Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 17 - Is Walmart the Problem?

Episode Date: January 9, 2017

Is Walmart destroying middle class America? Is it the problem or merely a symptom of a larger economic disease? Find out who's bending over working class Americans and how hard they're sticking it to the them in this ear-opening edition of Timesuck!

The research I did for this episode took a very, very different course than I expected. It seemed like the more things I looked up about today's topic, it just opened up more questions than it did answers. Because I'll be honest, this was going to be a hatchet piece of just against Walmart. I've never been a big fan and I wanted to just illustrate how there's just this huge problem, this blight on the American economy, these kind of evil robber barons of retail that exploit their workers. And if we could just get rid of them, then we could go back to the small monpastor, you know, Main Street kind of idealistic fifties kind of retail world.

And I know there was a lot of problems back in the fs and 60s and 70s with racism and sexism. But I thought, maybe there was a chance we could get back economically to a better outlook for the middle class. And I thought Walmart was one of the main impediments to get back there. And you know, the problem with the American economy is a lot deeper than Walmart. However, Walmart is part of the problem for sure.

Walmart's the one in the only store the problem for sure. Walmart's still the one in the only store I've ever boycotted. For the last seven or eight years, I've done everything I can to avoid them. It started when I did a few college tours. I did a couple hundred colleges, shows at colleges, mostly around 2007, 2008, 2009, and that range there. And I would go do all these little liberal arts schools in these small towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia, and all over the country.

I literally did it every single state other than Hawaii. And I would drive around, and I would see over and over again, this just decimated downtown of some little city of like 20, 30, 40,000 people. And it would have this downtown that you could tell was booming in as recent as maybe the 80s. But now it was just all these closed storefronts and just nobody walking around. I mean, just dead.

95% of the parking spots are available. You know, the stores that are still open, there's just no one in them. And then I would think like maybe just the town self was dead, but then I would go to my hotel where the students have put me up, which was usually a newer hotel, like a holiday in or a hampton on the edge of town. And I would go to the edge of town,

and it would be, you know, your TGI Fridays and your Olive Gardens and these big hotels that all had full parking lots, but no parking lot was more full than the Walmart or the super Walmart on the edge of town, just, I mean, hundreds of cars. And it didn't take some economist or genius to figure out, like, oh, that's where all the people went. That's where all the people who used to shop downtown went.

You know, and it just makes me sad and made me so angry about Walmart. Like, I just thought that they were just fucking destroying America. And maybe you'll think that too. Maybe you do think that maybe you don't. By the end of this podcast, I think you're gonna at least agree that they you don't by the end of this podcast. I think you're going to at least agree that they're part of the problem, but the problem is so, so much deeper than Walmart, with what has happened to America, the economy, and the kind of the downtown local store versus national store,

since the early 80s in America. So let's get corporate on this holy shit, what can of worms that I fucking open edition of TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. My first off, I wanna thank everybody for the kind reviews. I mean, they've been pouring in on iTunes. And if you haven't done one of those, man, please do, I appreciate it so much. I think it seems to be helping boost listenership.

I also want to apologize for I have a cold today, but I had to get this done to get it done on time for the weekly Monday podcast. And yeah, so just thank you, thank you, thank you. And we're going to start 2017 already started off. Let's say we're started off, but we already did the MI Dumberist, am I getting Dumberist episode last week? And you know what?

And actually, I'm glad I'm doing this one because I felt that one was like kind of against the working class almost like I was kind of shitting on them. And this one is very pro working class. You know, where, you know, it's easy to be like, well, why don't you just get a better education referring to last week's episode. Well, there's a lot of factors working against people. And economics being maybe the biggest one. And I really delve into that in this episode and show that, you know, it's not the working man.

That's the fucking problem with the economy right now. And yeah, and again, I went into it, you know, definitely with the bias with this episode, starting to research Walmart and watch some documentaries on Walmart, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Well, let's start there. Let's start. You know, is Walmart bad for business, essentially? You know, is it bad for its employees? for business, essentially. You know, is it bad for its employees? I think so. I think so. Wages were just about $9 an hour, just a few years ago.

You know, they really just kind of have hovered around minimum wage. And if you're against like minimum wage, you know, hikes overall, especially for bigger corporations, I mean, it's just not a living wage. It's just, it's just, it's getting farther and farther from a living wage. They did raise recently to about $13 an hour

for full-time employees and about $10 an hour for part-timers after a lot of kind of public outrage, a lot of bad press, a lot of lawsuits, frankly. Full-time employees do receive insurance to which Walmart pays 75% of the premium. They get a matching 401k retirement plan where Walmart will match 6% stock matching plan for full-time employees, plan where Walmart will match 6% stock matching plan for full-time employees

where the company will match 15% so if you buy 100 shares of stock they'll get an extra 15 for you but none of those benefits matter if you can't afford to fucking get them and that's been from a lot of things I read a huge problem with Walmart employees, you know, and you can watch a lot of interview after interview on these documentaries. But they're like, well, yeah, okay, there is health insurance, but like on the wage I'm getting from Walmart, excuse me, let's see on the wage I'm getting from Walmart, I can't afford it. Like, I cannot afford to get it, I can barely afford it to eat. And, uh, and Walmart has, you know, very aggressively kept its wages down, uh, partially through being very anti-union. You know, in 2014, this is the kind of shit they'll do.

Some workers at a Walmart store and Quebec successfully unionized. Right after they did that, Walmart announced the store was going to close citing economic reasons. It's fucking bull. I bet you my life, that store would have still been profitable after that, but it wouldn't have been as profitable and they wouldn't, and they didn't want, and you'll understand why I'm saying this a little bit later when I reveal some things, they wouldn't want the rest of their stores to realize they could still be profitable, even though they're paying their employees more at that particular store. Because then they'd have less fucking gigantic insane corporate profits. 2014, the AIDS Circuit Court of Appeals handed Arkansas Walmart employees a victory reinstating the lawsuit alleging that Walmart engaged in anti-union activities. And I watched one of these documentaries where they did tons of stuff for like corporate execs

in Arkansas for Walmart would pressure these regional managers and store managers to kind of basically not kind of to keep a close eye on employees who seemed like they were starting to kind of unionize. And if there was any hint of that, they were told to fucking fire them. That's like some old turn of the 19th century stuff. When the old robber barons were running the railroads and there were other factors with the roof, the fucking iron fist. And if you dared go against them, you were out of there. It's like that same, the man, the same shit is happening.

