Actually, the headline reads: “Wal-Mart, Unions Unite on Health Care.” For years Wal-Mart has been falsely accused of shifting the cost of health care for its employees to taxpayers because the company’s high premiums and deductibles keep many Wal-Mart employees from participating in the company health plan–as if Wal-Mart is to blame for the welfare state instead of Congress. Wal-Mart has thrown in the towel:
Executives from Wal-Mart and three other major U.S. employers on Wednesday joined hands with union leaders in setting a goal of providing “quality, affordable” health care for every American by 2012.
The partnership of business and union leaders laid out four main goals, including universal health-care coverage for all Americans and boosting the value of every dollar spent on health care.
And how much is Wal-Mart committed to pay for affordable health care for every American? Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott said in response to a reporter’s question: “Wal-Mart is not committed to spending more on health care or making any immediate promises to provide health coverage to more workers.” So who will pay the bill? The government, of course, after it takes the money from the taxpayers.
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As a customer and a shareholder, it is my unhumble opinion that this minimum wage supporting, ‘Green’ hacking, health care socializing man must go… FIRE LEE SCOTT NOW!!!
This seems to me to be the pattern for many government interventions. At first it (government program x: welfare, free health care, education, zoning laws, housing, roads, defense, etc.) is proposed as an extreme measure and only for those who would not have it otherwise. It is almost always proposed as something that will not interrupt daily life for those who do not wish to associate with it.
This coercion creates a commons, and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ ensues as many look to get a free lunch out of the deal. The program grows exponentially.
Once the program grows large enough, it becomes integrated into the fabric of our society — in this case, most companies feeling (or being!) compelled to offer health care coverage. The average Joe American cannot imagine what life would be like without the government providing that service.
When one company exercises its rights not to participate (Wal-Mart), they are accused of not being “fair” and of shifting costs to the rest of society — as if they had an obligation in the first place. Companies like Wal-Mart face stiff legal opposition sooner or later, and it’s no wonder that, eventually, they crack.
And so we see a shift in the government program from a general safety-net, to an overgrown mess of a bureaucracy, to a program with compulsory complaince, and eventually to a program with mandatory participation.
Once the participation is mandatory, it becomes necessary to squelch any functioning private competition and give special monopoly privileges to one government branch or company.
When a liberty-minded fellow comes along and suggests that — maybe, just maybe — private companies could do things like build and maintain roads, provide security services, take care of education, and (as we will have to argue in the future) take care of health care, he or she is ridiculed. They are accused of being impractical, cold-hearted toward the poor, and an extreme fringe in political and social thought.
If you ask all those who support universal healthcare, they seem to believe someone else will foot the bill. The game of musical chairs will be interesting to watch.
Walmart is dead. When Walmart had 5% of the revenue of Sears, Sam Walton drove his pickup to stores, walked in and started checking out stuff and stacking shelves. That standard perpetuated through out the company creating one of the most customer focused and technologically advanced corporations the world has ever seen. And they provide critical services at the lowest possible prices to rural America.
Now they schmooze Congress and the like trying to get tax payers to foot bills or get government to regulate their competition out of business. Never once did they mention their customers.
Free advice: Do not buy Walmart stock as a long term investment.
More free advice:
If you want a retailer buy Target or Kohls.
If you want an auto manufacturer then buy Toyota USA or Honda USA.
If you want a health care company then buy United Health Group.
If you want more bureaucracy then buy these old dinosaurs:
GM
Ford
Now Walmart!!!!
Unfortunately, many people are economically ignorant. They don’t understand that, as Milton Friedman famously said, “there’s no free lunch” (I hope I don’t get in too much trouble for quoting Friedman on the von Mises Institute site). Universal healthcare is ineffective at best in small and/or sparsely populated such as England, Canada, and Sweden. In such a large country as the United States, it would be catastrophic.
Reading this, a little piece of my heart just broke. One of the companies that I most love taking up the cause of socialism.
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