Quote Originally Posted by zookeeper View Post
Garin, Nice job of sidestepping the issue of hoarding BILLIONS upon BILLIONS while the taxpayer picks up the tab for many of their workers "benefits."
Great work ethic those Walton's have!
First, saying they make $25,000 every minute is quite an exaggeration. Lets look at real numbers. According to Yahoo finance, the largest shareholder was Jim Walton with 10,501,672 shares as of June of last year. That equates to dividend income of about $19,743,143 per year which is about $37.56 per minute. Still not bad pay but far from $25,000 per hour you claim.

Second, Wal Mart directly employs more than 2.1 million people worldwide. That is a massive number of people. Add to that the millions upon millions who are employed in multiple other businesses supporting Wal Mart's sales and operation and you have virtually the world's most massive business.

Now, lets look at the layoffs that have you foaming at the mouth.....about 2,800 people. All businesses lay people off while undergoing reorganizations or slowing business. I've been laid off myself and totally understand it is part of life. You seem to feel that the Walton family had something to do with this business decision. Do you understand business so little that you don't realize that NO ONE in the Walton family has anything to do with the decision to lay these people off. Wal Mart is a business run by officers and the people they laid off were let go by way of a business decision. The company will open both Sam's and Wal Mart stores this year that will employ far more than the 2,800 these layoffs will entail. The Walton family is so far removed from the layoff decision you could line 100 Superstores in between.

Next, you seem to be under the impression that the Walton family sits in buildings virtually drowning in the hoarded piles of cash and stacks of $1000 bills, being waited on by naked servants, serenaded by musicians and being fed bon-bons and grapes like so many Jabba-the-Huts. Their wealth is in the value of the stock they own which rose to all-time highs in recent weeks.

The company donated directly to charity more than $650 million dollars over the last 5 years.

The company and the Walton Foundation has pledged $2 Billion just to hunger causes by 2015.

If they didn't hoard all those billions and billions, what exactly, would you have them do? Just give shares of their stock away? Pull up in front of the local stores in pickup trucks loaded with stock certificates and just start throwing them up in the air for anyone to get? They give hundreds of millions away every year. Millions of people are invested in Wal Mart stock and expect the business to operate in the most profitable way. This is a fiduciary responsibility. If the company feels 2,800 Sam's employees are not needed, then that's part of their responsibilities of running a business.

Since you don't understand what capitalism is, what you see with the Walton family is simply called building and wildly successful family business that has helped the middle and lower income people of this country survive far better than if Wal-Mart didn't exist at all. The family simply owns stock in the company. No one puts a gun to the head of any Wal Mart employee to work there. Well over a million American's do keeping far more off of the government dole or relying on it far less than they otherwise would.

Wal Mart is a business. It is not in business to provide welfare jobs for tens of thousands or pay more than they need to pay. If they raise wages, then they raise their prices and it will defeat the purpose of their business plan. They didn't become the worlds largest business by paying prime wages and benefits.

If you don't understand these things, then you don't understand capitalism at all.