2013, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a classed action suit against Walmart for violating workers' rights in foreign countries, alleging that Walmart denied minimum wage required overtime, punished union activity. In some cases, workers alleged that they were beaten by supervisors. You know, Goddamn well, they'd do that here if they could. If certified 100,000 to 500,000 workers could be included, specifically the suit alleged that one Bangla Dash worker worked seven days a week from 7.45

a.m. to 10.00 p.m. without a day off in six months. And I bet that fucker was getting like $2 a month or so, or some shit. So yeah, so crazy exploitation of workers, both domestic and foreign. And I will say to be somewhat fair to Walmart, it's not like there are the only ones doing that. Basically, all the major retailers buy foreign goods and all those foreign goods are made in factories, many of which have horrible working conditions. However, Walmart is the nation's largest retailer. And to me, with that comes more responsibility. If, Walmart is the nation's largest retailer and to me, with

that comes more responsibility. If you're selling the most of that stuff and making the most money off that stuff, which they are, then you should, you have a greater weight to throw around and you could pressure those places to take better care of the workers, but they fucking don't. They don't because I would cut into Wall Street profits. And let's talk about that. Let's talk about Wall Street profits here. Check this out. This is 2015 numbers. I'm going to give you right off the back here revenue in 2015 for Walmart. Get ready for this number $482 billion dollars. I'll repeat that in 2015 I'll repeat that. In 2015, Walmart's revenue was $482.00 billion. Their operating income was $24 billion. Their net income was just under $15 billion. Their total assets were about

$200 billion. Check out that net income, almost 15 billion. And that's what they show in their tax returns. Anybody who is self-employed or runs a business nose that you hide so much shit. I mean, you have to be incredibly naive not to believe that. You minimize, I mean, net profit is what you get taxed on. So you do everything you can to inflate your expenses to make that number as small as possible. Now, there is a drive to please shareholders,

so you don't wanna make it too small. But you also don't wanna pay a bunch of extra taxes on it either, so you know that if the reporting 15 billion, they probably made actually much more than that. And to go off of some more stats here. And again, this is the episode I made a real effort on this one to pull from stuff, like government websites, kind of government watchdog websites, Forbes, Huffington Posts, you know, think routers kind of associated press type articles, not just a fucking weird conspiracy theory sites.

But this revenue and profits.com said Walmart has made between 10 and $15 billion in net profit every year between 2004 and 2015. Now, that same period annual revenue went up from 281 billion in 2004 to the number I just told you, $482 billion in 2015. Also, you know, in an increase literally each and every year. So again, that just tells me, you're like, wait a minute. So you've almost doubled your revenue, but you're still reporting, just, you know, roughly the same amount of profit, bullshit, so they were making a lot of fucking money. Now, I wonder like, if you're making all this extra profit, why can't

you share it with the workers? You know, why can't you, I mean they're notorious for like driving down the costs like squeezing ever of like distributors and product manufacturers and you know, paying them less than they would at other places. So where does this extra money go? Well, first off, you know, profit is one of the main driving factors increasing stock price. So much of this money goes back to the shareholders and who owns most of that stock, who is the biggest shareholder in Walmart stock, the Walton's themselves. 2015, Business Insider article reported that as of December 31, 2014, the Walton family owned 50.86% of the company company stock for a total of 1.42

billion shares. Now that stock is down about 25% from 2014 to a share price currently as I'm relaying this of just over $69 a share. That means give or take a few hundred billion dollars. The family, sorry, give or take a few billion dollars. The family, uh, sorry, give or take a few billion dollars. Uh, the family has 98 billion dollars in company stock, just in company stock. That doesn't include wages, assets, and other investments. When you include those, 2014 Forbes article reports the Walton family is America's richest by far worth 140 billion. 140 billion.

And are these people reinvesting? And by the way, this Walton family, second generation. This isn't Sam Walton and his wife who fucking founded Walmart. These are the kids. So they weren't like the entrepreneurs that set this shit in motion. They were along for the fucking ride. They were born into the right goddamn family.

I'm sure they tell themselves that they fucking steered it into the right place and patten themselves on the back. Fuck them. They were born into the right goddamn family. And because of that, there were 140 billion dollars collectively. Motherfuckers. So, and again, are they given some of this money back into the country that built up their empire? No, not really the Walton Family Foundation established by the parents, Sam and Helen Walton. It runs independently of the second generation of Walton's family, wealth, according to a report by Walb, 1%. Now, in the past 23 years, the four heirs of the Walb, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, that $140 billion split four ways. The four errors donated a combined total of 59 million to the Family Foundation, despite a net worth of 140 billion.

That means they donated less than half of 1% of the money that was given to them by mommy and daddy into a foundation that mommy and daddy created for charity. All right, now this foundation is good. In 2013, alone, the foundation invested 325 million across education reform, environment, and other projects in the family's home region

of Northwest Arkansas, such as Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which was funded with a tune of 1.2 billion. But think about how much more could be done if they gave some of, you know, I don't know, some of their billions. So, you know, they could give, if they're worth $140 billion, they could give $40 billion and a charitable stuff. $40 billion, you know, and still be worth $100 billion.

God damn, just to put that money in more perspective, according to a 2013 gocker.com article, the Walton family is worth more than the combined wealth of the bottom 40% of Americans. That is terrifying inequality. Think about that. God damn near half of America combined is not worth as much as four fucking families.

