No, it most definitely is not. Walmart (one 'l') is consistently in one of the top employers with employees on SNAP. So, if you live and work in the US, you're subsidizing Walmart's employees.
Is it worse or better for you that these same companies will purposely schedule less hours for workers so they don't meet the legal threshold to be considered full time employees?
If you are the single working member in a family after a certain size, you may still qualify for SNAP. Usually, not only in the US, but in most countries with similar well-fare programs, the eligibility is determined by the household income, not the individual.
Also, Wallmart have plenty of non full-time jobs, which tend to attract a lot of single mons that have no access to child-care, and this probably increases the probability of those employees being eligible to SNAP.
The media loves to drop those kind of number without context for page-views.
Let's also remember that in the real world outside of our bubble, 20, 30hrs week jobs are basically what a single mom with limited access to child-care can afford to work.
SNAP is based on income, so anyone that's properly employed should be making too much money to qualify.
So is this purely a communication problem, or is there a real a wage/hours problem?
If they're offering enough hours and the employee is choosing to be far under full time, then we should phrase things more specifically than "employed".
But if anyone that wants to be full time, or is full time, doesn't meet the income threshold, that sounds like Walmart taking advantage of insufficient worker protection.
SNAP eligibility is based on household net income. A father of 2, with an unemployed spouse, and medical bills could be earning vastly more than someone single and debt-free, while still qualifying for SNAP when the latter does not.
It's silly to put the oneness onto their employers when circumstances can vary so wildly.
I can't edit my remark, so I'll add to it here: Your comment history shows a pattern of sarcastic commentary and quips instead of good faith statements of opinion.
This is a bad way to measure things because SNAP benefit qualifications are measured by annual income and number of children.
Walmart could pay shelf-stockers $50/hr, but if they have 6 kids and work 20 hours a week, they would actually qualify for food stamps. Does that mean they're underpaid at $50/hr?
If Walmart laid off all their employees and replaced them with half as many employees that were paid twice as much, you'd be subsidizing even more people's living expenses. Yet somehow Walmart would be a more ethical company because no of their their own employees would be on SNAP?
So if you don't have the skills to be worth twice the compensation, you don't deserve a job at all and it's the taxpayer's responsibility to pay for your expenses?
What a weird thing to read into my comment. No, I do not think that. Skills didn't even come up. And this isn't the only employer that exists, nor is there a fixed supply of job money in the world.
Also, paying half as many people twice the wage is in aggregate roughly the same as cutting typical work hours to 20 per week while maintaining the same pay per week. Where's the downside for the employees?
And in particular for the SNAP aspect, the whole point of this discussion is that the current wages were not getting those people out of the SNAP income range, so the taxpayer cost is the same even if Walmart fires all of them and replaces them with nothing.
If Walmart is bad for employing people who rely on SNAP, then wouldn't it be the same be true for any other business that does the same?
> Also, paying half as many people twice the wage is in aggregate roughly the same as cutting typical work hours to 20 per week while maintaining the same pay per week.
My point is that it's not roughly the same at all. In one option everyone is still employed, and in the other half the people don't have a job. Obviously, if something magically doubles everyone's productivity, that would be a good thing, but you have to apply that on both sides of the comparison.
> taxpayer cost is the same even if Walmart fires all of them and replaces them with nothing.
Walmart minimum wage is $14 now. Walmart workers who are single and childless or married to a working couple who otherwise wouldn't be eligible for SNAP would become eligible if they lose their jobs.
> If Walmart is bad for employing people who rely on SNAP, then wouldn't it be the same be true for any other business that does the same?
I didn't say they're bad. My claim is that if they paid twice as much per hour, for half as many people, that would be an improvement.
> My point is that it's not roughly the same at all. In one option everyone is still employed, and in the other half the people don't have a job. Obviously, if something magically doubles everyone's productivity, that would be a good thing, but you have to apply that on both sides of the comparison.
If people can get paid the same amount while working half as many days, most of them will work fewer days. Half of people would not be unemployed. And for the people that would end up unemployed, more jobs will fill the void.
We don't need to push down wages to keep people employed.
There would be a lot of chaos if every single company doubled wages to low level employees on the same day. But we don't need to worry about that contrived scenario.
> Walmart minimum wage is $14 now. Walmart workers who are single and childless or married to a working couple who otherwise wouldn't be eligible for SNAP would become eligible if they lose their jobs.
I think the vast majority of them would find new jobs.
Or we could only apply this policy to future Walmart hires or something.
> If people can get paid the same amount while working half as many days, most of them will work fewer days. Half of people would not be unemployed.
I gave a simple thought experiment, but you're trying to escape making a trade off. Yes, in the real world, people value free time, you can employee people part time, and there are other employers besides Walmart, but that's outside the point I'm trying to make. If we're going for full realism, Walmart would also go bankrupt if they laid off half their workforce and paid the rest twice as much.
I'm not trying to escape the trade-off, I just don't think it teaches us anything we can apply to the real world.
If we keep things as simple as possible, and assume those people stay unemployed, then Walmart should make as many jobs as possible at absolute minimum wages, maybe even below the legal limit. But if we're talking about semi-realistic scenarios, then they should not do that.
This moral framework can lead to all sorts of suboptimal outcomes, such as employer healthcare mandates that are subsided with tax incentives (though some other interventions, like modest minimum wages can help people without distorting the economy).
