The Real Welfare Queen Isn't on Food Stamps—She's in the C-Suite

How Walmart, Amazon, and McDonald's Live Off Your Tax Dollars

Photo by Fethi Benattallah on Unsplash

Sally is a single mother who relies on food stamps and Medicaid. She doesn’t pay income tax because she doesn’t earn enough to owe any. She relies on government programs to feed her child and keep them healthy. Sally is a welfare queen. At least, that’s what politicians would call her. She’s exactly the kind of person politicians have been telling you to resent for the last fifty years—the one living off your hard-earned tax dollars, the drain on the system, the reason your paycheck doesn’t go as far as it should.

Here’s what most politicians and political pundits don’t tell you about Sally’s life.

She wakes up at 5:30 AM to get her daughter ready for school before her shift at Walmart starts. She’s worked there for years now—full-time, never missed a day she didn’t have to. She stocks shelves, helps customers find what they need, and covers when coworkers call in sick. She does everything she’s been told a “good worker” should do.

And she still can’t afford groceries.

That’s why Sally uses food stamps. Not because she’s lazy—she works forty hours a week. Not because she’s gaming the system—she qualifies because her paycheck simply doesn’t cover rent and food and keeping the lights on. Not because she wants to—she’d rather earn enough to skip the nervous anxiety that pulses through her body every time she swipes an EBT or debit card because she isn’t certain there’s enough funds for the transaction to go through.

Sally is exactly the kind of person you’ve been told to resent. The welfare recipient. The one “living off your tax dollars” while you work hard for your money. She’s the modern version of the woman Ronald Reagan spent the 1970s warning America about. The one driving her Cadillac to the welfare office to pick up her government check.

Here’s the thing we were never told:

Sally isn’t the welfare queen in this story. Walmart is.

Every month, Sally receives around $200 in SNAP benefits to feed her daughter. Every month, her daughter gets healthcare through Medicaid because Walmart's insurance costs more than Sally can afford on her wages. Every month, taxpayers cover the gap between what Walmart pays Sally and what it actually costs to survive—while also handing Walmart billions in tax breaks, grants, and subsidies for being such a generous "job creator.

Corporate Exploitation of Taxpayers

In 2024, Walmart’s profits exceeded five billion dollars in a single quarter. CEO Doug McMillon’s compensation that same year? $27.4 million. And the amount of public assistance Walmart’s employees require because the company won’t pay living wages? An estimated $6.2 billion annually. Walmart could pay every single employee a living wage and still walk away with billions in profit—they just choose not to.

We’ve been paying Walmart’s payroll. They just convinced you to blame Sally for cashing the check.

The real welfare queen never drove a Cadillac. She flew private jets, built distribution centers with your tax dollars, and paid her executives millions while we subsidized her workers’ groceries. The real welfare queen is named Walmart. And McDonald’s. And Amazon. And every other billion-dollar corporation that’s been feeding at the public trough for decades while pointing at people like Sally and calling them parasites.

Walmart isn’t some rogue bad actor breaking the rules of capitalism. This is the rule. Across every sector of the American economy, profitable corporations have perfected a simple con: pay workers poverty wages, let taxpayers cover the difference, then point at those workers and call them the problem. It’s not a bug in the system—it’s the entire business model.

Corporate Welfare’s Greatest Hits

McDonald’s had nearly 9,000 workers receiving food stamps across nine states, according to a 2020 government study. The company reported net income of $1.76 billion that quarter. Their executives earned millions. Their workers qualified for Medicaid. We paid the difference.

Amazon, now one of the world’s most valuable companies, had over 4,000 employees on SNAP benefits. Jeff Bezos became the world’s richest man while Amazon workers in multiple states required public assistance to survive. The company that delivers everything to your door couldn’t deliver living wages to the people making it possible. Taxpayers covered their payroll costs instead.

Dollar stores—both Dollar General and Dollar Tree—consistently rank among the top employers of SNAP and Medicaid recipients. These chains have exploded across America, particularly in low-income communities, paying wages so low that their own workers can’t afford to shop anywhere else without government assistance. It’s a closed loop: your tax dollars subsidize their workers, who then spend those dollars at the same stores, refusing to pay them fairly.

