The average full-time Wal-Mart employee makes less than the federal poverty level, and fewer than half of its full-time employees can afford even the cheapest health insurance plan offered by the company.

Furthermore:

One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.

Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.

That's hardly a ringing endorsement of unfettered capitalism or a justification for the fawning adulation spewed on the company by the free-market types. But, I guess as long as we're all able to continue buying Chinese-sweatshop-made landfill crap at extra low prices, it doesn't really matter all that much, does it?

--Socialist With A Gold Card

Did you get paid to write this, RedDog, the way Wal-Mart is buying off think tanks that publish similar praise.  Moreover, why do you feel you need to defend such a successful corporation anyway?  Can't they make it in the "free marketplace" on their own, without political apologists doing free marketing campaigns for them?

I havent seen anyone being forced at gunpoint to apply/work at Wal-Mart. If someone wants to earn more money/benefits look for another job.

If you research Wal-mart you will stop trying to defend a company that is driving the US & Canadian economy into the toilet. It's goal seems to be to turn Canada and the US into third world coutries. By squeezing suppliers to cut wholesale costs, the company has hastened the flight of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. By scouring the globe for the cheapest goods, it has driven factory jobs from one poor nation to another.
Driving down wages, sending manufacturing to China, Bangladesh, and Honduras. Monthly wages: China= $63.75, Bangladesh= $18.53, and Honduras= $139.00, USA= $893.00. Do you want Salmon that is caught in China and shipped to the US, handled hundreds of times just to save $2.00. I am more than willing to pay more for things to keep our economy growing and healthy. Lets keep our products made in North America, before it is too late.