The Arjay Conception

Wal-Mart is every family’s shopping delight as a one stop center with ultimate low prices. And we don’t often stop to think about what the true cost is for offering goods at such a low price. Why? Because we don’t have any money.

Sure, there are little kids somewhere in Korea or the Honduras putting together our American bullshit. We’re not thinking about them because they are not here. But what about the little children in the United States whose parent’s sole income is from Wal-Mart?

A single mother of two children working at Wal-Mart as a sales associate makes $7 per hour when she first begins. Working a full-time schedule, she would earn (not bring home) $280 per week, for a total of $1120 a month.

Now, in order to be able to work a full-time schedule, the children must be taken care of. Let’s make this easier for you unsympathetic souls and say that her children are school-aged. This means, we must “only” account for before-school care, or after-school, or both. The price is $50 per week, per child. That is $400 a month. We’ll let’s just make it even easier and say the state pays most of the expenses (+$360).

Well, the family must eat and buy household items. With $1080 remaining, she is forced to shop either at the Dollar Store, or Wal-Mart. She chooses the latter because of her 10% employee discount and we all want one stop shopping, right? Perhaps she can get food stamps, which possibly leaves her with $1000 (a person rarely gets too many food stamps); but toiletries and such are not food items…neither are clothes and shoes, detergent, etc.

Laundry anyone ($50)?

$850. Using conservative estimates, she has the electric bill ($80), water bill ($30), and if she’s lucky, a phone bill ($35 if you have Metro PCS, and no land-line).

Whether she drives, or rides, there is a cost for transportation. At today’s rate, maybe it would be better if this single mom utilized the public metro system ($60/month). This way, she won’t have a car note, or insurance to worry about.

Health insurance can be acquired through Wal-Mart for full-time employees. However, there is a hefty price for this. OR she can get health care and medicine for free if she gets Medicaid.

Finally, she can pocket the rest. Woohoo!

Oh shit! Where is she living for $645 per month in the Washington D.C. area?

Can we roll back some of the aforementioned expenses?

If she moves up to manager, she’ll be lucky to make $25k and work 50+ hours a week to include her weekends.

Wal-Mart’s homepage has a dollar figure that features a live update of the “amount of money Wal-Mart has saved American families.” Wal-Mart saves you this money, by taking it away from their employees, and then making you support their families through your tax dollars (oh yeah, and sending your money to China).

And the single mom who earned $13,440 in one year?…

360 (state child care) X 12 = 4320
+
300 (state food) x 12 = 3600
+
priceless (state health care/Medicaid)

= more than she brought home from Wal-Mart.