Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Blazing Handbasket Frozen Over, Incident #1

Incident #1: I agree with something in a Snooze Minus' editorial column*

From today's editorial, which is a shocking display of, well, getting it:

But in October the resident voters of the city changed that so in 2007 Wal-Mart will pay the city of Fairbanks just over $12,200, an annual savings to the corporation of about $152,300. That’s a great savings by most people’s standards, but in the scheme of things this is chicken feed for the Arkansas-based retail giant.

And now with a new employee head tax — one of the options proffered by the author of Ballot Measure No. 3 and now approved by the City Council — the employees who work for Wal-Mart will have to help make up the difference by contributing $20 of their own paychecks each month to the city instead.

That's the Walmart break, but what about Lowe's, Home Depot, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, Petco and all the rest??

*This may actually be Incident #2, I think I agreed with something that Craig Medred of the Anchorage Daily Snooze wrote several years ago.

2 comments:

Deirdre Helfferich said...

Yep, shunt that tax on the poorest employees (well, with the exception of those making less than $10/hour). Talk about stupid!

CabinDweller said...

Hey $10 an hour, if you are the primary wage earner in a house, or trying to support kids, isn't all that much either in a place like this.

Not just stupid, but bad policy if you are concerned about families and community.