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If Walmart Paid Its Employees a Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up? (video)
YouTube ^ | April 4, 2014 | Slate .Video

Posted on 04/09/2014 11:56:04 AM PDT by EveningStar

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To: EveningStar

Many Wal-Mart employees have the best of both worlds.

They get enough from their paycheck to have fun, yet earn so little, they can still get .gov handouts and be low ranking members of the FSA.


21 posted on 04/09/2014 12:13:16 PM PDT by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
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To: EveningStar
Just how accurate is their math anyway?

I am suspicious of any discussion that accepts the term "living wage". That term is akin to the terms "fairness" and "excessive profits": they mean what liberals define them to mean.
22 posted on 04/09/2014 12:13:26 PM PDT by LostInBayport (When there are more people riding in the cart than there are pulling it, the cart stops moving...)
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To: EveningStar
The issue is that most of the benefits are being paid by the Fed and State gov. When you look at the fact that a large portion of Walmart’s income comes from food stamps, I have to ask if they are really a private company anymore or a make work program for welfare.
23 posted on 04/09/2014 12:15:44 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: LostInBayport

Wages are not determined by what you “need”, but by how much value you provide the person paying you - just like any good or service.


24 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:07 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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bfl


25 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:08 PM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: EveningStar

I do not comprehend the issues of wages at Walmart or fast food places. People are free to not work at jobs if they don’t think they pay enough. Walmart is singled out for this sort of crud when I doubt Kmart and Target pay is not much higher if any.

If employees want higher paying jobs they need to find out what qualifications such jobs require and do whatever they need to do in order to qualify for that type of job.

My first job was in fast food, my second job was in retail at a department store, that is how I see that type of job, as a starting point- stepping stone. If working fast food or retail is your cup of tea then bust your butt and/or take night classes so you can move up into positions at those stores that pay what you want to make. Not everyone at Walmart or McDonalds is making minimum wage.

I know several people that work at my area Walmart and none of them are depending on that income to survive. Most are already retired and just want something to do or a little extra money. A couple people I know that work there are college students that are just there for spending money/work experience.


26 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:14 PM PDT by Tammy8
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To: EveningStar

One glaring error in their “analysis” is assuming that everything else would stay the same. Which it never does. The economy is perpetually in a state of disequilibrium. When things are working well, the economy seeks general equilibrium — but, it never actually achieves it. When one thing changes, everything else has to change somewhat, to adjust to that change. And so on.

Some of the likely adjustments are easy to predict from theory. Employers will be able to hire better qualified workers, at the mandated higher wage. They will fire the marginal workers, and substitute more educated, and more motivated workers. They won’t need as many of these workers. Employers will substitute capital for labour — investing in new technology (which their more qualified workers will be able to operate), in lieu of cheap labour. Again — a reduction in workforce. More retail business will migrate from bricks-and-mortar stores to on-line. Once again, fewer minimum-wage workers will be required.


27 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:16 PM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: cuban leaf

Payroll is the MOST expensive liability businesses have most people
DO NOT realize that ALL employers match ALL payroll taxes, workers
comp insurance is according to payroll (VERY EXPENSIVE), the cost of training NEW employees, and health care!!! MOST LIV’S do not have any idea the COSTS that go along with PAYROLL!!!!


28 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:49 PM PDT by Kit cat (OBummer must go)
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To: EveningStar
Nobody is forcing Walmart employees to take those jobs.
Government meddling is destroying private sector jobs in this country.
I'm hard pressed to cite an example where government regulations/legislation can create private sector jobs.
The only jobs that government can create are more government jobs, which do not increase national wealth --- on the contrary they put more burden on the private sector to pay the salaries of the bureaucrats whose regulatory activity further burdens the economy.
Raising of the minimum wage will put more minimum wage workers in unemployment.
The quantity of government in this nation is well past the threshold of killing the economy of the United States of America.
29 posted on 04/09/2014 12:16:58 PM PDT by Amagi (Lenin: "Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.")
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To: Huntress
If Slate paid its unpaid interns any wages, would it still be economically viable?

If women and men working at the White House were paid the same,


30 posted on 04/09/2014 12:19:02 PM PDT by Night Hides Not (For every Ted Cruz we send to DC, I can endure 2-3 "unviable" candidates that beat incumbents.)
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To: LostInBayport

I don’t disagree with what you are saying. But what does it say about one of the more profitable companies in the US when it pays wages low enough that its employees are eligible for public assistance even when working full time? Are they not making their profits on the backs of taxpayers?

I’m not sure what the answer is. I don’t know that a full-time wage that is low enough to qualify for public assistance is something that we want for adults, though.


