It's a Start
I pointed to a California study a couple months back noting how Wal-Mart ingeniously points their employees to state-funded public assistance programs (such as for health insurance) so that they don't have to offer it themselves (and thus cut into their "always low" prices). Here's one example:

In Arkansas, the birthplace and headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the state’s Department of Human Services released damning figures yesterday stating that the retail giant leads the list of top 10 employers whose workers are receiving state welfare. Arkansas is the ninth state to release such figures recently, showing Wal-Mart consistently ranking at or near the top in total employees on state aid. The Arkansas study shows that nearly 4,000 of the companies 45,106 employees are on public assistance, with a vast majority of them receiving Medicaid for their children. Food stamps and transitional employment make up the rest of the public assistance, costing the state $39.6 million per year.

Congressional Democrats are trying to shine a spotlight on this practice:

In an effort to put pressure on the health-care policies of large profitable companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., several Democrats said on Tuesday they would introduce a bill requiring states to report annually on the number of workers relying on taxpayer-funded health programs. The bill would not require companies to offer affordable insurance to workers, but it would shed light on their practices and establish how many workers rely on publicly-funded programs such as Medicaid, a state-federal program for those who cannot afford medical care. "Programs like Medicaid provide a critical safety net for low-income women and children, the disabled, and the elderly and shouldn't be a profit center for large companies like Wal-Mart," said Sen. Edward Kennedy on Massachusetts, one of the bill's sponsors.

When you combine "always low wages" with not enough hours to produce a livable salary, you are endangering the human capital that makes your company hum. This was made crystal clear a couple days ago after watching the premiere of Morgan Spurlock's new FX cable channel series, 30 Days (it was stored on our Tivo, so I'm not sure exactly when it's on, but I believe it's shown on Wednesdays). If you're not familiar with Spurlock, he's the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Super Size Me (and its companion book, Don't Eat This Book), which took on the fast food industry by having Spurlock undergo a McDonalds-only diet for a month. The new series takes this fish-out-of-water premise and applies it to a range of subjects (upcoming episodes include an Evangelical Christian living among Muslims for a month, a conservative homophobe living in San Francisco for a month, etc.), and the first episode featured Spurlock and his fiancee living only on minimum wage for a month in Columbus, OH. It was eye-opening and a fantastic reminder of how blessed I am in my life and in my work. But it also angered me to see that, despite both of them working jobs at full time at above minimum wage (with Spurlock himself working a second job), they were defeated in being able to pay their bills at the end of the month--largely due to the fact that they were in debt to the hospital some $1,400 for two emergency room visits for rather innocuous maladies (Spurlock for a sprained wrist, his fiancee for a bladder infection). While many states have legislated higher minimum wages (such as my home state of Washington, where it's $7.35), the nationally mandated bare minimum wage is $5.15 and it hasn't changed in 7 years. A 2004 research paper from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the effects of this stalled wage level; here's but one issue from that paper:

The value of minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. Because the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation, the value of the minimum wage erodes over time, making it difficult for low-wage workers to make ends meet. In the past 65 years, the minimum wage has been increased only 19 times, and those increases have not come at regular intervals. The combination of inflation and government inaction has caused the value of the minimum wage to lose ground relative to average hourly earnings, widening the gap between low-wage workers and the middle class. [...] A minimum wage that fails to keep up with inflation depresses the living standards of low-income workers and contributes to the overall stagnant wage growth characterizing the current recovery. It is therefore critical that policy makers move quickly to restore the lost purchasing power of the minimum wage. Since the last increase to $5.15 (passed in 1995), the value of that increase has been completely eaten away, returning the minimum wage to a historically low level in terms of purchasing power. In 2004 dollars, the 1995 minimum wage was worth $5.19, compared to current $5.15 minimum wage. A full-time worker earning the minimum wage back in 1968, when Congress raised the minimum wage more regularly to keep pace with inflation, would have made the equivalent of $15,431 today44% more than today's full-time minimum wage worker. This decline in the real value of the minimum wage over the last seven years translates into lower real wages for millions workers and contributes to the income gap between poor working families and the middle class (Lee 1999, p. 1016).

And rather than serve the people who elected them to office, the BushCo administration continues to cast a blind eye toward the people while keeping big business happy (but one example). We're back to 1992: it's the economy stupid. That should be the Democratic rallying cry for mid-term elections next year. That and, oh, probably that big Mess-o-potamia.