Jesus Christ, four members of a family, God damn it, excuse me. Ah, you know, and it's like, they could give so much more back to their employees. 2013 fortune article, you know, by some economists pointed out that the Walmart's insane profits, they're talking about those,

and they recommended that they pay their employees 50% more, and then they broke down how they could do this, still please shareholders, and still make insane profits. But they don't, you know, because no one's forced them to, because there's no government regulation

on this kind of stuff, which there should be, which I'm gonna talk about a little bit. And, you know, if no one's forced them to, because there's no government regulation on this kind of stuff, which there should be, which I'm going to talk about a little bit. And you know, if you are thinking like, oh, what are you, you've spoken socialist or communist? No. But capitalism has gone too fucking far in this country and we're all suffering. All of us except for the upper one percent of the upper one percent. And it is bullshit. And you're going to understand how bullshit it is by the end of this podcast.

And I think there's this American attitude that I'm sure the Walons have it, they probably feel like they earned it. They earned it. I feel like a lot of conservatives have this attitude. I've talked to people that the Walons, the Trumps, the world, they deserve the money they have because they earned it.

I hear that phrase a lot. Well, they earned it. I think how you earn money matters. I think it matters a whole fucking lot. And if you exploit the very people who allow you to earn your wealth, you haven't earned it in my mind. You've stolen it, motherfucker. You stole it from the people beneath you. You gathered off the sweat and the blood and the tears and the hopes and the dreams of the people running the business you created. Now, do you deserve more money than your employees?

Because you're the one who had the vision to start the company. Absolutely. Of course you do. You started the jobs in the first place. All right? You're entitled to more, but not infinitely more. There's no humanity in that. No one. I repeat, no one needs a billion dollars. Fucking no one. Now, I'm not saying no one should have a billion dollars, but I am saying that no one needs it. And no one should have it if it means that the company that's given them this billion is run by an impoverished workforce, which Walmart has. That's when capitalism becomes a fucking evil and inhumane.

And I hate it when you start speaking poorly of capitalism, people start again through in the words around socialism and communism, like that's the only other choice. That is simplistic illogical bullshit. The world is not black and white. There's not only capitalism or socialism, right? It's not full of just this or that. You know, we could have something in the middle.

I firmly believe that heavily regulated capitalism is the only way to go. Capitalism is strong government oversight, but only if the government overseeing the capitalist isn't in fucking bed with them. And that's the problem we see we have now in our country is the politicians being in bed with corporations. And I think that's why high ranking government employees like Congressman Senators, the President, his cabinet, I think in an ideal world they should literally not ever be allowed to earn income from the private sector ever, ever again, in any way, shape or form once they've taken public office.

Think about the different kind of people that would attract to those jobs, if you couldn't just make insane money on doing speaking engagements and stuff. I thought it was supposed to be public servants. I feel like we've forgotten that. They're supposed to be public servants, not corporate stuages. You know, as you get a government pension, the rest of the lives, they can be very comfortable. You know, they could have a nice house,

some nice vehicles, never have to worry, be guarded by a secret service, never have to worry about being poor ever. But, you know, just take away the incentive for them to be cutting deals, for these corporations that are gonna give them kick back when they get in the office and hire them to be cutting deals for these corporations that are going to give them kick back when they get an office and hire them to do a 30-minute lunch and pay them fucking $100,000. You know, like that shit does not happen. That shit happens all the fucking time in Washington, D.C.

God damn it. But you know, I don't know. I don't know if we'll, uh, if we'll ever be able to get there because I feel like so many Americans are obsessed with materialism You know even people who have no realistic chance of ever being wealthy do not want to take the dream away of becoming insanely wealthy Because it's like that's what they're fighting for that's their American dream You know why? What why why why are we so obsessed with insane wealth? You know like the fucking piece of shit Kardashians and stuff like that, they can just, you know, jet set around the world. That's really how you want to live. I think it's disgusting.

I really do. You know, and I've met a lot of wealthy people who are bitter, miserable fucks, and I've met a lot of working class people who are the happiest people I've ever met. I don't know. If we don't figure out how to cut some of this greed out of DC, these problems like Walmart are only going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. And there is another way. This is the bright spot of my research.

One of them, a couple of bright spots in here. I was thinking about, like, God, are all people that had to have 100, tens of billions of dollars just fucking horrible? Another not. Excuse me again. You can't compare the Walton Empire to Bill Gates, Microsoft, for example. And like Warren Buffett, those guys have pledged

to give away almost all their fortunes to charity when they pass. As opposed to Sam Walton, who just gave it to his fuck-faced kids, they decided to hoard it. They decided to use each and every tax loop all possible in order to keep the money in their own family account, not let the public claim a single dollar more in taxes than they actually have to. In Bloomberg today, Zach Remider had an excellent in-depth report today on the strategies

of the Walton family uses to avoid a state and inheritance taxes on their fortune, which has been, again, built in the backs of extremely low paid workers. They're disgusting. You know? Another one's talking about, you know, being Christians too, which kills me. Another one's talking about Jesus all the time. You know, do you hear Bill Gates talking about that? Do you hear Warren Buffett?

No, you don't. Sorry, I was getting all high and mighty. And just in my head there, just for a second, I almost had Warren Buffet. I always do that with like the word Buffet. I want to say Buffet. I'd be great at this entire podcast. If I just took away any sense of credibility by just being like, do you want to, you know, you don't have to do it that way.

