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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26094 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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Walton family, whose business is only viable because the government enables them to pay below-livable wages with their welfare programs.

I don’t understand this common argument. Without welfare, wouldn’t the employees be more desperate, enabling walmart to pay them far less?

And to look at the problem from the other side: let's say Bernie decides that the state guarantees a minimum standard of living to everyone, regardless or work status, and raise that to equal or higher than whatever walmart pays : as a consequence, no one works at walmart anymore and the state pays everyone a walmart salary. It's a gigantic loss for the state. What I mean is, it's actually walmart who helps the state give money to people so they have an acceptable living standard (which is the responsibility of the state, according to leftists), not the other way around.

I think the argument is basically feudal. The employer is basically considered a liege lord to its employees, owing them some minimum standard in living. If the king (government) has to step in and provide additional largesse directly, that's a failure on the lord's part.

I don’t know, bit anachronistic, and they don’t bring up this ‘liege solidarity’ anywhere else.

My theory is that employees think they produce a lot of value, at least equivalent to their wages + welfare (+ a share of ‘unfair’ walmart profits, which they reluctantly grant those bloodsucking capitalists), and that this sum is stable and independent of other actors, and prices. They equate the value they provide with the effort they put in, which is usually a lot, because low-wage jobs really are tedious and unrewarding.

So they think that without the welfare, they’d just get more wages. The idea that someone's work might only be worth 5$/h just will not compute.

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