Meanwhile back at the NY Review of books..
Simon Head reviewed a bunch of books related to Wal-Mart. His article was long and full of too many points to cover here, but these three points, among others, jump out:
• "The average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three."
• For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance, costing federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million U.S. employees."
• State governments are burdened by Wal-Marts, too, with California spending more than $20 million on health care for Wal-Mart employees.