Politics, Politics, Politics

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Walmart benefits from billions in government subsidies: Study

Walmart is the beneficiary of billions of dollars per year in federal subsidies, according to a new report [PDF] from the non-partisan, progressive group Americans for Tax Fairness.

The report estimates that Walmart and the Walton family—which co-founded the company and still owns a majority share—collectively profit from nearly $7.8 billion per year in federal subsidies and tax breaks.

“This report shows that our current system is anything but fair – rather it provides special treatment to America’s biggest corporations and richest families leaving individual taxpayers and small businesses to pick up the tab,” the report concluded.

The $7.8 billion includes an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance for low-wage Walmart employees, including programs like food stamps, subsidized housing, and Medicaid. It also includes an estimated $70 million per year in “economic development subsidies” from state and legal governments eager to host Walmart in their cities.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/walmart-government-subsidies-study#51652

 

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How Wal-Mart Has Used Public Money in Your State

A secret behind Wal-Mart’s rapid expansion in the United States has been its extensive use of public money. This includes more than $1.2 billion in tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants from state and local governments around the country. In addition, taxpayers indirectly subsidize the company by paying the healthcare costs of Wal-Mart employees who don’t receive coverage on the job and instead turn to public programs such as Medicaid. This website brings together available information on both kinds of subsidies involved in Wal-Mart’s “double-dipping.” In the future we will add data on other ways Wal-Mart relies on taxpayers to finance its growth.
http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/

 

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Federal government should stop subsidizing Wall Street

Imagine if the United States had an airline industry in which the biggest carriers that fly both domestically and internationally received a larger government fuel subsidy than those flying only domestic routes. Unfair? Yes — and that’s exactly how the U.S. financial system works.

The fuel of the largest firms in our financial services industry is subsidized, and the public bears the cost.

Financial firms can borrow money — their equivalent of fuel — more cheaply and with less market scrutiny when they have access to government guarantees of deposit insurance, loans from the Federal Reserve and, ultimately, taxpayer support such as we saw with the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. This safety net was intended to stabilize the financial system by protecting the payments system that transfers money around the country and the world as well as the essential lending that commercial banks provide. But these protections also assure those who lend to banks that they will be repaid regardless of the condition of the bank. Under such circumstances, creditors give the firms a discount on the cost of the funds they borrow.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...6d6c9b5d7ad_story.html?utm_term=.88f256fbcfa9

 

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This Year’s Subsidy to Wall Street = the Amount of This Year’s Sequester Cuts

Posted on February 28, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog


Guest post by Eric Zuesse. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Since we’ve bailed out the 10 largest banks $83 billion this year alone, should they give it back to us by paying into the U.S. Treasury the amount of this year’s sequester? After all, it’s the same amount.

On February 20th, Bloomberg News editors headlined, “Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?” and issued the first-ever thorough and current analysis of the taxpayer-subsidy to the Wall Street mega-banks. They found that this subsidy is $83 billion this year, but they made no note of the fact that this amount is only $2 billion less than this year’s sequester cuts are estimated to be, so that all that would need to be done, in order to avoid those cuts, would be to have those mega-banks that we bail out every year forego their subsidy from taxpayers, for just one year. Unfortunately, this would be easier said than done.

That $83 billion subsidy this year is, according to Bloomberg’s, also approximately the amount of profits that those banks are “earning” this year. So, if the mega-banks wouldn’t refund it out of what we gave them last year, then they could just refund it by paying to us – who, after all, bailed out their stockholders enormously in 2009 – the “profits” that they made this year.


The editors at Bloomberg News (hardly a bunch of populists) calculated this $83 billion figure based upon their analysis of the figures in a sadly ignored but rigorous study that had been done by IMF economists, a study that had been issued months back, in May 2012, and which was titled “Quantifying Structural Subsidy Values for Systemically Important Financial Institutions.” As Bloomberg’s editors summarized the reason for this ongoing federal subsidy: “The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail,” due to the special Government backing for too-big-to-fail (TBTF) institutions.

The taxpayer-funded annual subsidy to these TBTF banks has never before been calculated as to its actual annual dollar-value, but this rigorous IMF study finally provided the means for doing that. Bloomberg’s summarizes: “What if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?”

“The top five banks – JP Morgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits.”

This $83 billion, in other words, is the current value of the annual subsidy received by America’s 10 mega-banks, from our Government’s special treatment of them as “Systemically Important Financial Institutions” (i.e., fully guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers, irrespective of the normal $250,000-per-account limit in savings and checking accounts), or TBTF institutions, which the other 7,053 (out of the total 7,063 FDIC-insured) banks are not – other banks can fail without destroying the U.S. economy. In a certain sense, these are the banks where the super-rich can enjoy FDIC protection without that $250,000-per-account limit, and can even gamble under the protection of that comforting umbrella.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013...-the-amount-of-this-years-sequester-cuts.html

 

[nongolfer]

6.22BB out of 7.8BB are to employees. Of which how many are under 18, and how many are part time, and how many actually support a household on this income?

