Terre Haute is getting a new Walmart store. I get the impression that most folks there were originally in favor of this, but they aren’t so happy about it now. Apparently, Walmart gave local contractors only five days to bid on the project, which is a ludicrously short amount of time, so the contract ended up going to a company from Missouri. Poof! A metric ass-load of jobs gone, just like that. It gets worse, though. Based on pay stubs obtained by a local news station, the company that won the contract is not deducting state or county taxes from its workers’ pay checks. By law, out of state workers must have state and county taxes deducted from their pay. Because that money isn’t being deducted, a sizable chunk of tax revenue that would have been received from local workers will now be lost.
Terre Haute really can’t afford to lose that money. A representative from one of the local unions was interviewed. He said that if his company had gotten the contract, not only would the local tax money not be lost, but his company A) uses local workers and B) donates a percentage of their profits to local charities. That means that money would be going into the pockets of local workers, charities, and government. But, because an out-of-state company won the contract, it won’t.
That’s just one of the many hidden costs of supporting a business like Walmart.
red paper boat 