[sokoloff]

IMO, there are two, perhaps three issues:

1. Walmart sells things to SNAP recipients. This is something that is perfectly fine, as I downloaded the MA.csv listing of food vendors who accept SNAP and it seems like it's damn near everyone, including tiny little convenience stores. That's a level playing field, and the fact that Walmart gets money from SNAP is no more interesting than the fact that they get money from American Express. In particular, this is not stealing; this is selling.

2. Walmart employees being recipients of government support programs. It's fine to object to this, but I don't see it in any way as related to #1. Presumably, you would object to any other employer who doesn't sell food (and therefore doesn't take SNAP) paying their full-time employees at a level that permits them to qualify for and accept SNAP benefits. Could you confirm/deny that?

3. Walmart lobbying for the preservation / expansion of SNAP program. It's also fine to object to this, though I see the case for their lobbying to be much more strongly to preserve the #1 status quo than the #2 status quo.

[will_brown]

1. Just because a tiny convenience store can/does accept SNAP that isn’t a level playing field. Go ask that tiny convenience store how much revenue they make from SNAP and how many employees they have on SNAP, if you want to see how unlevel the playing field is, as how large their SNAP lobbying budget is. And the whole idea you equate SNAP with AMerican express, fully demonstrates why our converstation won’t go anywhere, You draw no distinction between a private credit card company and taxpayer funded subsidies.

2. We agree there is a difference between accepting SNAP and having employees on SNAP, but in Walmart’s case they are in fact related and part of the whole picture. After all Walmart leads both categories they make more money directly from SNAP than any other business and they have more employees on SNAP than any other business.

3. Again lobbying for SNAP isn’t a problem, except it is part of the overall picture.

Not sure I can highlight, what is bad corporate behavior anymore than this: Walmart with the left had takes $14B in SNAP annually, with the right hand they push more employees onto SNAP than any other employer, and instead of taking any of the $14B in SNAP revenue and increasing wages to get employees off SNAP or through legislation having to reimburse taxpayers, Almaty is taking those funds to lobby Washington to increase the overall budget of SNAP to increase their taxpayer profits and lower the SNAP eligibility to get more employees on SNAP.

But again you equate Walmart taking SNAP to Walmart taking AmEx, you also believe Walmart should be championed for catering to an underserved segment of society. This conversation can’t really go any further in good faith.