You can be like Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet is one of Americans greatest businessmen. He invented, he invented the Buffet for poor people. Did you know that? According to my research, you'd be like, oh, he actually does know anything. But I don't know why, I could have kept that quiet. It only happened in my head,

and I corrected it before I said it, but I felt compelled to put it out there. But these guys, you know, they're out there donating billions and making their employees and investors millionaires less and right. But the Walton's are there. They're the big Christian, big fucking phony pieces of shit. I don't want to show you how they compare specifically to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. There's this from the Forbes list of the world's top philanthropists of 2015. Number one was Warren Buffett. He donated $2.84 billion in 2015 alone, lifetime donation

of $25.5 billion. 39% of his current net worth. Number two in the list is Bill Gates. He donated $1.4 billion, lifetime donations of almost $33 billion, 41% of his current current worth. Now down on the 8th, they still were in the top 10. They were in the top 10. Number 8 is the Walton family, $375 million. Lifetime donations of $5.65 billion. $375 million compared to Warren Buffett's 2.84 billion. But that their lifetime donation is only 5%. Remember Warren Buffett was 39% Bill Gates was 41%.

They've only donated 5% of their current net worth. And let's not forget this is a money that came from a trust founded by their parents. The money they donated was from that family trust as I already stated that these fucking greedy assholes barely donate to so in reality They donated some of them some of them donated none Some of them, you know a couple million dollars 30 million dollars. I don't know But you might think Jesus. Yeah, that's a lot. How much have you donated not very much? My donations lifetime are probably

Barely above a thousand so so I this I realized that there's as a research, I could do a lot more too, but a thousand for me would affect my life far more than literally a billion from one of these people. That's what kills me. Like their day-to-day life, they wouldn't have to do anything. They could just tell one of their many assistants, hey, figure out how to get a billion dollars and put it in something, fucking for orphans or something. But give it for for beaten for orphans who are also domestic violence victims. Just the word just for mentally ill domestic violence victim orphans. Just give it give a billion to them. You know, whatever they wanted.

And then like it would just take as long as I just took to say that. And then some many other people would carry it out. All right, I'm gonna take a quick, I'm gonna pause, you won't notice it. I'm gonna pause the unpause so I can get some water and clear my throat. It's cold to kill me. All right, let's probably, it's probably gonna sound weird now. Because it just goes from me going, hey, I'm just gonna clear my throat for a second, and then just like, millisecond, and then, all right.

But it had to be done. It second. And then, all right. But it had to be done. It had to be done. All right. So now that I've been bashing Walmart, which is what I intended to do, kind of the start of this podcast, it started bringing up a lot more questions with me, though. It's like, OK, I'm bashing these guys.

But how do they compare to the other big box stores? Like, let's start there. I think Walmart, its closest competitor, would be Target a place that I admit, I've shopped that a lot over the years and I always thought was a really good company. So how does Walmart compare to Target? Here's where the podcast gets sad again.

Annual revenue at Target in 2015, actually between 2011 to 2015 was between $69.73 billion, annual profit roughly $3 billion a year. So you know, it's not the 10 to 15, but no one starved on $3 billion a year. Now according to a 2014 Fusion.net article, citing the study from Glassdoor.com, Glassdoor.com is a website I kept going back to in this whole thing. Just where a website where employees can just, you know, send into the website how much they're getting paid,

for various companies, what they feel about the company they work, it gives a good rough feel of America's biggest companies. You can check out all kinds of companies on GlassTorke.com Who do not sponsor, as I do not have any sponsors, just to the spot gas. So, it sounded weird like I was plugging them for a second. But according to that, Walmart's average hourly wage was $9.22 compared to Target's average wage. This is 2014 of $887. Target does pay their managers a little bit more. A retail store manager makes $66,000 a year compared to Walmart's $60,000. It's a little bit more. Department manager makes $48,000 in Target compared to $ to 29,000 Walmart. That's a lot more. But the Huffington Post also ran an article in 2013,

breaking down how target is really no better than Walmart. Employee satisfaction at Glassdoor.com is worse for target than it is for Walmart. And Target CEO made $28 million in 2012, despite people getting paid about nine bucks an hour, the employees. And that was some figures thrown out by Ralph Nader, you know, one of America's kind of biggest consumer

advocates for decades. So that fucking sucks. So that fucking sucks. Target is essentially, as far as employee satisfaction and how their employees are financially compensated no better than Walmart. Now, what their family does with their money, what the founders of Target do, I don't fucking know.

Maybe there's some benefits there. But really, who gives you shit? I do think there's some of that. If Target was given a billion dollars a year to starving people in Africa, but we're exploiting all of their workers in America, I don't think I would feel any better shopping there. It's like, I feel like you've got to take care of your own first and then do what you can to help everybody else.

But if your employees are, their kids are malnourished here, because you're helping somebody else, you know, elsewhere, I don't know, that doesn't make me feel better. And I don't even know if they're doing that. There was so many things to research on this one. I feel like I needed a staff for this episode. Thank God I let go of the 30 minute time limit from previous things, because there's just so much

yet. Okay, so what about some other companies? So that's targets. I know that's sad, but let's get happier again and talk about a Northwest company. Love living in the Northwest, love being back here, and love how some of our companies match up. In 2014, the average Walmart employee made 11, 83 an hour, according to some Bloomberg articles. And these things do vary because it's so tricky to get an exact average because there's so many different positions and everything. So if you're confused as to why these numbers kind of vary

a little bit, there's no consistency from one reputable site to another. Because the company doesn't just put out exactly, you know, what it is. And I wouldn't trust there, I would trust there's the least. But anyway, in this particular article, just for a side-by-side comparison, Walmart, 11.83 an hour, Costco employee, average of 20, 89 an hour.

I can almost double, fuck yeah, Costco. And I love Costco too, man. Free snacks, it's fucking great. And they never hassle you, by the way. If you've never been a Costco member And I love Costco too, man. Free snacks, it's fucking great. And they never hassle you, by the way. If you've never been a Costco member, I love it. I hadn't been in years and I went recently. And what I love is the no guilt when you go get some free snacks.

I remember like years and years ago, when I first got a Costco, I go to the free snacks and I feel a little sheepish because I had no intention of buying whatever thing they were peddling. And I felt like they could, they could, you know, figure that out with me. And they would see that I was just

skeven off of them for some free food. They don't fucking care. Don't care. Zero pressure if you to buy. Like zero. You can tell they're instructed not to fucking pressure people. So free snacks, they got dollar hot dogs. I like that.

