Wal-Mart has been victimized by another ludicrous study, this time out of (surprise!) the University of California at Berkeley:
Wal-Mart’s wage and benefit policies cost California taxpayers $86 million a year to provide health care and other public assistance to the retailer’s underpaid workers, a new study says.
UC Berkeley’s analysis is based on the premise that Wal-Mart’s low pay scale forces the retailer’s workers to supplement their incomes with Medicaid, food stamps and other such programs at an unusually high rate.
Strangely, the company is trying to defend itself on the “academics'” terms rather than on common sense terms:
Wal-Mart maintained that its wages are similar to those of its rivals. And it said 90 percent of its workers have health insurance, either through the company or coverage provided by the employer of a spouse or parent.
How about Wal-Mart just move out of oppressive California altogether, and see what effect all those unemployed people have on the state’s taxpayers?
