You will be contributing to Walmart’s vast profits today even if you don’t go brave the Black Friday crowds. In fact, you’ll be padding their profits tomorrow, too. And the next day. And the next. If you pay taxes, you’re with the rest of us schmucks just handing money over by the billions to the Walton family and the other principal owners of Walmart. The world’s second largest corporation is the country’s biggest “welfare queen,” relying on the generosity of the American welfare system--i.e., our tax dollars--to pay poverty wages. It's a subsidy, plain and simple. Walmart has figured out that it doesn’t have to pay wages that feed and house and secure some modicum of health. Why pay workers enough to live on when those dumb taxpayers will foot some of the bill?

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WE BREAK DOWN AN ACCOUNT OF LIVING ON WALMART WAGES
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It is estimated that as many as 80% of in-store Walmart workers depend on food stamps to supplement their paltry wages. Estimates place the per store taxpayer subsidies at as much as $1 million or more, with per employee costs amounting to almost $6,000. The total taxpayer costs to subsidize Walmart’s low wages is found to be somewhere in the neighborhood of between $2.6 and $3.6 billion.

One wonders if the Walton family is thankful for our gift. Our annual gift pays CEO Mike Duke’s $20.7 million salary easily. Duke is stepping down in February, and we’ve already taken care of his entire $113 million retirement package. Hope he enjoys that. He might consider sending us a card. We’ve paid the entire Walmart executive team’s salaries with plenty to spare.

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Rosalind Brewer, Executive VP — $14,448,472

William S. Simon, Executive VP — $11,216,022

C. Douglas McMillon, Executive VP — $9,316,441

Charles Holley, Jr., Executive VP and CFO — $6,530,794

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We’ve bought heiress Christy Walton’s $12.5 million home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We took care of Rob Walton’s more than $16 million car collection. Oh, and his $50 million private jet. Don’t worry about it, Rob, happy to help. That brings us to a little over a quarter billion dollars, which leaves about $3 billion, give or take, that the Walton family and the web of Wall Street firms who own the rest of Walmart can spend as they please. Though it’s impossible to know exactly how much, we can safely assume that a guy like Laurence Fink has gleaned some loot from our generous arrangement. The BlackRock CEO’s 26-acre estate in Westchester, NY, his Manhattan and Vail, Colorado homes, and his Gulfstream G-550 private jet are at least partially funded by our magnanimous contributions to the Walmart empire.

But our generous giving to corporations doesn’t stop at Walmart. McDonald’s may even be better at working the welfare system. The fast food giant actively directs its low-paid employees to federal programs so that it can maintain its hefty profit margin with shitty wages. Nancy Salgado, a 10-year employee of McDonald’s, recently called the company’s McResources hotline to ask about how to survive after not being given a raise in her decade-long service. The response: Go on welfare.

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WE BREAK DOWN THE McRESOURCES PHONE CALL
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The leaked phone call follows the release of McDonald’s “Practical Money Skills” booklet offered to employees, a paternalistic and dubious guide to surviving on McDonald’s wages. McDonald’s assures its employees that “financial freedom” can be had on a McDonald’s wage. Step One: Get another job. Step Two: Find a portal to another dimension where health insurance is $20 a month. Step Three: Use the booklet as kindling in a fire because your heat just got cut off.
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WE BREAK DOWN McDONALD’S “SAMPLE MONTHLY BUDGET”
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From Walmart to McDonald’s and on down, corporations have learned that we taxpayers will enable the companies’ poverty wages. The answer, though, is not to throttle the programs on which so many citizens rely; no, the solution is to demand that wages be sufficient to support those whose work make the companies work. A McDonald’s without employees is just a useless building, same with Walmart. Those whose days are spent powering the companies should be able to feed and provide for their families, at the very least.

Thankfully, after years of union dormancy, Walmart and fast food workers are organizing themselves to demand higher wages and better treatment. Today, strikes and other protest actions are planned at nearly 1,500 stores. It will likely be the biggest retail worker labor action in US history. The protest is only the latest in a series of actions increasing in power and visibility each time.

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WE BREAK DOWN THE LATEST PROTEST OF WALMART
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After decades of post-industrialization, offshoring and deunionization, a national discourse is beginning to build about the responsibilities of the new hegemonic employers. Ashton Kutcher even took to Twitter two weeks ago to assail Walmart for its wages. In response to this summer’s living wage protests, fast food industry boosters were forced to take out a full-page ad warning that robots would be enlisted to replace humans if workers’ wage demands were met. This is a long overdue national conversation. The so-called “good jobs” that have been sent overseas over the past few decades were only good--that is, well paying--because of the many years of struggle to unionize and demand those wages and benefits. There’s no reason the same can’t be achieved for the new standard types of employment: fast food, retail and other forms of immaterial or affective labor. Whether you’re on the political right or left, the current situation should alarm you: Millions of hardworking Americans are struggling this holiday season, their corporate employers are raking in profits, and the rest of us find ourselves as accomplices.