I used to agree with you on #1 whole heartedly. It's a point I brought up many many times. But this is an issue that is not as simple as it seems. Because the c

I used to agree with you on #1 whole heartedly. It's a point I brought up many many times. But this is an issue that is not as simple as it seems. Because the catch is that employees are different. In particular a single adult working at minimum wage for 40 hours a week is not going to qualify for much in the way of public assistance. However, somebody who has 6 children at home would receive money from the government that would be some multiple of their salary. From WalMart's perspective any two employees are, more or less, the same. But that's what also leads to headlines like governments subsidizing WalMarts by $x billion. The issue is that WalMart could bring down this subsidy to basically $0 by only hiring employees who aren't having children while working minimum wage jobs (now $11/hour). Of course this is probably not the path you want to go down. Basically the issue is a lot more complex than the numbers, in isolation, would suggest. And it comes alongside fundamental questions about society, funding, motivations, and more. In particular it's effectively a proxy for 'should employers be required to pay employees who have children more money for the same work'? I've no idea the answer to that question. It's extremely complex and comes with numerous issues. In any case I suspect few people intuitively get from 'WalMart gets $x billion in indirect subsidies' to that question on their own. Certainly took me a number of years!