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realcoolhand -> RE: Immigration debate, legal charges against employers (5/31/2010 7:03:50 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: AnimusRex
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ORIGINAL: eyesopened
I would venture to guess that most of the criminal employers are not looking for cheap labor, they are looking to keep employees off the books so they can avoid WC premiums, taxes, insurances and more. It's easier to find illegals to agree to be off the books than it is to find citizens willing to do so.
Yes, I agree. But when a company pays low wages, who really suffers? The worker, certainly, but don't we all suffer?
For example, Wal-Mart was actually caught coaching their low-wage employees on how to apply for food stamps; when a Wal-Mart greeter gets sick, he goes to the ER and skips out on the bill he could never afford to pay...and so we all pay.
So Wal-Mart gets the value of low wages, while we all pay the costs of treating the uninsured sick, we pay for the accidents that uninsured drivers do, we pay for the social ills that low wages bring with them.
In fact, employers do not generally hire illegal immigrants because it affords an opportunity to dodge taxes. An employer who is going to dodge payroll taxes doesn't really care if the social security number on the application is legit, since they never intended to pay social security taxes anyway. Moreover, time and again, prosecutions targeting employers of illegal immigrants turn on charges of falsifying work papers, not tax evasion. The largest in recent history, the Agriprocessors case, is a prime example, as the principles were charged primarily with falsifying social security numbers and various acts in furtherance of a conspiracy to do so. So the fisc typically gets paid, at least by the larger-scale operators. Moreover, to all the nativists out there, don't forget that even those illegal immigrants working wholly under the table as nanny's and gardners for rich Americans pay sales taxes and, depending on how much luck they have with the American dream, property taxes as well.
While I've never heard that Wal-Mart coaches its people to qualify for foodstamps, my initial reaction is that a responsible employer would look out for its employees, and offer all the assistance possible in ensuring those employees know their rights, privileges, the differences between them, and how to exercise both. Which is not to say that Wal-Mart is a "responsible employer," at least not in the broader sense.
That said, I cannot imagine that many Wal-Mart employees would qualify for foodstamps. Wal-Mart pays a slightly above-market wage in virtually every market (as a time-tested way to attract the best and the brightest of their target work-force). That said, Wal-Mart manages to lower it's overall labor cost because, as you pointed out, they don't pay for healthcare. [Footnote 1: This plays on the poor risk-assessment skills of folks with neither the education nor the experience to weigh the benefits of a presently higher wage against the expected-cost of catastrophic illnesses from which they do not presently suffer.]
But it's important to understand HOW this costs the rest of us. It's not generally because Wal-Mart employee's soak up government subsidies. After all, most working-poor are ineligible for medicaid, and with the probable exception of your greeter most are too young to qualify for medicare. Moreover, every hospital I'm familiar with charges the uninsured at a discounted rate, though they do charge, will put the bills into collection, and lose no sleep over ruining someone's credit.
The real problem is that those discounted rates are subsidized by charging a higher rate to the insured. The effect is an increase in healthcare costs, which is passed onto employers who DO provide healthcare. Those employers then have to make a choice--either lower wages to manage overall labor costs, or cut healthcare. Wages can only drop so far, and eventually healthcare will give, with the result that more folks are uninsured, the need for subsidy greater, and the vicious circle perpetuated.
It's definitely an example of a private actor exploiting a market inefficiency to capture private goods while leaving the community holding a bag full of externalities. I can't really blame Wal-Mart--it's a rational economic decision--but it definitely highlights the need for a systemic approach to healthcare, that focuses on the mechanisms for providing healthcare rather than controlling costs through mandates or extending coverage through subsidies.
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