Some good, some good Franks. They got some little yogurt you shit. Let's fruit on it. I like that. Some good, some good Franks. I got some little yogurt you shit. Let's fruit on it. It tastes good. Cheap $1.50 pizza slices. And they got a lot of cool shit. They had a lot of cool stuff. And the truth are employees well. So I'm glad there was a point in doing the research for this episode. I felt like I was just gonna feel guilty shopping wherever I shopped. Other than maybe like the farmer's market. And I don't like a lot of their due dads there. I'm not some fucking weird hippie beatnik who's gonna live on organic jam and tie-dye shirts,

but Costco, I can go to Costco, so there we go. And then there's one even better than Costco, because Costco's not a totally fair comparison with Walmart, because it is like a stripped down warehouse kind of business model. This not, you know a totally fair comparison with Walmart because it is like a stripped down warehouse kind of business model. This not, you know, totally fair comparison. A closer comparison would be a store called Winco. Now, I did not know Winco's regional. It's like the West Coast. There's like in California and Oregon. I think Washington, definitely Idaho. There's one in Corte Lane here, right?

I am and they're founded in Boise And my sister actually worked for Winco. I forgot about them Because I knew that she had worked at one. I'd heard the name from her but I never been to one until recently and And they're like really really good really really good comparison So this is from a 2013 time at magazine article As far as how WinCo can deliver such low prices, the statesman story tells the details, the company's history and business model. It all began interestingly enough when two Idaho businessmen opened up a warehouse type discount

store with a name that could have been pulled from a spoof of Walmart called Wehrmacht. The company became employee owned in 1985 and changed its name to WinCo, short for Winning Company in 1999. And prices are kept low through a variety of strategies. And when they say low, they beat Walmart on a lot of stuff. So they're neck and neck with Walmart basically just across the board. But here's how they do it. The main one is it cuts out distributors, another middleman and buys goods directly from

farms and factories. Winco also trims costs by not accepting credit cards, asking customers to bag their own groceries. And so I want to get to their, okay, so done, done, done, with all these factors help, Winco is, you know, able to compete against Walmart on price, but what really might scare, and this is from this article, the world's largest retailer is how Winco treats his employees. This is what made me feel the best. In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers as a means to avoid paying

full-time workers' benefits, Winco has a reputation by doing right by its employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension with employees get an amount equal to 20 percent of their by its employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension with employees get an amount equal to 20% of their annual salary, 20%. You know, that's awesome. With their annual salary put into a plan that's paid for by Winco.

That's a fucking hell of a lot better than a 6% matching 401k, which I described earlier was Walmart. Because again, if you don't have enough money to put into it, then you're getting zero dollars in your pension. But these guys put up to 20% of the annual salary into their employees' retirements. And a company spokesman told the Idaho statement, the uh, statement, that more than 400 non-executive workers, i.e. cashiers, produce clerks, that kind of stuff. Currently, have pensions worth over a million dollars each.

And I read various articles about some of these people, and it's fucking great. I mean, how cool is that? That, you know, somebody who's worked, you know, stocking bananas in produce for the last 20 years is a fucking millionaire, specifically because of that produce job. So it can be done.

It can be done. Reading that may be like, Winco's so much more in hate Walmart, also so much more. But let's get like, OK, but with all these things, even with Winco, there is a nice retirement, but the way just still down, the way just not great a lot of these places, and maybe kind of like think about what is the real problem? but the wage is still down, the wage is not great, a lot of these places. And maybe kind of like think about like,

what is the real problem? You know, like, it feels like, you know, these jobs, the target jobs, the Walmart jobs, even a lot of like the Winco jobs. You're still, you know, not able to retirement or not. You're still not able to do much on 11 bucks an hour, 12 bucks an hour, something like that. The real problem is that we have too many minimum wage jobs.

Now check out this scary statistic. Two thirds of minimum wage workers in 2013 were still earning within 10% of the minimum wage a year later, up from about half in the 1990s. So it went from half to two thirds of all minimum wage employees, just basically continued to earn minimum wage. So that's terrifying and also in the mid 1990s only one in five minimum wage workers We're still earning a minimum wage a year later in 2015 that number was nearly one in three So 20% to 33%

That's a bad that's a bad we're heading in a bad direction with that and And it's a you know, and it just sucks because retail jobs in general pay so much less than manufacturing jobs. According to a current population survey data study, the average hourly wage in retail is 68% of that in manufacturing. So it's a third less than manufacturing jobs, which is terrifying. When you think about how 1960, one in four American workers had a job in manufacturing. One in four. Think about that.

One in four people had a job in manufacturing. Today, fewer than one in ten. That's scary. That's scary. The US lost five million manufacturing jobs since 2000 alone due to outsourcing and automated assembly lines. How the fuck do we get there? I'll tell you, fall street, the rise of monopolies,

and good old corporate greed. All right, no one company should ever be allowed to completely take over the market. Never works out well for the common man. And when I started thinking about that, like with Walmart, I started thinking about like I talked about the beginning of this podcast, about these pushing these little, small retail outlets and small towns across America out of business and just kind of devastating

the downtown, abandoning the outside and just doing that over and over and over again, what happened to antitrust laws? Like how are they able to become this huge fucking employer that mistreats so many of its workers? And if you want to want antitrust, let me define it. It's of or relating to legislation preventing or controlling trust companies or other monopolies with the intention of promoting competition in business.

So, you know, basically, it's that you should never allow a company to own too much of the market share because then it can exploit its workers, which is exactly what Walmart has done. So, let's dig in a little bit more into the history of antitrust, even though this is not a historical podcast. This is not historical podcast. Says, can keep going.

This is not historical podcast. And I'm not singing my own intro song. All right, so when did ant anti-trust legislation begin? It began basically with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. That's named after Ohio, Senator John Sherman. And it prohibited certain business activities that the federal government regulators deemed to be anti-competitive. The law attempts to prevent, you know, the artificial raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply and by businesses acquired a monopoly of their market, you know, such as kind of, you know, close to what Walmart has done.

