"It found that a single Walmart Supercenter cost taxpayers between $904,542 and $1.75 million per year, or between $3,015 and $5,815 on average for each of 300 workers.”
A thought experiment:
Suppose a fire destroyed the local Walmart (without killing any of the employees). Wouldn't this imply that the government would now save ~$5000/year per former Walmart employee? After all, the Walmart is now gone.
However, how can that be? The employees still need those benefits, plus whatever Walmart was paying them.
Walmart's average sales associate makes about $16,000 per year. If the government had to make up for the loss of the associate's wages (which they would, at least for a time following the fire), the cost to the government would be four times the amount it's currently paying in benefits ($16000 + $5000 = $21000).
Said another way, far from costing the government money, Walmart is saving the government $16000 a year per employee.
A thought experiment:
Suppose a fire destroyed the local Walmart (without killing any of the employees). Wouldn't this imply that the government would now save ~$5000/year per former Walmart employee? After all, the Walmart is now gone.
However, how can that be? The employees still need those benefits, plus whatever Walmart was paying them.
Walmart's average sales associate makes about $16,000 per year. If the government had to make up for the loss of the associate's wages (which they would, at least for a time following the fire), the cost to the government would be four times the amount it's currently paying in benefits ($16000 + $5000 = $21000).
Said another way, far from costing the government money, Walmart is saving the government $16000 a year per employee.