Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Beestie
And speaking of total public assistance, its interesting that California does not seem to have a problem with the children of illegal immigrants attending public schools or with illegal immigrants picking every peice of fruit or vegatable grown in the state.
|
You are making a pretty big leap there, Beestie. The report was about Walmart. It does not pretend to address any possible problems or attitudes about other California labor issues. The report doesn't mention anything about Silicon Valley, either. Does this mean that Californians have no interest or opinions about the computer industry?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Beestie
Where's the study showing how much the benefits paid to illegal immigrants employed by Californian farm co-ops at below minimum wages? Where is the Cellar outrage about that? When the cost of tomatoes rises to $10.00 pound because California mandates that all migrant workers must be paid $15.00/hr and provided with full insurance coverage then I suspect you'll sing a different tune.
|
Oh, I imagine you could generate some comments about migrant workers if you cared to make a post about them. I'm sure UG and others would be happy to oblige. However, again, this was not the topic. And how do you know that we would start singing in a different key when you complain that you can't even hear the song in the first place?
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Beestie
Wouldn't surprise me a bit if the unions funded this study.
|
I checked and the study comes from an institute which is a part of the University of California. Tax payers and students fund the California system of higher education, the last I heard. Naturally, some of these tax payers probably belong to unions. Some of them are probably corporate executives.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Beestie
The minimum wage in CA is 6.75/hr. Wal-Mart pays over $9.00 per hour. And I can't imagine that everyone in CA earning minimum wage has full health insurance coverage.
|
No, I don't imagine that everyone getting the minimum wage in Cali has health insurance, either. Probably a lot of those minimum wage earners are kids working part time flipping burgers. Probably a lot of those minimum wage earners are a lot of different people doing different things working for all kinds of different companies. However, we are talking about a mega-international company named "Walmart."
Here's the most recent stats on Wal-mart's profits that I could find:
Wal-Mart Reports Record Sales and Earnings for 1st Quarter 2006
Net sales for the first quarter were $70.9 billion, an increase of 9.5 percent over the first quarter of fiscal 2005. Net income for the quarter was $2.5 billion, an increase of 13.6 percent from $2.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2005.
Thats from the Wal-Mart web site. Now, either you buy into the idea of "welfare" or you don't. But if you object to tax payers footing the bill for the health care of a low income, single Mom and her kids, then you should certainly object to tax payers having to foot the bill for an outfit making such an enormous profit by importing goods from a country whose system is anything BUT free market. You can't have one set of rules for one group and a different set for the other without exciting comment from the people involved.
And, BTW, $9.00/hour puts a family of 4 well below the Federal poverty guidelines.