The Walmart Food Drive has inspired generalized outrage around the country about minimum wage. The story is this: in a Walmart in Ohio, food bins were set up by some employees to collect cans for other employees who are unable to afford Thanksgiving food.

This is a problem, because Walmart is one of the richest corporations in the world, yet continuing to pay employees just as little as possible. So little, in fact, that Walmart is one of the biggest beneficiaries of food stamps in America. Not to mention the Waltons have been notoriously stingy, barely giving a penny to charity until a few decades ago.

Now, they mostly use their philanthropy to buy gifts to bribe towns into generous public subsidies and avoid taxes. And they’re about the second-largest corporate donor to the GOP.

But guess what? They still employ more Americans than anyone else. Especially more than Amazon, which is probably the company’s biggest competition at this point.

But here’s…

The irony

Walmart is providing jobs, while  companies like Amazon are not. Let’s not even get into the way Apple “employs” people (plus, we made a music video about that already).

Oh, and guess what? Amazon and the people who are disgusted by shopping at Walmart are killing the stores. Walmart reported a 1.4% decline in US sales.

No one yells at Amazon for essentially serving as a funnel from child labor factories to the doorsteps of consumers. At least Walmart’s creating jobs. They might be shitty ones that need to be subsidized, sure, but the reality is that online retailers are destroying Walmart just fine. In the aftermath, small businesses will hopefully sprout like flowers from the wreckage. In reality, everyone will instead decide to point-and-click.