I'm arguing that enacting policies that force people into a life where it is impossible to find employment is a bad thing.
Even if this is true, benefits + low-wage job is better both for the worker and society than a lesser total entirely from public benefits and no job, so, the WalMart jobs are a net win.
> presumably have worse education
Hence why they can't get better jobs, but punishing WalMart doesn't fix that.
> and health outcomes than the average American.
Probably, that comes from being poor and is exacerbated by a wealth-dependent healthcare system. Again, punishing WalMart for employing them doesn't improve this.
Would Walmart go backrupt or employ noticeably fewer people if wages and taxes were higher? I don't think so, as similar companies exist in many economies with better wages. Is it inflationary? Only if the wages grow disproportionally with the economy (like costs have in health care). Basically richer people are effectively charged more for their shopping, and shareholders see less profit.
People employed at below cost of living wages (reliant on welfare for basics) by definition can't save much, and in the US are excluded from education and quality health care. I couldn't be happy with a system that perpetuates that just to get groceries 1% cheaper.
Thats a perspective, not a universal fact. They are effective and useful from a political perspective, which may be beneficial to consumers long term. Alternate levers being circumstantial.
They are anti-consumer in the sense that they raise prices without offering more or better goods in return. Sure you may try to muscle in some roundabout logic that concludes that tariffs will punish the consumer into using their money the way you want them to, such as buying overpriced goods from domestic producers, but history has shown again and again that only free trade produces net benefits. Tariffs just obsfucate the damage.
For instance, the EU guarantees European farmers a certain minimum price for agricultural goods. This price is 200% above market price. The effect is that every European consumer has reduced purchasing power because they must pay 200% more than they need to for food, African farmers are kept in poverty because they can't sell their goods to EU consumers, and the only people who win is the extremely small percentage of people in the EU who farm.
In this way, they are factually anti consumer.
It is not. You use a non gradiated tariff as a bad assumption. Good luck with whatever.
> They are anti-consumer in the sense that they raise prices without offering more or better goods in return.
There is also to say that economy of scale is real, so (within bounds, I wouldn't meddle in guessing numbers) it is reasonable to ask the company making 10 billion per year to be more efficient per-dollar than a 2-persons shop.
Regarding the EU I believe you are missing the point. Farming in the EU (outside of the Netherlands apparently) is almost by definition going to be a terrible business profit wise in an unregulated market; too little to automate too high cost of living for workers.
The regulations in place exist because of an explicit consideration that keeping those industries alive (especially regional traditional products) is something with a value in and of itself.
For sure many regulations have serious issues and some of them are plainly wrong, but arguing for anarcho-capitalism to me sound as reasonable as arguing for communism.
Disastrous? Were we better off in the days of Sears and Barnes and Noble? Companies like Walmart with $500 billion in revenue have margins of about 3%. A 10% revenue tax must increase prices, or Walmart would lose money on each transaction.
What you're promoting is a tariff on goods bought from big companies.
Tariffs are bad. They are regressive and anti-consumer