Those would be necessary facts to even begin to have an educated conversation.

70MM in economic develop subsidies. Which presumably Wal Mart eventually pays back in increased commercail property taxes.

I'm sorry. I really thought for a moment you had some corporate subsidies that I could actually agree on, not some partially explained facts that are easily explained in one post, with just a few well placed questions.

FWIW, I'm no fan of Wal Mart.

 

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Corporate welfare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Corporate welfare is a term that analogizes corporate subsidies to welfare payments for the poor.[1] The term is often used to describe a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment for corporations. It highlights how wealthy corporations are less in need of such treatment than the poor.[1]

The definition of corporate welfare is sometimes restricted to direct government subsidies of major corporations, excluding tax loopholes and all manner of regulatory and trade decisions, which, in practice, could be worth much more than any direct subsidies.

Subsidies considered excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare.[1] The label of corporate welfare is often used to decry projects advertised as benefiting the general welfare that spend a disproportionate amount of funds on large corporations, and often in uncompetitive, or anti-competitive ways. For instance, in the United States, agricultural subsidies are usually portrayed as helping independent farmers stay afloat. However, the majority of income gained from commodity support programs actually goes to large agribusiness corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland, as they own a considerably larger percentage of production.[22]

Alan Peters and Peter Fisher, Associate Professors at the University of Iowa,[23] have estimated that state and local governments provide $40–50 billion annually in economic development incentives,[24] which critics characterize as corporate welfare.[25]

Some economists consider the 2008 bank bailouts in the United States to be corporate welfare.[26][27] U.S. politicians have also contended that zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve System to financial institutions during the global financial crisis were a hidden, backdoor form of corporate welfare.[28]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_welfare

 

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I really thought for a moment you had some corporate subsidies that I could actually agree on,

did you read what I just gathered and posted!

and besides wal mart does get a giant chunk of taxpayer money.... not counting on what the gov has to pay their employees in subsidies

BTW I'm not a wal mart fan at all!
but will admit if in a hurry I do go there..... from my place it is 5miles to the right to broken arrow.... or 5 miles to the left to go to coweeta.... wal mart just happens to be in between the 2 towns less than a mile from me.... so regretfully I do go there when in a hurry!....oil for cars etc...shopping we go to broken arrow!

 

[nongolfer]

The minimum wage argument isn't very good. Neither is the Wal Mart argument. Not only in my opinion, but also based on economics.

The bank bailout is a good argument in my opinion. Unfortunately it had broad support from both Republicans and Democrats, and was almost universally supported by a majority of economists leaning both ways.

But it is odd you point towards the bank bailout, with which I agree, becuase it would have had severe economic and social repercussions, largely falling on the poorest, most vulnerable.

But it was bad legislation in what is supposedly a free market. Just as health care 1 under Obama was, and health care 2, as proposed by Republicans was. Although the bank bailout largely paid for itself, where as the stimulus didn't.

Doesn't matter. The amount of bad legislation by liberal is staggering. As is the amount of bad legislation, and policy, by alleged fiscal conservatives. The stuff, although a lot less of it, legislated and proposed by fiscal conservatives is the most disappointing as they should know better.

Government spending money stimulates very little, depending on how it is being spent. Government programs for the poor actually perpetuates poverty. If it doesn't, show me some empirical data that shows poverty lessening after each large government program.

Poor people could use some tough love. And a job.

If you really care, and I suspect you do, it is about time for you to stop blindly following one ideology, and think for yourself. I remember talking to a wealthy man long before I made my first real money. He told me it was o.k. for me to beleive my eyes.

 

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The minimum wage argument isn't very good

what??????? in every state that they raised the minimum wage the economy improved!...of the 10 worst states... all red... we (the gov) give them more money for food stamps welfare and etc... than they pay in taxes!

Neither is the Wal Mart argument

we give wal mart a lot of money in different breaks... all so they can hire minimum wage people... that we end up giving benefits to because they can't live on the wages that wal mart pays!

The bank bailout is a good argument in my opinion

that we got fucked on... should have and would have been nice to,let them fail... but the economy would not hold up if we had.... but Obama put in checks and balances to stop that from happeneing again...BUT trump just removed them... said the banks needed the freedom to borrow and lend.... how long before we are right back in that mess?

Government spending money stimulates very little, depending on how it is being spent

got a good meme for that... but you wouldn't or don't like the meme's.... but the jist of it is..... the best thing for the economy is a well paid worker... he spends his wages on ..whatever.... that money goes back into different biz that helps the economy.... bottom line is it is the well paid worker that makes the economy move...NOT biz!
pay the workers they spend the money!