And then there was also the Clayton Antitrust Act, passed in 1914, that expanded the scope of the Sherman Act. The Sherman Act also triggered the largest wave of mergers in US history. So basically, like, you know, all these companies figured out that one way to get around the Sherman Antitrust Act was just to merge together. Somehow, that was loophole. And essentially, the Clayton Antitrust Act was just to merge together. Somehow that was loophole. And essentially the Clayton Antitrust Act

was supposed to be a block that loophole. Now, why do these laws come about in the first place? They came about because during the late 19th century, hundreds of small short-line railroads were being bought up and consolidated into giant systems, separate laws and policies emerged regarding railroads and financial concerns such as bank and insurance companies, advocates of strong

antitrust laws, argued the American economy to be successful requires free competition and the opportunity for individual Americans to build their own businesses. As Senator John Sherman put it, the guy who again started the, you know, fought for the Sherman Antitrust Act, he said, quote, if we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. Fucking think about that. Because you know who's a fucking king right now? The Walten's.

I mean, think about that. They have the wealth of kings. They really do, you know? They just don't have the fucking title, but it's the same god damn thing, and we're being exploited by them the same fucking way. And so after this, you know, legislation was passed, you know, like between like, from the 20s, all the way into the 80s, you know, monpastors prospered. It was like kind of like the golden age of the common worker in America, I mean, racism and sexism, you know, still were huge problems, but economically,

those who could work did very, very well compared to now. From the 1930s up until 1980, the average American aftertacks income adjusted for inflation tripled, which translated into a much higher standard of living for, you know, most people in the American population. In 1980, the American standard of living was the highest among industrial countries. And then in 2014, median wealth in the United States was 44,900, which puts United States in 19th place, behind many other developed countries. The U.S. now has one of the widest, rich poor gaps of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow. A lot of prominent economists have warned that the widening rich poor gap in the U.S.

population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy in continues to grow. A lot of prominent economists have warned that the widening rich poor gap in the US population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy in standard living in 2016, Alan Greenspan. He's the fucking money guy. I've heard about him forever. He's an American economist who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States

from 1997 to 2006. He wrote that quote, the income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide and it's growing so fast that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. If I can smell that revolution coming, I'm gonna get into that at the end of this shit. 2015 Brookings Institute report found the typical man with a full-time job. The one in the statistical middle of the

middle earned $50,383 last year. Typical man with a full-time job in 1973 earned $53,294. You know, measured in $2014 to adjust for inflation. That's scary, man. That is fucking scary, really scary when you take into account that even after the housing collapse, a home today costs approximately three times as much as a home in 1970 compared to the wage the average person earns. So do you understand what that means?

I'll sum that up. That means it is three times harder to buy a house now than it was in the 70s. Three fucking times harder. I bet people thought it was hard then, and now it's three times as hard. Because the middle class is going away from a variety of factors, you know, I started off talking about Walmart And you know all these places and the manufacturing jobs going away Leaving us with a you know one of the main sectors of jobs is like retail and clearly I've established those things don't pay shit

And then we're not making any more, you know, you can take an inflation, then we use to, that's a fucking dangerous, dangerous, dangerous path we're on. You know, and especially if you get into the cost of higher education, which has increased exponentially in the last, you know, 34 years compared to wage, you know, it is getting truly, it's not just, you know, people being alarmists, it's not conspiracy theorists. It is true, there are numbers.

I've been looking at so many numbers the last couple of days, showing that it is definitively getting harder and harder and harder for the lower class and the middle class to get ahead You know, there are there are less good jobs than there were before and You know a growing disparity between the upper class and the lower and middle class and It's just gonna keep getting worse like you know, it's it's's just going to keep getting worse. Like, you know, it's on the road to keep getting worse. And so, you know, when did this stuff stop being enforced? As anti-trust legislation? Like, like, you know, we had that big rise in prosperity of the middle class all through World War II, and especially after World War II up until

about, you know, the early 80s. Why? Why did it go away then? Well, fucking Reagan, that fucking cock fuck. Here's what happened. This is from the nation, quote, where it really saw a major radical revolutionary change, was when Reagan came to power in 1991, and this is talking about the death of the middle class.

One of the very first things that Reagan administration did was they went to Congress and said, quote, we are changing the way we enforce the anti-monopoly anti-trust laws. No longer are we going to seek to have competition for the sake of competition. No longer are we going to seek to distribute power to prevent the concentration of power. What we're going to do now is we're going to allow people to concentrate power because it's going to be more efficient and it's going to help the consumer in this country. Because of that power, this concentrated, these guys are going to use it to drive down the price of what we buy at the store. And they did.

They did drive that price down. Unfortunately, they also stagnated wages. What is the fucking point of paying less for goods if If you make less money when you take inflation into account, then you use to. I would rather make $100 an hour and pay five bucks for a candy bar than make $10 an hour and pay three bucks for a candy bar. It's like cheap goods only matter if your wage is high enough to make that like a

deal. Like if you can't afford a house, if you can't afford insurance, who cares if a fucking soda is a little cheaper? Oh God, it fucking kills me. Fucking economics man, like capitalism thrive and the windfalls that come along with it will trickle down into the working class, huh? Bullshit. All that money has trickle right into corporate profit and the only winners are shareholders owners and upper management, man. The rest of us just get bent over like the

poor and powerless. Always have. So that's the history of that. You just learned something about history, that. You learn something about history. Even though this is not about history, yes, I'm singing my own after song. All right, so here's what that's left us with. Here's the result of anti-trust law is not being enforced. Let's talk about why food does cost what it costs.

I did say at the end of that, the goods in theory with Reaganomics would cost less, but do they cost that much less? I think a lot of people will feel like the food prices have gone up. And why is that so? Because the four largest food companies control 82% of beef packing, 85% of soybean processing, 63% of pork packing, and 53% of chicken processing. All of that in the hands of four different companies.

