Posted on 02/17/2005 2:15:32 PM PST by Rakkasan1
Who proposes a new tax hoping to see not a penny in revenue? A Montana legislator who wants to change the way Wal-Mart pays its workers there.
Sen. Ken Toole, D-Helena, is sponsoring a bill that all but names Wal-Mart as the object of the tax: A big retailer that doesn't pay an entry-level salary of at least $22,000 a year and that hires more than half part-timers will be charged a progressive tax of 1 to 2 percent on its gross receipts over $20 million a year.
It's just the latest proposal by local governments to try to collect more money from Wal-Mart. One spark was a report last year by U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., that
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Go Wal-Mart Go
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
It's a Bill of Attainder. It'll never pass even the most sympathetic court review.
What a Toole.
That should increase prices and decrease wages just fine.
Let's see...let's tax the company more to make them pay more...yeah, right...Montana doesn't have enough people to make Walmart need their business that much....
And we are pro-walmart because?
Personally I'm anti-socialist, and the socialists are anti-Walmart.
I'm neither pro or anti Wal-mart, but these pols are fools if they don't understand businesses don't pay taxes- they just pass them on to customers (and sometimes also employees)
I do appreciate Wal mart standing up to not being bullied by union thugs.
Shades of Twentieth Century Motor Company - Atlas Shrugged.
If you want to influence businesses to hire more full time employee's - give the businesses a tax break then they hire full time employees.
It really is that simple.
If the tax applies to their competition, Wal-Mart will still have an edge. They'll stay and make money.
If the tax only applies to Wal-Mart, they could close up shop like the did with the store in Canada when the unions moved in.
Here we go again!
But these union lobbyists have nothing else to do anyway.
The reason people need money is so they can exchange it for products and services of greater use and value. Because of a WalMart, it takes less money for anybody to have a median standard of living. When you start paying kindergarten teachers $100,000 (as they are proposing in Hawaii, and probably places like Minnesota and San Francisco) the cost of living goes to infinite -- but one's standard of living drops to nearly zero.
You can't exchange your $100,000 for the necessary brain surgery; instead, that money has to go to pay the babysitter -- so you can't get the brain surgery.
--and , in case this goes on to be the usual Wallyworld thread, everything bad that will be said about Wal-Mart, I heard people of my grandparents' age say about Kroger--fifty five years ago--
The tax only applies if your company makes more than $20 million a year and fits certain other rules. The rules have been designed to only affect Wal-Mart. So says the story:
"Toole's homework told him that even the biggest grocery stores in Montana don't reach $20 million a year. It also told him that Costco pay scales will protect it from the tax. That pretty much leaves the world's largest retailer, which has 11 stores in the state of about 1 million people."
They could close all the stores in Montanta, or threaten to stop buying from Montana-based suppliers (if there are any).
but it's worse than that....read the whole article, and you will see that California, Minnesota, Georgia, and who knows what other state are all proposing legislation of one form or another designed to put the squeeze on WalMart.
You're right. I just don't usually believe what I read or see in the media.
If the tax is only a couple of percent, Wal-Mart can still be profitable. They have a big margin edge on small companies.
I guess we'll see.
You are correct, O Wise One. For those not familiar with the term:
Bill of Attainder
Definition: A legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial.
The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed."
"The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature." U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965).
Ditto that. I don't really like Wal-Mart, but I like the people attacking them even less.
Unfortuately we must also admit that is how far too many conservatives backed Microsoft's egregrious violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Are progressive taxes, and things like the AMT, Bills of Attainder, or aren't they?
First step, if they don't already: set up each store as a separate corporate entity. If that doesn't help, set up each department as a separate corporate entity and set up another corporation to contract with the others to perform check out. Final solution- fire all part timers and contract with a staffing company to cover those positions.
Thanks to all that answered, that explains it.
I see your point, I am very much against unions and taxes, BAD
for business and employees!
Absolutely, Pal. I'm a long way from being a leftist, but Wal-Mart is a wretched outfit that pays their slaves-ERRR-"employees" less than living wages and forces many to rely on state assistance to survive. Plus, WM destroys smaller retailers wherever their mushroom megastores pop up, and drives American producers out of business by buying from our friends in Red China at prices only a slave state can offer. Wal-Mart is ugly capitalism, folks, but then again, I'm sure some of you Wal-Mart apologists look back fondly to the good old days of child labor in coal mines as well.
I see you have been visiting the union anti-Walmart sites for your propaganda.
You need to take a basic economics class because you don't have a clue how capitalism works. What you are saying makes you sound very ignorant.
WalMart workers, McDonald's workers, people who work very hard for their money get something those bloated union faces and bodies collecting $100,000 salaries for doing nothing will never get: the respect from others and their own self-respect.