Government programs for the poor actually perpetuates poverty. If it doesn't, show me some empirical data that shows poverty lessening after each large government program.

can't and won't.... agree with you on that...... see my above statement!

it is about time for you to stop blindly following one ideology

I don't... I am not sold on the dems..... I screwed up and voted for a friggn republican this time... langfort... all he talked about was working across the isle and getting things done.... now he says he will vote with the rest of the right on health care... even though he knows nothing about it... but believes in his party

anyway my thing the left does not pass laws to hurt the middle class.... they may not help that much but they don't intentionally hurt!
unlike the right!
hate to agree with 2bi.... but we do need more than just the 2 party system..... but the third party never gets their head out of their ass in time to do or say anything... so we are stuck with the lesser of 2 evils!

 

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[TwoBiFour]

Money given to "Big business" to expand and grow so they can higher more employees providing more jobs for the community = Bad.
Money given to "Big Business" so someone can get cheep insurance = Good.

 

[TwoBiFour]

can't and won't.... agree with you on that...... see my above statement!

I implore you to watch Poverty Inc. It's on Netflix

 

[subhub174014]

implore you to watch Poverty Inc. It's on Netflix

sorry I meant I can't and won't argue with you on that... because I agree with you on it

 

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Money given to "Big business" to expand and grow so they can higher more employees providing more jobs for the community = Bad.
Money given to "Big Business" so someone can get cheep insurance = Good.

and I will agree with you on that.... but that has not shown to be the case.... good idea IF there was some kind of guarantee on that.... they could work out some kind of tax credit for those that supply a decent insurance to employees!

 

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Will Donald Trump be the last Republican president?
Chicago Tribune 17 hours ago .

Since President Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination a question hangs over the right: Should the GOP survive or is it morally corrupted and politically deformed to such an extent that those of good conscience on the center-right must start anew? Having engaged in the original sin, if you will, of supporting Trump and then defending his aberrant presidency and helping thereby to define political deviancy down (as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the decline of social and behavioral norms in his lifetime), has the GOP in essence forfeited political legitimacy permanently? The former (should the GOP survive) goes to the moral culpability of those who lifted Trump to power and kept him there. ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/4e139c...ab78744/ss_will-donald-trump-be-the-last.html

 

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Top Republican senator says his party is in 'denial' about Trump
Allan Smith,Business Insider 11 hours ago .


Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona wrote that his party is in "denial" about President Donald Trump in a column in Politico on Monday.

Flake, who is up for reelection in 2018 and is one of the more vulnerable GOP senators in the upcoming election, held little back in the Politico op-ed, describing an executive branch "in chaos" and a president who has "seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians."

The Arizona Republican also took issue with his party's mission while President Barack Obama was in office.

"Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process," he wrote. "With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump."

"I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obama's failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure," he continued. "It was we conservatives who, upon Obama's election, stated that our number-one priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president — the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime."

He said conservatives were "largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama's legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us."

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/top-republican-senator-says-party-223439328.html

 

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It's starting to look like Trump is already a "lame duck" Pres..... sure hope so!

Senior GOP senators serve notice: No action on healthcare at this point
Los Angeles Times 10 hours ago .

Trump administration officials continue to push the Senate to take another run at healthcare legislation, but on Monday senior Republican senators pushed back, making clear that they're done with the topic for now. "There's just too much animosity and we're too divided on healthcare," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the head of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an interview with Reuters. "I think we ought to acknowledge that we can come back to healthcare afterward, but we need to move ahead on tax reform," Hatch said. His remarks were quickly followed by others in GOP leadership positions. "I think it's time to move on to something else," Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri told CNN. "If the question ...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/8874f532-2e4d-3ded-86f5-e0076bb9a1c1/ss_senior-gop-senators-serve.html

 

[MacNfries]

"Ah, say this ain't soooo!"

TRUMP MISLEAD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-aides’-stunning-cry-for-help-admitting-the-president-misled-the-american-people/ar-AApeDD3?li=BBnbcA1



I think we ought to start a little wager as to WHEN President Chump will tell the TRUTH about something ... anything ... healthcare, the Russians, the WALL, scores on his golf cards, bathroom breaks at work ... ANYTHING. The man is a habitual LIAR ... the whole LOT of them in his administration ... *******, staff, lawyers, name it! What a pathetic bunch of CHUMPS!

 

[TwoBiFour]

The man is a habitual LIAR ... the whole LOT of them in his administration ... *******, staff, lawyers, name it! What a pathetic bunch of CHUMPS!

Are you referring to the Democratic party or the Republican party?
I think that sums up the current government body!

 

[MacNfries]

Are you referring to the Democratic party or the Republican party?
I think that sums up the current government body!

Well, hummm, I'll admit politics in general is in a sorry state; makes me want to *******. But my comment was regarding Trump ... "The man is a habitual LIAR ... the whole LOT of them in his administration ..." which none are Democrats to my knowledge. You got to admit the lying (which they aren't refuting and now have FOX NEWS helping them) is becoming ridiculous. Maybe this is Trump's intention, to make mock of government and call notice to the increasing lack of credibility, but I don't think so. I honestly think Trump has a mental problem and needs serious help. I just hope they can find it for him before something really serious comes up that calls on Trump to make the ultimate decision, because he's not capable of that.