This is rich. Despite the holiday season, Walmart is reporting that it will have "negative" profits for the fourth quarter of 2013. One of the reaons the company is citing for its woeful performance? Food stamp cuts.
Indeed, cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have been devastating for millions of American families. And the cuts have certainly prohibited Walmart consumers from buying low-cost food products.
After all, they've prohibited struggling consumers from buying any food at all.
But so too have Walmart's unsustainable wages, and the low wages the company has fought to keep in place by lobbying against living wage mandates and minimum wage increases. Remember: Walmart is the nation's single largest private employer, with full-time employees making so little that they themselves must seek government assistance – or private goodwill – to survive.
This hypocrisy, to go along with the company's corporate greed, is astounding. Even by Walmart standards.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, just out from Oneworld Publications.