I’ve been chastised by Wal-Mart! Imagine my distress.
The largest corporation in the world apparently was stung by one of my recent commentaries [see Hightower, “Wal-Mart milks taxpayers,” Oct. 21]. I had pointed out that Wal-Mart, which touts itself as a model of “free-market” success, actually has built its market muscle by squeezing more than a billion dollars in subsidies from state and local governments.
In response, Sarah Clark, the company’s director of corporate communications, fired off a missive to some media outlets. She asserted that my commentary was “full of inaccuracies.” Was the key figure of $1 billion in taxpayer giveaways to Wal-Mart inaccurate? No, she didn’t dispute it.
Rather, Wal-Mart’s chief flack tried to change the subject, offering numbers purporting to show that the company is a generous corporate citizen. “In the past 10 years,” Clark says, “Wal-Mart has paid $4 billion in property taxes alone . . .” But wait — it owed those taxes! Other businesses pay property taxes, too, yet they don’t get a billion bucks in special subsidies.
Then Clark notes that her company “generated $52 billion in sales taxes.” But wait again — that’s not Wal-Mart’s money. It’s money that local consumers paid to finance public services. This money is also the result of sales that the monopolistic giant took from local businesses. Wal-Mart doesn’t expand a community’s buying power — it just redistributes purchases from other stores to itself.
But Clark presses on, claiming that “Wal-Mart has remitted $192 million” in wage taxes. Once more, however, this money is not a voluntary contribution from a good-hearted company — it’s taken out of the employees’ wages, as required by law.
To see the full report and related material about how Wal-Mart does indeed
milk taxpayers, go to www.goodjobsfirst.org.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2004.