Airfare. Why have airline tickets remained high in price, even though the cost of jet fuel has plummeted like 40%. Well, because airlines have consolidated into a handful of giant carriers that drive up roots and include on fares. 2005, the US had nine major airlines. We have like four now, all very politically well connected. You know, here's something I didn't realize about the internet. The US has the highest broadband prices amongst

advanced nations, but the slowest speeds. Why? Because more than 80% of Americans have no choice, but to rely on their local cable company for high capacity Wi-Fi. You know, it's usually just Comcast AT&T Verizon or Time Warner. I think some of those fucking, what, a couple of those merged together while backslash is well, like three now or two, unbelievable medicine, drug companies. They pay the makers of generic drugs to delay cheaper versions. That something actually happens. This pay for delay agreements are illegal in other advanced economies, but antitrust enforcement

hasn't laid a finger on them in America. Cost taxpayers 3.5 billion a year. Then banking, that's the most gross. Wall Street's five largest banks now account for 44% of America's banking assets Up from 25% before the crash of 2008 and 10% in 1990 That means they can you know they can charge higher fees and interest rates on loans because there's no one else to go do You know and because they're like that quote-unquote too big to fail they can get you know hundreds of billions dollars more in taxpayer bailouts

It's fucking gross, man. So what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? All of this stuff got me thinking like, well, if we went away from these big giant nasty corporations, these big giant monopolies, and we went down to like, mon post-ords again, would that be better?

Is it better to shop at mon post-ords? Is that better for the average worker? Sadly no. This is probably the saddest part of the podcast from a 2014 Stanford study. Pays 15% higher in large firms with 1000 plus workers compared with mom and posh shops that have fewer than 10 workers.

For a non-manager, that's the difference between $13.61 an hour and $15.10 an hour. So you'd make over $15 compared to about $13.5. For a manager, the average pay range from 1943 at a small retailer to $21 an hour at a large one. Maybe even more important, the big chain's offer opportunities for people to move up to the little ones can't.

18% of workers are first-line supervisors and another 10% are more advanced managers in the retail stores. Those people are promoted, paid advances. The average supervisor earns $43,000. The average manager earns $66,000. You just can't do that at a little local Ace Hardware store. Man, and then, you know, you just can't do that. A little local Ace Hardware store. Man, and then, you know, so, and then there's a whole other issue. And again, I just, I said this just kept

like this fucking can of worms. And then I was thinking like, well, another problem too with local versus big is the items themselves. You know, because there's a whole other level of exploitation there. You know, if you're buying a bottle of Coca-Cola at your locally owned grocery store

or if I can winco or Walmart or wherever, what about the people who work at those places? You know, and then I started thinking like, what if he tried to just do like American made? Maybe there's some safety there. You know, because I talked about the loss of manufacturing jobs, what if you just bought stuff only made in America? Wouldn't that be better? Maybe not. This is the very most depressing part of this podcast. This is from a Washington Post article that

came out just a couple days ago. And it's about the garment district in LA. And it's about how these illegal immigrants are making made in America goods in Los Angeles at these shady fucking factories. And like this guy that they interviewed for this, he made $225 for the week, was translated to $5 an hour because he worked a shit ton of hours. And he said there's nothing to do but just, you know, take it. And federal, it says federal regulators have uncovered a widespread practice of garment workers.

Most of them undocumented being paid far below the legal minimum wage according to a recent Department of Labor report. According to this report, clothing prices, excuse me, clothing prices, prices, Jesus Christ wanted to throw on another syllable in there. Many retailers would have had to rise nearly 40% for the workers to be paid minimum wage, man, 40% below minimum wage, yikes. And then the garments made by these underpaid workers most often get sold at fashion or discount retailers

like Forever 21, TJ Maxx, Ross Dress for Less. Man, if you used to feel good about shopping to some of those stores, God dammit. So, I don't know. So what are you supposed to do with all this? Here's the conclusions with all this sad information I've thrown at you. You know? Basically, what I'm finding out is once you start peeling back the layers of the US workforce, you open up a really, really ugly can of worms.

Overseas workers are being exploited. You know, even on the iPhone I used for part of this research that was probably made by somebody in China that the fucking get crippled from having to do the same movement over and over again and getting paid nothing to do with American factor workers are being exploited. Giant corporations are exploiting the common worker to boost Wall Street appeal, increase the sizeable wealth the owners of upper management.

And I've touched them a few times and made it and explain it. But you know, the reason Walmart and these companies wanna have huge profits is to increase the value of their management. I've touched them a few times, and I didn't explain it. But the reason Walmart and these companies want to have huge profits is to increase the value of their stock. That's how you drive stock price up is to show higher net profit and to show bigger share of the market, which antitrust should stop. The more you can do that, the more you can raise the price of the stock. Who benefits the most from the price of stock? Usually, the owners who have the biggest share of the stock and upper management, who they give that as incentives to work there. So you just fucking strangle the person at the bottom so that the person making $20 million

a year as some CEO can get another $50 million a year stock bonus. It's fucking gross, man. So fucking gross. Wages for most professions have stagnated for decades with more and more minimum wage jobs going away all the time. The wage and education divide between the rich and the poor is dividing, and the middle class is dying. Fun stuff, fun stuff, fun stuff to lead right into some top five deckaways. Time suck, tough, five take away.

