Cities Love Amazon and Hate Walmart

April/25/2018 0:06AM
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The average warehouse worker at Wal-Mart makes just under $40,000 annually, while at Amazon one would take home about $24,300 a year. That’s less than $1,000 above the official federal poverty line for a family of four.

But, cities are wooing the new Amazon second headquarters. HQ-2, the catchy name for the second proposed headquarters will employ 50,000 workers and Amazon will invest $5 billion in construction.

Here are the offers:

Atlanta: offers $1.0 billion in incentives

Chicago: $1.7 billion

Columbus, Ohio: $2.3 billion

Philadelphia: $2-3 billion

Newark, N.J. : $7 billion

Montgomery Country, Maryland: $8.5 billion

But, there seems to be a disconnect: This from 2010:

In meetings with Wal-Mart, Chicago politicians won some concessions. For example, the Chicago stores will all be union-built, and Wal-Mart agreed to donate $20 million to neighborhood charities. Most significantly for a company that has been loath to strike deals on wages, Wal-Mart had agreed to an entry-level wage of $8.75 an hour, 50 cents higher than Chicago’s minimum wage as of July 1, Mr. Daley said.

Squeezed for cash and desperate for jobs, Chicago took whatever it could get. One labor leader hailed the wage deal as a “Chicago-only concession,” saying it was the “deal-clincher.” Walmart quickly put him in his place, explaining that the raise is “nothing new,” and that the “same is offered elsewhere around the country.”

Watch out New York, you could be next. Not yet, in 2018 Walmart is still banned from NYC. Why? The United Food & Commercial Workers union says no and the politicians bow down.

Despite the fights with Chicago politicians and those in other cities in the state, Walmart now has 51,000 employees in the state with average pay of $13.10, as of February 2016.

What’s going on here? One retailer has to fight tooth and nail to bring investment, fresh food, bargains, and thousands of new jobs to cities, and a second gets huge incentives that will come from the pockets of taxpayers who will see offsetting tax increases?

Amazon, any way you slice it, is a crappy employer. Walmart is the country’s largest employer, excluding the government.

Pretty simple isn’t it? Old Sam Walton was from Arkansas and Walmart keeps it headquarters there. Jeff Bezos started in Seattle and is loved by left-wing liberals everywhere. He owns the Washington Post and uses it for lobbying purposes. Get the picture? If you are one of ours you are forgiven for the very sins that cities say condemn Walmart. Non-union and not sexy to liberals. Despite the fact that the poor shop at Walmart and the not-so-poor use Amazon.

How do you feel about subsidizing the richest man in the world, a true Trump hater, with your tax dollars? Supporting a Ponzi scheme that never makes a profit but survives by selling more and more stock when cash flow dries up? A true house of cards like Facebook and Tesla.

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  1. […] Cities Love Amazon and Hate Walmart […]

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