'Corporate welfare' for Walmart and Amazon?

Few people would support direct federal payments to big corporations like Walmart or Amazon meant to pay their employees. But that may be happening in effect since many of their workers benefit from U.S. medical and food assistance programs, a new study suggests. This analysis comes amid a broader political debate over affordability issues. You can read more in my column this week, linked below.
     
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Providing low-paid workers with government benefits like health insurance and food assistance is usually considered to be socially minded policy. But another way to look at the payments is as subsidies giving big businesses access to a large pool of labor able to work for less-than-living wages.

That's the critique of Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In a new report she reviewed pay practices of companies she dubbed "The Low-Wage 20," or the 20 largest employers of low-wage U.S. workers.

Among her top findings: more than half of these firms reported 2024 median pay that would make a family of three eligible for food benefits under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, and for government-subsidized Medicaid health insurance benefits in most states. All the while, most of their CEOs earned hundreds of times as much per year.

You can click the button below to read my Q&A column with Anderson and to watch a video of our discussion.

Note: Data is as of Dec. 30, 2023. Source: FERC filing