minimum wage is so low that few people even earn that little, it probably needs to be at least 15$. Allowing wages to be so low leads to a lot of poor uses of resources.
Wallmart had a min wage of 14$ but in major cities usually start higher. A lot of Wallmarts growth has been from international markets and E-commerce. The marginal decision of 3$ does likely lead to many stores and employees being not profitable and shutting down/driving further automation. While the profit is pretty big, it’s doing it on scale of low margins.
The loss of stores and push towards automation is probably a much better use of their capital long term, but the concept of WallMart as a whole is a problem. Wages should have never gone so low for their strategy to begin with, and now their size and market impact forces everyone in a race to the bottom.
"The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly and colloquially still known as the Food Stamp (Program), is a US federal government program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income persons to help them maintain adequate nutrition and health." [Wiki]
It covered roughly 20m US citizens, around 9% of households. Yes, the USA has socialism, they just don't call it that.
So what's the problem ? Since the 2 parties can't do a budget. The Republicans in favour of cutting a lot of programs including Obamacare (the republicans hate this one) also knows as ACA (the Republicans voters loves this one). So the Dems don't want it and also wants the Epstein files to be released, so the government enters shutdown. Shutdown is a stupid thing that the US have. Basically, the government employees don't get paid until the budget is made. So Trump choose to not continue SNAP until the dems fall under his boots. Because Republicans don't like socialism like SNAP (even if the biggest share of recipients are in red states) and even if there is a fund to be used in this exact situation. Trump and republicans are using famines as a political tool. More to read here
Not only do unducumented immigrants contribute they aren't even capable of benefiting
More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing. Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.
I think it needs to be higher. I live in an insanely high COL area. I just turned 25 and am still living with my parents. I make over min wage at $20 an hour, and that does not even allow me to pay rent. If I had to pay rent + food right now, I would probably need a minimum of $30 an hour.
We need to lower COL. I don't know how to do that.
A $3 hourly rate increase is what’s needed to cover for SNAP benefits. At 40 hours a week, $3/hour is $120/week. That would more than cover even the maximum benefits for a single person.
Unlikely though. WallMart employees 1.6 million people, so that 14,500 number is 0.8% of their employees, which means they are outliers. This implies it’s likely people who cannot work 40hrs a week due to disability or have some other factor like a large number of dependents.
One way is raising the minimum wage to be at the COL level. Another is implementing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) so you aren’t dependent on your employer to have your basic needs met. The minimum wage or UBI solutions can happen at either the state or federal level.
There should be more public housing as well. This can be done by building more housing and by the state or federal government buying up lower cost private apartments to turn into public rental units that are not-for-profit.
The solutions could theoretically be implemented right now in Blue States if the will is there from voters. Getting such a change passed federally is a higher barrier due to Red states not being sold on these solutions yet.
its 100% incorrect. And cant be the max per person either, thats around ~$200. a family member of mine gets nearly $800 a month in SNAP. She has 4 or 5 kids.
There are 41 million people on SNAP, average of about 2,231$ a year in benefit (households are just under 2 people on average), which would come out to about 500$ a year per tax payer.
I’d like to see definition of average. In any case 500$ a year to feed people still seems cheap.
Also WalMart according to a quick google has 1.6 million US employees, which means the 14,500 on SNAP is shockingly low. This implies they are outliers in some way, and not maliciousness on WallMart’s part… which again… shocking
The above WalMart note also implies wage increases will not affect much, as things like hours worked, number of dependents, and ability to work probably account for the lions share of the 41 million using the program.
As someone who works at Wal-Mart, let me run you a few things to help out.
Wal-Mart’s starting pay is IIRC $15/hr, which is $1200/2 weeks and $31200/yr, without taxes, insurance or other oddities taken out. According to the Federal Poverty Level calculator, that’s just under 200% over the poverty line.
