Walmart's "Giveaway"

Don't be fooled by Walmart's announcement that it is raising its lowest wage to $10 per hour for full-time workers by 2016. The wage increase is just pocket change to the Walmart heirs. According to a recent BloomburgBusiness article that focused on just one Walmart heir: “At the current rate, it would take a full-time Walmart employee working 12 hours a day more than a million years to earn the equivalent of Christy Walton's net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.”

The Economic Policy Institute points out, the six Walmart heirs now have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined, up from 30 percent in 2007. Between 2007 and 2010, the collective wealth of the six richest Waltons rose from $73 billion to $90 billion, while the wealth of the average American declined from $126,000 to $77,000 (13 million Americans have negative net worth). Six people (Walmart heirs) have passive net worth - the money is inherited through stock; they don't need to do anything to earn it - equal to more than the bottom 40% of the people in the US;

The Family Business

Walmart earned $16 billion last year (it just reported a 9 percent increase in earnings in the third quarter of 2012, to $3.6 billion), the lion’s share of which went instead to Walmart’s shareholders. Between 2007 and 2010, while median family wealth fell by 39 percent, the wealth of the Walton family members rose from $73 billion to $89 billion…In 2007, it was reported that the Walton family wealth was as large as the bottom 35 million families in the wealth distribution combined, or 30 percent of all American families. And in 2010, as the Walton’s wealth has risen and most other Americans’ wealth declined, it is now the case that the Walton family wealth is as large as the bottom 49 million families in the wealth distribution (constituting 41 percent of all American families) combined.

Walmart Robbers

Walmart , owners of ASDA's were likened to 19th Century Mexican dictator .

A Walmart employee who had complained that vouchers handed out by the company as part of its salary payments could only be spent in the company's stores.

The practice of vouchers "that come from the worker's salary only to be exchanged in the management company's establishment is similar to what happened in old company stores (that existed during Diaz's dictatorship)," the court said in its decision.The company stores under Diaz's dictatorship were abolished under the 1917 constitution.

In both cases, "the cost of the respective discounts were absorbed by workers, not bosses," the court said.

Mexican non-governmental organizations last November called for a boycott of Walmart to protest low salaries and working conditions of its employees.Walmart is the largest private employer in Mexico, with 157,000 employees, according to Mexican media.