Don’t count on the geniuses running WalMart to figure out the problem anytime soon. Rather than looking at how meager is the pay of millions of working Americans, the execs are blaming the expiration of the payroll-tax break on Dec. 31. The Bloomberg report noted that “For a person making $40,000 a year, that is about $15 a week.” $15 a week is wrecking WalMart? Really? Or is it the fact that nearly one in every five U.S. households earns less than $20,000 a year?
WalMart, in fact, leads the list of the 20 Companies With the most low-wage workers. As Henry Blodget pointed out, Walmart could give every single one of its 1.4 million U.S. workers a $5,000 a year raise and STILL have $17 billion in profit. (Daily Kos).
Walmart is the very antithesis of Epicurean. It is an anti-worker rights, power-hungry, corporation for whom massive profits are the only important thing. A corporation run by a Epicurean, on the contrary, would adopt the attitude that a happy, welllooked-after workforce would produce even better result for shareholders, and would spend its money right back there in the store. How can the Walton family spend all the money they have? Isn’t it almost a full time task looking after it and preventing fraud and loss? To be financially comfortable is one thing, but having all that money and wanting even more offends the spirit of Epicurus.
The sick thing is that these super-rich people, many of whom have inherited their corporations and their wealth, reject the idea that they are simply lucky and believe their wealth is a natural outcome of either their superior judgment or something to do with god. That is, if you are not rich god has not blessed you. Meanwhile, they , with others are sucking up all the wealth without a moment’s thought of the long-term consequences to the nation.