Alright, number one. Walmart is fucking us in the ass unfortunately target and many of the other big box stores are not only not helping us They're waiting for their turn sometimes with even less loot on hand than Walmart Number two the Walton's are evil trust fund fucks who I hope die painful deaths for how they chose and they continue to exploit their employees to increase their decadent wealth best for how they chose to continue to exploit their employees to increase their decadent wealth. Oh man, they could pay all their employees 50% more than they're currently paying them and still be incredibly profitable. Just think about that. Number three, our government has let it all happen because most of our politicians are owned by corporate influence. The Fox is truly guarding the hen house. Number four, fuck you, Ronald Reagan, failing to enforce anti-trust laws

in the 1980s, cutting taxes on the wealthy and deregulating industry, f**king killed the middle class and their opulent wealth, the likes which we haven't seen since the roverbearance of the 19th century will never trickle down from the upper crust. When the insanely wealthy are taxed heavily, you take away incentive for them to have enormous salaries and huge corporate profits. Instead, they're much more likely to reinvest those profits into assets like company expansion and employee salaries.

Income levels have stagnated since the Reagan era except for the top 1%. The chief executive officers of America's largest firms earn 3 times more than they did 20 years ago and at least 10 times more than they did 30 years ago. Thanks, asshole. Number five, Winco and Costco fucking rock. Two companies headquartered and found it in the northwest proving one of always known is the best part of the country. Time suck, tough, five, take away.

Alright, so how do we change things? How do we change things? I didn't want to just leave with nothing but just depressing information. You know, I think we know we have to increase wages, which will increase the cost of goods. However, some of the cost of goods increase could be offset by regulating the salaries of upper management and forcing families like the Walons to push back much of their exorbitant wealth

into their own workforce. They won't like it, but fuck them. What are they gonna do? Leave the country? No. Sadly, nothing short of some type of economic revolution. It's gonna change our current system, you know? History repeats itself.

The poor get pushed down and stepped on and stepped on and stepped on until they can't fucking take it anymore and then they revolt. And that cycle, man, that is old as time. It just keeps going around, keeps going around, and we're in the middle of it now as we always are. You know, I was thinking about the American Revolution. I think about the founding of our own country.

You know, I think we were taught kind of as kids that we fought for some noble concept of freedom. Shut the fuck up. That's a feel good grade school version of the truth. Give me a goddamn break. You know what we fought against? We fought against financial enslavement. Great Britain found itself deep in debt,

followed his victory over France and the French and Indian War, and as a result, it enacted the Sugar Act of 1764. Now that was a law passed by British parliament. In 1764, raising duties on foreign and refined sugar imported by the colonies. So as to give the British, British Errors in the West Indies monopoly on the colonial market. And then there was the stamp act of 1765.

Again passed by the British government, they required the payment of a tax to Britain on a great variety of papers and documents, including newspapers that were produced in the American colonies. And then there was the town Shend Acts of 1767. The Town Shend Acts, series of laws, which set new import taxes on British goods, including like paint, paper, lead, glass, tea, all kinds of other things, used the revenues to maintain British troops in America, pay the salaries of some royal officials who were appointed to work in the American colonies.

Now, and then there was other measures aimed at raising funds from the 13 American colonies. Taxes, you know, remained orders of magnitude, higher and greater than across the pond. You know, they were getting tax more in England, but the colonists fiercely resisted them anyway. They were protesting against, remember this is a big thing we did learn about, taxation without representation. And eventually, they took up arms against their government because they had taxation without representation, wake the fuck up, that's what we have now. The common man is being taxed without representation. Because we have representation and they am only right now. We have corporate lobbyists who are so deeply entrenched and embedded with

our politicians, according to the Center for Public Integrity, $173 million float from giant blue chip corporations into political nonprofits. 83% of that money went into trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute, i.e. big oil. Oil money, right? Think about Bush and Cheney. Think about those fuckers working for Haliburton and then starting a war that just, you know, furthered the careers of people who worked at Halibut. You think anything that has to do with representing the common man? No, man, we're not being represented anymore.

The politicians that do have our interest at heart, people like Ralph Nader are deemed unelectable by the majority of the population or being too idealistic. Man, some type of revolution. It's the only hope. Now, saying that, I don't know how the fuck we do it. I don't know if I'm willing to die. I don't know if I'm willing

to give up my little cozy lifestyle to do it. But we're not going to steer the shit back around. I don't know. I predict. I predict they're going to let us just have just enough toys to keep us happy. The lifehones, PS4s, that kind of stuff. Maybe I'm part of it. I'm part of the wheel man. They'll let us have our little podcasts to keep us from getting so pissed off. They were like, hey man, what the fuck?

And then we go up against them. Now, they're not gonna put any money in education. They're gonna keep us undereducated, except for the elites who soon will be the only people able to afford the best colleges and universities. And then there's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be the gated communities and there's gonna be the rest of us.

And if you're one of those people who are the rest of us, I do hope you keep listening to this. Sorry, this was possibly depressing, but goddamn, I didn't know where it was gonna go. I thought I was gonna get to make fun of Walmart for 30 to 45 minutes and be depressing, but goddamn, I didn't know where it was gonna go. I thought I was gonna get to make fun of Walmart for 30 to 45 minutes and be like, peace bitches, I'm out. But no, no, the problem is so much bigger,

so much more entrenched than that. I wish it was easier to fix. Reminding me of that kind of line of thinking like conspiracy theorists. I love when people talk about like the Illuminati or something, it's like, what a great thought that is to think that there was just one little group of people that are controlling things.

And if we could get rid of them, then we'd all be good. And we'd all have equality again. Uh-uh, man, we have to undo just this ridiculously entrenched corporate system we're in right now to ever get out of this. So, I don't know. So if you got a good corporate job, I guess, you know, good for you, man.

Good for you. Don't give it up. And if you're a good corporate job, I guess you know, good for you, man. Good for you. Don't give it up and And if you're listening to this and you work at Winco Shoot me. Shoot me an email. Is it really as good as cracked up to be? I hope so, man. Because after this podcast, I need something to truly be optimistic about That's not true. I have you guys. I have you listeners So we'll goof it up next week. I don't know what the topic's gonna be, but it's not gonna be this heavy because I can't fucking take it.

That being said, I hope you enjoyed this little bit of time suck. [♪ Music playing in background, music ends. All right. [♪ Music playing in background, music ends. Thank you.