The corporate giant Walmart isn’t exactly famous for its humanitarian efforts and overwhelming conscience. Time after time it has proven that, as we have all come to expect from the jaded elite, what really matters to it is the bottom line. Recently Walmart has been back in the news again as the Supreme Court has dismissed a gender-discrimination class action law suit against it because – get this – there were too many women being discriminated against to be considered a “class.” Seriously.

For more than ten years, Betty Dukes has sought to represent nearly 1.6 million women who have been underpaid, harassed and passed up for promotion by the company, which seems to have a business model that involves keeping people poor. A quarter of Walmart customers earn less than $25,000, hovering right around the poverty line, which is almost double what the average Walmart employee makes (at $8 per hour and 34 hours per week… or $14,000 gross per annum). Gross indeed. Walmart employees make so little, in fact, that many of them still qualify for government assistance such as state Medicaid. In California alone, taxpayers send $86 million per year to Walmart employees! That is money that people could be spending at Walmart! I mean… uh… Target.

This is certainly not the only time that Walmart has been in the news for its employment practices and also isn’t its first class action lawsuit, so perhaps it’s just a bit jaded by the whole process now. It’s been accused of firing workers for discussion of unionization, judging supervisor performance on how little they can get away with paying their employees, profiting off of secret life insurance policies (called “Dead Peasant Insurance” – nice) taken out on any employees who paid for company medical coverage, denying employees paid breaks and forcing them to work unpaid overtime, breaking child labor laws and immigration laws, even locking night-shift workers in the building during the hours that the store is closed for business! We all know that it’s sometimes hard to keep people motivated at work, but somehow I don’t think locking the fire exits is the best way to ensure employee retention – although I can see how it might have helped Walmart’s chances of claiming those insurance policies.

Yet, the debate rages on: In an economy that is suffering so, is a superstore that can provide the “necessities of life” at such a low, low cost really the Big Bad? You tell me… because employee treatment isn’t the only area where Walmart has been found wanting. Ignoring the price-wars and the end of the Mom & Pop era… or how about killing endangered species? On purpose? For six years. To wit: In December of 2007, Walmart was caught red-handed selling furniture made from wood that was illegally logged in protected forests of Russia, home to Siberian tigers and other endangered wildlife. Several months later, after its own “internal investigation,” Walmart joined the Global Forest & Trade Network, which mandates an end to illegal logging. Walmart also vowed to stop selling the illegally logged wood furniture… in 2013. “Just give us another five or six years, then there just won’t be anymore of those pesky tigers to worry about!”

If for any reason you still aren’t convinced that the Waltons (five of which are on the list of the 10 riches people in America, btw) are the epitome of the jaded rich, I’ll let ol’ Sam tell you himself why no one should want to work at Walmart, let alone shop there: “I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We’re going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment.” I’ll give you one thing, Sam, you’re a very convincing guy. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those fancy blue vests… unless maybe as an ironic costume at next year’s Jaded Halloween bash. Maybe.