I am a huge LeBron James fan, both for his on-court play and off-court efforts. I have long believed that most of the criticism of him has been spiked “hater-ade” with little substantive basis.
Having said that, if James’ haters have been waiting for something with a little more meat on which to chew, he has given it to them on a silver platter. I am speaking of his collaboration with Walmart to “combat hunger”.
On the surface, it looks like a laudable effort. It is certainly a public relations coup for Walmart. Folks are indeed hungry in the wealthiest country on Earth and they do not have the luxury to be picky about from where their next meal comes.
I get that.
We all should get that it is important to look at root causes and when we do that with Walmart and hunger in America, as the great sport writer Dave Zirin points out, “it is more of the problem than the solution”.
We should be clear about what Walmart is. The heir to the founder, Sam Walton, is worth about $145 billion. It is the largest private employer in the United States, with 1.3 million employees. Its 2018 revenue was over $500 billion and is projected to clear that number in 2019, in no small part due to the corporate tax rate being cut from 35% to 21%. We should also understand that thanks to other corporate loopholes, Walmart is unlikely to even pay the 21%.
We should be just as clear about what Walmart is. It is fanatically anti-union (Click HERE to view Walmart’s anti-union employee training video). It pays its average cashier about $8.48 per hour. These meager wages, in addition to the fact that some 600 thousand of its employees are part-time, are the principle reasons that about half of Walmart employees experience food insecurity. How insecure: a significant number of Walmart employees actually have to access public assistance in the way of food stamps just to get by.
Think about that the next time a “supply side” tax cut advocate promotes this nonsense: Walmart got a 14% tax cut and still will not raise wages to keep its employees from having to access food stamps.
This type of “corporate welfare” is the primary motivation behind the recent bill introduced by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, targeting some of America’s largest corporations. It is called the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing out Subsidies Act (or the “Stop BEZOS” Act). The bill would tax companies like Amazon and Walmart for money their employees receive in federal benefits.
So essentially, what LeBron is doing is aligning with the fox to guard the hen house.
Now, Walmart would respond by likely saying that they in fact are raising their floor for salaries.
That is true. It will be raising its minimum wage to $11 per hour this year.
The raises will be financed by the recent closing of 10% of their Sam’s Clubs, which amounted to about 11 thousand jobs. So essentially, it was a shell game or Ponzi scheme. Given its tax breaks and poverty wages to begin with, Walmart deserves no more credit for this than my mugger would for bringing me a get-well card in the hospital.
Walmart is certainly not alone. Such corporations facilitate yet another shell game when one looks at the unemployment number being at 4%. How? By suppressing wages and hours, it insures that a number of people must take a second and sometimes third job.
Some may be asking now, why this is your or my business how LeBron attempts to address a need as pressing as hunger. He has a right to donate his time and money in any way he sees fit. To that, I say that the issue is not what he does or does not have a right to do with his money and time. It is clear he has such a right. The issue is how effective are such efforts when allied with an entity so culpable in exasperating the problem he is trying to address. That is to say, between its employees having to rely on public assistance and the sizeable tax cut, Walmart is essentially being subsidized by our tax dollars.
That is what makes it not only our business but also our obligation to call out all who allow their platform to be used to provide Walmart cover. Silence would be tacit approval.
Nevertheless, real solutions for these issues of systemic origins require systemic analysis. When one engages in such analysis, it becomes clear: be the issue hunger, homelessness, or student loan debt, there simply will not be a cadre of individual heroes that will come to the rescue. These systemic and structural issues are foreseeable in a capitalistic society. They will, therefore require systemic and structural solutions. These solutions can begin when we decide collectively as a society that food, education, housing, among other needs, are human rights and not mere privileges for those who can pay.
This is not about telling LeBron to “shut up and dribble”. It is about making it clear when he is dribbling out of bounds. Teaming with an entity like Walmart, which compounds hunger in America, is way off the court.
