In the absence of legislation, Walmart would pay their workers some wage $x. You have decided that, as a matter of decency, they should actually pay $z > $x. However, you and like-minded voters have only compelled Walmart to pay some intermediate sum $y.
Now, you're upset about the residual $z-$y coming out of your pocket. But you might instead be grateful that Walmart is kicking in $y-$x to support your extravagant political demands. That's the subsidy.
> it's much better for me to be making up the hidden costs of chronically underpaid workers
Those workers are only underpaid according to your notions of fairness. You think _Walmart_ should be tasked with implementing _your_ moral vision at _their_ expense. I think _you_ should be tasked with implementing _your_ moral vision at _your_ expense.
It doesn’t suddenly become about moral vision and fairness only when it’s something progressives want.
The notions of private property and free markets are about moral vision and fairness. They are enforced with the threat of violence, and they benefit members of society unequally. Some people like to pretend that they’re natural, that they’re a given, and that challenging any component of them is imposing one’s own morality on some God-given system.
That is false. No economic system is more or less about morality and fairness than any other. You believe in letting the capital retain more of the earnings than the labor because you think that is moral. It has nothing to do with some supposed position of neutrality.
I'm not here to argue about what is owed but by whom.The government is a system to implement (and pay for) a shared social vision. Walmart is a system to sell cheap foreign-made goods to Americans. People who gnash their teeth about corporate subsidies are trying to transfer costs from the first system--which was expressly designed to bear them--to the second, which was not. It's a poor idea, and self-serving to boot.
We allow the second system to exist because it is meant to play some very small part in our shared social vision, and it is meant to pay for its associated costs. If it wasn't designed to bear the cost of paying its workers a wage that we collectively deem to be decent, then perhaps it was poorly designed and deserves to be reevaluated. I think that judgement belongs to all of us.
And if we consider all of the locally owned retailers that have gone out of business due to Walmart's (admittedly efficient) business practices, then saying something like "Walmart doesn't need to exist" really isn't that all that crazy.
Voting provides us the opportunity to set the ground rules for living in a society. If they can thrive in a market with lower taxes or fewer rules let them.
Isn't $y just the minimum wage, and in the absence of the voter-compelled pressure, $y tends towards lower than $x (as the zero-pay internships have amply shown can be taken advantage of)? The value of $x shouldn't be taken alone; it can be a blended value arrived at with ancillary policy decisions decided by major actors like Walmart with asymmetric resources to throw at policymakers.
Now, you're upset about the residual $z-$y coming out of your pocket. But you might instead be grateful that Walmart is kicking in $y-$x to support your extravagant political demands. That's the subsidy.
> it's much better for me to be making up the hidden costs of chronically underpaid workers
Those workers are only underpaid according to your notions of fairness. You think _Walmart_ should be tasked with implementing _your_ moral vision at _their_ expense. I think _you_ should be tasked with implementing _your_ moral vision at _your_ expense.