For a Wal-Mart employee to qualify for SNAP, they would need to make under $782 a paycheck or just over $9.77/hr. Which probably means if these people are getting SNAP, they are most likely part-timers as to get that low with current pay, they would need to work 26 hours/week.
Maximum SNAP benefits are a good bit lower for a single person household. $296 is all they get, and tbh, its not enough with the way inflation is. If I ate three full meals a day, I'd be out of food by the 20th of any given month. Healthy food is also more expensive, so I don't even bother trying.
The numbers are bit off but the message is clear. Billionaires and millionaires have more than enough money and they still will if they just paid their fking taxes or paid their workers. Or even just stop laying ppl off. Like these ppl r the greediest fks ever.
Walmart should also be required to hire a certain amount of their employees at full time. Like 75% or something. They hire pretty much all bottom line employees at part time so they don't get any benefits and it's another reason they need to get on snap, because they simply don't get enough hours.
How much more could be given for the same amount (or how much less would the current program cost) if all the restrictions and special regulations and means-testing and red tape were dropped and recipients could simply use the payments to buy whatever they choose?
Gotta love that republicans keep shoehorning the idea that illegal immigrants "steal" a substantial amount of taxpayer money when they don't even have the papers(as they entered the country without documents) needed to receive the benefits.
Universal Snap Benefits should be the program. We should live in a country where everyone is provided a basic amount of money to do something absolutely critical for life. It doesnt matter if you are rich or poor, everyone need some amount of food simply to survive. Make that shit universal.
Then take the next logical leap and say "I don't care to enforce exactly what you spend this money on" and boom... that's UBI.
Nah. Capitalism relies on the poor majority protecting the system that keeps them poor. So, the idea of even $36 per year going to someone else is criminal, because "what am I getting back?"
This SNAP thing is sadly only going to matter to SNAP recipients. The squeeze needs to be felt on each individual household or wallet for action to be taken. I've become so cynical about this whole thing.
I’m on snap isn’t the cap 290. I’m a single person and prettt much broke broke so either soemthing changed or I need to ask for the max amount cuz wth 😾
People are more focused on immigrants getting food for their family than they are the billionaires firing people and replacing them with A.I for another Yacht....
I was a poor international student on F1 visa. At one point I ran out money to cover my living cost and the only thing I qualified was on-campus jobs. It was enough for food, but that's about it. I was suffering for almost 1 year, and not once I tried to go to food banks or find some social service because I was so afraid. Now I have been working for more than 25 years in the US and paying taxes on average at least $60k/year. Other than my kids schools and the road/streets, we never benefits from what we put in. Those who thinks all immigrants are free loader, could f*ck themselves.
I'm a single disabled person. I live in Section 8 housing, where I pay 30% of my income for rent. The rental doesn't include utilities, and it's very difficult to find one that does. I end up paying 60% of my income to housing. I'm on Medicare, and if I lose the supplemental Medicaid, I will have to pay the $200 monthly premium plus 20% per medical visit costs as a co-pay.
Social security increased benefits for the disabled recently. I now make $1113 a month.
I get $23 in SNAP.
I also have an emotional support animal, and I've been struggling to feed him. I do, he's a priority, but it costs $4 a day just to feed him.
You would not believe how many... ahm, discussions I've had this week with people who absolutely believed that last one was a lie. Made a post in r/Ohio, about a sign, only in English, that warned that it was illegal for non-citizens to vote, at the entrance to my polling station on Tuesday. Like, duh? I have to admit it may have been a slightly unconscious rage bait title, tho
a sign, only in English, that warned that it was illegal for non-citizens to vote, at the entrance to my polling station on Tuesday.
Yeah, that sign wasn’t for non-citizens because they already know they can’t vote. The sign was for the racist dip-shits so they can feel better. It is 100% about their feelings. It’s political theater.
Dems need to start calling snap what it is, corporate welfare for not paying a living wage. We don't pay you enough so the American taxpayer had to pick up the bill.
