Conservatives rail against woke corporations, and we do our best to avoid giving our money to organizations that hate us and are working to destroy our beloved country. But beyond the ethical problem of supporting Marxism, there is also a practical reason not to do it: it's expensive!
Imagine if your state decided to add a brand new 8% sales tax to every purchase you made. Maybe you could soothe yourself by thinking, At least the money is going to improve the roads and schools. But what if the tax was instead used specifically to promote woke-ism of all kinds? You would rightly be enraged.
Yet charging you an 8% woke tax is exactly what virtue-signaling leftist corporations do.
For the purposes of this article, we'll imagine you're treating yourself to a cozy new winter parka for $100. If you could subtract all the money woke corporations lavish onto left-wing causes from the price, how much would you actually be paying for it? How many of your hard-earned dollars are being appropriated by the company to pay for Marxist rubbish? Read on for my semi-scientific estimate:
DEI: $3
Spending on creating a more "diverse, equitable, and inclusive" corporate culture varies from company to company, but you can bet that the more woke a company is, the more it spends on DEI gobbledegook.
The Triangle DEI Alliance, a business advisory organization in Durham, N.C., recommends "allocating 2-3% of the organization’s operating budget" to DEI efforts. That number may be a little wishful, considering there has been considerable drawdown in such expenditures this year as the polarizing measures have cut into revenue. But it's not unreasonable to assume the woker corporations spend at least 2% of their operating budgets on it.
Then there are the other, more difficult-to-quantify costs of implementing a DEI program. "The other costs are much more expensive because they force an organization to make tough decisions on prioritization, revise their processes or adjust targets," admits DEI pro Sarah Cordivano in an honest, introspective post on Medium:
When you think about the cost of DEI, it’s not just budget allocation. It’s the entire cost of an authentic strategic approach to DEI. This includes: hiring or allocating staff, the cost of revising processes, the cost of collaborating across stakeholders and most importantly the cost of prioritizing DEI alongside other strategic initiatives.
A DEI initiative costs the company dearly in terms of workers' time:
It’s important that these stakeholders recognize DEI as a strategic priority and are willing to support [it] with their working time. Practically this looks like: a communication professional supporting on internal DEI communication, a HR data analyst providing reports on employee data or a legal team advising on GDPR for diversity data collection. Everyone from the executive team down to the managers of these individuals needs to perceive DEI projects as a critical strategic priority for the organization, not a passion project or an add-on.
Smaller companies that can't afford dedicated personnel can designate an HR staffer to spend over half her time on the initiative. Employee Resource Group (ERG) organizers at all levels will lose 10% of their productivity to the DEI cult activities as well. And everyone is expected to spend hours of time on needless, tiresome, indoctrinaire training and struggle sessions — er, meetings. The overall drain on productivity is extremely difficult to quantify: let's add another $1 to the tab.
Corporate philanthropy & ESG: $2.50
Woke companies give their profits away to all manner of leftwing causes. They'll support LGBTQ groups that go into schools and indoctrinate kids, "community organizations" that serve as Democrat vote factories, and of course, society-destabilizing groups like BLM.
"Many large corporations — and smaller businesses — earmark 1% of their pre-tax profit for charitable giving," reports Groundswell, a 501c3 focused on connecting "clean energy" non-profits with donor cash. But "This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Some companies give considerably more. Whole Foods, for example, donates 5% of its after-tax profit to charity each year, and small businesses — those with fewer than 100 employees — contribute an average of 6% of their pre-tax profits to charity. "
Groundswell cites social philanthropy luminary Curt Weeden's "simple formula to help businesses set their corporate philanthropy budget" — 1.2% of the previous year's pre-tax net income.
The vast majority of Fortune 500 companies also spend money internally on their own idealistic folly — what the establishment swells call ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues. From workers' abortion jaunts and gender "health care" to expensive, inefficient "green" facilities to paid time off for staff to participate in leftie volunteerism, corporations fling cash at woke causes.
There are still other ways left-wing financing is built into the corporate model. Publishing and media companies hand out monetary rewards to high-profile Marxist servants in the form of fat book advances or producer deals. Other companies will pay out handsome marketing deals and gift valuable products to celebrities and "influencers" — who also tend to be big, fat lefties.
Once again, it's not possible to determine the precise percentage of each corporation's operating budget that is spent on woke philanthropy and ESG, since it varies from company to company and includes many intangibles. We'll set our sample model at 2.5%.
Woke-enabled theft: $1.00
Product (and profit) lost to theft, or "shrink," has always been a part of the retail business. But George Soros's army of woke DAs decriminalized most shoplifting and predictably generated a spike in theft.
"Retail crime, violence, and theft continue to impact the retail industry at unprecedented levels," the National Retail Federation found in its most recent annual retail security survey. "This year’s study found that the average shrink rate in FY 2022 increased to 1.6%, up from 1.4% in FY 2021. When taken as a percentage of total retail sales in 2022, that shrink represents $112.1 billion in losses."
The problem is so intractable that rather than demand officials provide better protection or empower staff to address the issue (and risk being called "racist"), companies mostly shrug and simply build that shrink right into their operating calculations.
Not all retail shrink is attributable to leftism, so we'll generously deduct 0.6% from that 1.6% figure. Add another dollar to the woke tax.
Political spending: $1.50
Corporations donate to both parties and to liberal and conservative causes alike. PACs, lobbyists, and political campaigns are all on the recipient list. During the 2020 election season, corporate political spending broke records. They dialed it back briefly when left-wing groups pressured them after the Jan. 6 riot, but the spending has since ticked up again.
On top of that, within most corporations, executives donate handsomely. Many companies also match their employees' leftie donations. So when you hand your money to left-leaning organizations, you are paying the salaries of their Marxist employees, who then spend their money on their favorite left-wing nonsense.
Corporations also spend money on dues to various organizations that then work to influence political outcomes. In a post on Popular Information, the authors explain:
For example, most major companies are members [of the] U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A company like UPS pays substantial dues to the U.S. Chamber, which then uses those funds to influence policy. The U.S. Chamber opposes a $15 minimum wage, corporate tax increases, and federal legislation to protect voting rights [this is obviously a left-leaning interpretation]. How much does UPS spend to support these efforts? That is a secret. Many corporations choose not to disclose whether they even are members of the U.S. Chamber, much less how much money they contribute.
And the U.S. Chamber is just one of the thousands of ideological, industry, and issue-based groups — most organized as non-profits — that exist to influence the political process.
And then there are unions. Manufacturers who run union shops necessarily have considerable Democrat donor systems built into them.
I spent way too much time researching the average percentage of a corporation's budget that goes to political spending. It is a closely held secret in most cases and it takes so many forms that pinning it down is an impossible task. We'll go with a conservative estimate of 1.5%.
Related: Avoid Shopping at These Woke Companies on Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Total Woke Tax paid per $100: $8
Bottom line: I don't want to pay more dollars to a corporation so it can hand out my money to any cause, even one I actually support. I'm perfectly capable of donating to my favorite charitable causes myself. Why pay an extra fee for salaried corporate middlemen to handle the donation process? Why let a corporation have my tax break?
We are now in the thick of the big Christmas/Hannukah/assorted holiday shopping season. We are buying gifts, ingredients, decorations, and gay apparel. But remember — when you drop a Benjamin on a present for someone special or a sweet new cocktail dress for the office party, if you do business with a woke corporation, multiple dollars of that price tag could ultimately wind up supporting anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-groomer, climate hysteria Marxism.
P.S. Statistics being what they are, I'm sure some of you will have an alternate take on my Woke Tax calculations. Let me know what I got wrong in the comments section below!
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