The total bill for corporate America’s wage theft from taxpayers is staggering. A single 200-employee Walmart requires an estimated $420,000 in annual taxpayer subsidies for employee assistance programs—housing support, food aid, healthcare, and educational services. Multiply that across thousands of stores, and you begin to see the scale of the con. Federal business subsidies reached $181 billion in 2024, with an estimated $6.2 billion of that going just to cover the gap between what major retailers pay and what their workers need to survive.

What makes this truly obscene is that these same corporations also receive billions in direct subsidies—tax breaks, grants, and sweetheart deals from local governments desperate to attract jobs. Jobs that don’t pay enough to live on. Jobs that require public assistance. Jobs that transfer wealth from your pocket to their shareholders.

This is the System’s Design

This isn’t a failure of capitalism. It’s capitalism working exactly as intended.

The system requires an exploited underclass—workers who have no choice but to accept poverty wages because the alternative is homelessness and starvation. Let’s be clear, the exploited underclass is the vast majority of working people. Regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation, the system is an equal opportunity exploiter.

Corporations know this. They build entire business models around it. Pay workers just enough that they can’t quite quit, but not enough that they can actually live. Let the government pick up the slack. Pocket the difference as profit. Reward executives for “keeping costs down.” Repeat.

This is why they fight minimum wage increases so viciously. It’s why they union-bust and threaten to close stores when workers try to organize. It’s why they lobby for cuts to social programs while simultaneously depending on those programs to subsidize their payroll. They need us desperate enough to accept whatever they offer, but not so desperate that we can’t show up to work.

For the system to thrive, it needs us to be angry and to point fingers at the wrong people.

That’s where the “welfare queen” myth becomes essential.

• If we’re busy resenting Sally for using food stamps, we’re not asking why Walmart’s CEO needs $27 million while his workers need Medicaid.

• If we’re mad at poor people for “not working hard enough,” we’re not noticing that full-time work doesn’t pay enough to survive.

• If we’re convinced the problem is government handouts, we won’t question why corporations get billions in subsidies while workers get blamed for needing help.

Capitalism requires exploitation. It requires some people to profit enormously from other people’s labor while paying them as little as possible. The “welfare queen” myth exists to make sure we blame the workers for being exploited instead of the corporations doing the exploiting.

Another Way Is Possible

The solution isn’t complicated. There are multiple ways that we can ensure everyone has enough to live on.

A living wage—currently around $25 per hour nationally—would mean workers like Sally could afford rent, groceries, and healthcare without relying on government assistance. It would mean corporations actually pay for the labor they profit from instead of outsourcing that cost to taxpayers. It’s not radical. It’s basic math.

End corporate welfare. Those $181 billion in annual business subsidies? That money could fund universal healthcare, free childcare, or infrastructure that actually serves communities instead of padding corporate balance sheets. Stop giving tax breaks to profitable corporations that turn around and pay poverty wages. Make them contribute to the communities they extract wealth from.

Support worker cooperatives. Imagine if Sally and her coworkers owned Walmart together. Profits would be shared among the people doing the work instead of funneled to executives and shareholders. Decisions about wages and benefits would be made democratically by workers who understand what it costs to survive because they’re living it. Worker cooperatives prove it’s possible—they exist right now, operating successfully while prioritizing people over profit.

Establish a universal basic income. A foundation of economic security that isn’t tied to employment would fundamentally shift the power dynamic. Workers wouldn’t have to accept poverty wages out of desperation. They could say no to exploitation. They could organize without fear of losing everything. UBI recognizes that in the wealthiest nation in history, no one should have to choose between feeding their children and paying rent.

Picture Sally’s life under these conditions. She wakes up at 5:30 AM—but this time, her wages cover groceries without government assistance. She and her coworkers own a stake in the business they build with their labor every day. She has healthcare that doesn’t depend on her employer’s goodwill. She has economic security that lets her save for her daughter’s future instead of just surviving week to week. She has the power to say no to exploitation because she’s not desperate. Her mental health improves because she’s not worried about her check stretching a full two weeks or how she’ll pay for an ER visit if her child breaks a limb on the playground. Her physical health also increases as she and her daughter can afford better quality meals. She’s not a welfare queen. She’s not a cautionary tale. She’s a person like you and me striving to contribute while having the opportunity to live with dignity.

That hope is not a fantasy. It’s what happens when we stop using our tax dollars to subsidize billionaire welfare queens and start investing in people.