The Unbearable Lightness of Wal-Mart's Fine

That Nathan Newman sure knows how to drive home a point:

Prosecutors announced they were dropping all criminal charges against Wal-Mart for its use of contractors employing undocumented workers in exchange for paying an $11 million fine, a hefty sounding amount but a pittance for a company with $288.2 billion in sales last year. Let's put it this way-- this is an equivalent financial hit to an average person making $50,000 per year being hit with a $1.90 fine for illegal activity.

Wow. I mean, really, Wow. I don't make enough in income to even be taxed, but I spent too long getting books from my room today and got a $40 parking ticket. Let's say, for argument's sake, that I make 20,000 a year. My parking ticket comes to .2% of my imaginary income. Not a whole lot, but remember, all I did was dawdle a bit while my car was in a loading zone. Wal-Mart, having employed illegal workers at wages barely above indentured servitude, was hit with a fine equalling .0038% of their income. Comparatively speaking, their fine for employing illegal immigrants was 1.9% of my parking ticket. Their fine for sustaining illegal immigration was 1.9% of my parking ticket. Fuck class warfare, there are times when I yearn for a French Revolution. And remember, Wal-Mart isn't being protected by those soft-on-illegal-immigration Democrats, this is a Republican company through-and-through. The same Republicans who demand tougher border controls and an end to all illegal, and much of the legal, immigration. And they're shielding the companies who fuel the cross-border fugitives. Beautiful.