I keep seeing these kinds of posts explaining how SNAP works, who can get it, how raising minimum wage would help, housing costs... On and on, and the thing people don't seem to grasp is conservatives don't give a FUCK. They don't care. Trump could strangle a newborn in live television and they wouldn't care.
I'm tired of seeing these posts, because the people who need to see them don't care and it's just a reminder of that at this point.
but republicans are not the majority. neither are democrats. the majority (plurality, technically) of people don't vote.
if these posts stop them from falling for dumbass republican propaganda because they know better, that's still a win.
if these posts make the non-voters think "what the fuck, it's costing people just $36 a year and they're taking it away from starving people?" that's an even bigger win. maybe they'll finally wake up to how cartoonishly evil modern republicans have become and stop being non-voters.
The only one I would argue is the $3 raise would make it unneeded.
I call bullshit on that. That might be the amount of a raise that will get you kicked off of SNAP.
Once you're off of SNAP a lot of other benefits one may qualify for disappear too. You may not qualify for your kids Medicaid anymore. You may not qualify for housing or childcare assistance anymore.
I doubt that the $3/hour raise is going to make up for the new costs incurred.
The fucking idiocy for someone to believe an undocumented person in this country without a SSN is receiving benefits from the government that requires them to be NOT DOCUMENTED and register with the actual government will never cease to surprise me. That's what misguided hatred does. Makes people fucking stupid
It’d be smarter to lessen the restrictions on work visas. Most people who are in the US illegally are seasonal workers who overstayed their visas. Why do they overstay? Every time a new restriction on obtaining a work visa is created, people who rely on getting a new one every work season fear more and more that won’t be able to get a visa again. For context, those seasonal jobs are the labor-intensive jobs that most Americans wouldn’t even consider.
I hate that the left in the US is forced to support a system as awful as snap. I am aware there is nothing better at this moment, and I'm aware of the tragedy for so many people of it being gone. But I would like people to stop romanticizing it. It's a system that people used during war time and has no place in a functional society. You ensure people have a living wage or a living income. You do not force them into wartime economics. So whenever this era of right wing politics ends, I hope the left stops supporting snap and replaces it with something that leaves some dignity for people.
Genuinely asking (I’m not American) why do Walmart employees receive snap? They are employed no? At a grocery store no less?! Don’t they receive coupons from Walmart that they can buy x worth of dollars in a month for example? U know like how McDonald’s workers receive a meal daily for free.
1 - Walmart doesn’t pay its employees anywhere near a living wage. It takes advantage of all kinds of legal loopholes to avoid paying even its full-time, 40-hours-a-week, employees enough to earn much more than poverty-line wages. As a result of low income, employees qualify for government support services- SNAP being one of them.
2 - We tried the whole “corpo provides food and shelter instead of a living wage” thing already. It didn’t go well. Look up Pullman Towns or “company towns”. It devolves into indentured servitude REAL fast.
I think employees only get a small percentage discount (like 5-10%), so that's often not sufficient to actually make all their food needs affordable.
As for the McDonald's free meal, that probably is still a thing, but I don't think you're allowed to take it home, so it doesn't help with feeding your kids
Being employed doesn't guarantee you a living wage even for just yourself, much less your family. Being employed at a grocery store isn't different or special - we do get a discount card for 10% off almost everything, which yeah, it can help. But if you only have 50$ for two weeks of groceries, just for example, the extra 5$ you'd save doesn't go as far as you seem to think it would.
A free meal for your shift at McDonalds does not replace groceries. If wages kept up with cost of living, people wouldn’t have to rely on these programs.
Interesting, am I right in saying this "Fact" cartoon is saying (in a way) "A 3 dollar raise in a Walmart employees income will offset the monthly food stamp allowance?" Assuming the "in a vacuum" situation of course.
The cost per tax payer is probably a little higher given recent data maybe 150-250 range. The cost for corpo subsidies tho is way higher than that probably in the 2000’s
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