▪️This is dumb, Walmart is the biggest employer in the US, and biggest by a lot. So it would make sense they have the most employees on food stamps, especially since they employ more low-skilled workers than anyone else (2-5X the other biggest retailers and restaurants).
▪️This talking point came out in 2020 after Bernie Sanders commissioned a Govt Accounting Office (GAO) study on workers receiving Medicaid and SNAP benefits. It looked at a sample of 9 states and the characteristics of these workers.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/d2145.pdf
▪️Walmart didn’t top every state; in WA it was Safeway, McDonald’s in NE, Dunkin’ in MA, Hannaford’s in ME, etc. Basically, the largest employers in each state had the most workers on SNAP, not really that surprising. State govts, public schools, universities & hospitals even made the list.
▪️While Walmart had the most SNAP workers overall, it was still just a tiny minority, only between 1-3% of all working adult SNAP recipients in each state measured. Working SNAP recipients are very spread out in the economy.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