That's why teachers are always complaining they can't get any respect, or that the community doesn't respect them, value them. In truth, if they had their own self-respect, valued and loved what they do, they wouldn't be begging it from anybody else.
That's what it's all about.
can you cite actual data to back up your statements. I know many Walmart/Sam employees who are quite happy working there. In my area, there are many small retailers competing with Walmart (&Lowes and Home Depot). I am sorry that all you have is Walmart!
What is a "living wage?"
Their profit margins are razor thin--3 cents on the dollar. That's how they keep they're prices low. If they eat this tax, they will be losing the majority of their revenue. They can either pass it on to consumers or close up shop.
They have no more jobs to unionize any more in Montana. They've killed mining, timber, coal and petroleum.
The unions peaked sometime in the '80s and they've been poison to everything they touch since.
They are teaching their membership to hate what they do -- as though that is the reason they should be compensated highly for, and not because they are creative and productive. If anything, that has become the cardinal sin -- that one should be productive enough to reduce the problem to very little, and even risk making their own jobs obsolete and unnecessary. Instead, as we have seen with the schools, it takes ten times as much money, twice the staff, to get the same or less results -- in a day and age that predisposes learning. And -- their (non)thinking goes, if the situation becomes worse, we'll have to throw even more money at them next year. So they become worthless individuals with nothing but contempt and for everything and everybody.
The health care industry is the same boat. If people got well, there'd be no market for $100,000 a year nurses, and they'd be making the minimum wage like they used to -- and went into it because it was a noble calling, as was teaching and journalism.
Now all we have in those "professions" are these resentful, frustrated types whose only concern is getting paid more than everybody else -- preferably for doing nothing of value -- as proof of how smart they are.
And we are anti-Walmart because?
You are pretty close to being a Left-sh_t, better get some knowledge about free markets and bone up before posting crap. People are not enslaved, if they can find better employment nothing is stopping them. Some do appreciate the opportunity to be working anywhere.
RE: Child labor laws, you better join the 21st Century. Socialism is a creeping disease and you are in the early stages.
Wal Mart is the Standard Oil Trust of our time. It is only a matter of time before they come up for an anti-trust lawsuit. Even if they don't do anything deliberately they control so much market share that they are becoming anti-competitive.
The recent Sears-Kmart merger/hostile takeover gives Wal Mart a better runner up.
But Wal Marts foray into the grocery business is tweaking the grocers unions and the next Dem in the White House will be under tremendous union pressure to file an anti-trust action against Wal Mart. And one hell of a lot of states and businesses are certain to file amicus curiae if this happens.
I'm a capitalist who sees the damage Wal Mart does with predatory business techniques.
Wal Mart is so big that no one else even compares to them.
--just like Microsoft--?--the company Janet Reno spent more time prosecuting than she did Al-Queda?--so successfully?
Wal Mart is the biggest corporation in the *world* with revenues greater than GE, GM, Ford, *and* Microsoft COMBINED.
I meant it when I said NO ONE compares to Wal Mart.
"They could close all the stores in Montanta, or threaten to stop buying from Montana-based suppliers (if there are any)."
Wal Mart is right out front saying 80% of what they buy comes from Communist China. That old "Buy American" thing was just an ad campaign.
What is a "living wage?"
It is BS made up by the left.
While I do not support Wal Mart, I also find the mimimum wage discriminates against workers who are only worth $2.50 an hour.
The US Constitution has jurisdiction in this case because Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, the "commerce clause."
This attempt by a "state," Montana, for example in this case, to negatively affect interstate commerce with taxes and/or other impediments to commerce, was the original intent of the "commerce clause."
When and how did the term "several states" (To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes:) become to mean a privately owned business over the years that is now regulated by the use of the commerce clause for constitutional jurisdiction of such regulation?
Isn't the meaning of the phrase one of the "several states," such as Montana, Minnesota, California, etc., that is to be regulated by the powers granted to Congress in commerce clause, clearly and unambiguously stated in the Constitution?
I never said that.
Do you also vote democRAT?
BTW- In school we had a career thing. Is it really true that if you make, say, 4000 a month you'll have to pay 1000 in taxes? If it's true then I can understand all those talking of taxes. Also they messed it up and I was supposed to be single but they gave me a kid so I had to pay like 500$ a month for him. Also BTW- I was in deep debt so had to give up my cable, dog, investments, and vacation. AArrggh!
Sorry. I wasn't very clear.
It's true that Wal Mart typically operates on thin margins. But their advantage is that their business model allows them to be 5 to 10% cheaper on average than their competitors. If their competition in this case is small, their advantage is probably closer to 10% than to 5%. If they have to pass on a 2% tax to their customers, they're still have a competitive advantage over the locals.
I'm sure the congressmen analyzed this before they proposed the tax. If Wal Mart left, they'd be stuck explaining why they're against creating jobs in the state.
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