31 posted on 04/09/2014 12:19:32 PM PDT by arbitrary.squid
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To: Amagi

That’s something that any liberal I’ve talked to on this issue just will not acknowledge.

Somehow there are no other places to work.
And if there are, none of them want to pay what someone needs (wrong premise, of course).


32 posted on 04/09/2014 12:20:45 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: EveningStar

“The way it works shipboard is, you do your job. You do it good you get a better job” Captain Ron


33 posted on 04/09/2014 12:20:59 PM PDT by wordsofearnest (Proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs it. C.S. Lewis)
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To: Sacajaweau
There's a ladder to this work thing. If you're at the bottom, it's probably because that's where you belong. Unskilled workers are a dime a dozen.

Bottom tier employees at Walmart make the same or more than their counterparts at Target ...

source

34 posted on 04/09/2014 12:22:17 PM PDT by al_c (Obama's standing in the world has fallen so much that Kenya now claims he was born in America.)
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To: pgkdan
Agree. I am willing to work for what I get paid at Walmart, after 8 years, about $11 hr. I have seen these new kids come to work and they are not worth the minimum wage they get. Many have left Walmart to get better wages at other places. I once asked a 30+ year-old why he didn't go elsewhere to get more money and he told me that he found out that he didn't like manual labor.

So there you have it. We are willing to do easy work for lower wages.

35 posted on 04/09/2014 12:22:20 PM PDT by eccentric (a.k.a. baldwidow)
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To: EveningStar
More people are on food stamps than ever before, because it is easier to get on food stamps than ever before. Here's an excerpt from an eye-opening article:

The grinding recession accounts for much of the increase the past few years, but not for its entirety. Spending on food stamps doubled between 2001 and 2006, even though unemployment was low in those years. Even when the economy is projected to improve in the future, usage of food stamps will remain elevated above historic norms. Food Stamp Nation is here to stay. One of its pillars is so-called categorical eligibility, which means that if someone is eligible for another welfare program, he is presumptively eligible for food stamps. In 2000, the Clinton administration issued regulations saying that merely getting a noncash welfare benefit could make someone eligible. Getting a welfare brochure or being referred to an 800 number for services is enough to qualify in almost all the states. In Vermont, receiving a bookmark with a telephone number and website for services is enough.

Categorical eligibility effectively wiped out the program’s old asset test (i.e., you couldn’t have $30,000 in the bank and get food stamps), although income limitations still apply. In the Obama stimulus, the work requirement was suspended, too, and hasn’t been restored. The requirement had discouraged young, able-bodied nonparents from utilizing the program; there are millions of them on food stamps. The bottom line is that government at all levels actively wants people on the program.

Newt Gingrich famously calls Barack Obama “the food-stamp president.” But the first president worthy of the moniker was George W. Bush. His administration brought a Madison Avenue element to the otherwise unreconstructed Great Society program. Not everyone who is eligible for food stamps knows it or wants to sign up. Bush began a recruitment campaign. In the same vein, the Obama administration is running radio ads hailing food stamps as a way to lose weight. At the local level, county governments spread the word and work to overcome residual cultural resistance to taking government benefits. The federal government pays $50 million in bonuses to states for signing people up.


36 posted on 04/09/2014 12:23:21 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: redgolum

Walmart is not the reason a large portion of their income is from food stamps. The reason is this administration thinks the more people they have on food stamps the better and are encouraging many people to get food stamps that would not have previously been accepting them. There is an actual campaign going on to get people on disability, food stamps, medicaid, etc., etc. Walmart happens to sell groceries so they do benefit from all those on food stamps, but would also make money if the economy was better and few were using food stamps.


37 posted on 04/09/2014 12:27:01 PM PDT by Tammy8
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To: EveningStar
Just how accurate is their math anyway?

The whole video relied on numbers supplied by researchers at Berkeley.

Read the closing credits carefully.

38 posted on 04/09/2014 12:27:45 PM PDT by Focault's Pendulum (I live in NJ....' Nuff said!)
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To: Amagi
'I'm hard pressed to cite an example where government regulations/legislation can create private sector jobs. '

Yes. That happens all the time. Many regulations and provisions create distortions in the economy. Look FED interest rates, housing boom.

The tax code alone 'creates' a whole sector of private enterprise. Yet, that does not mean we should have that sector. There is countless regulations to be followed that us peons have to do. That alone creates a entire private job ecosystem.

39 posted on 04/09/2014 12:28:36 PM PDT by Theoria (End Socialism : No more GOP and Dem candidates)
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To: EveningStar

What is the price elasticity that is acceptable with Walmart shoppers is the question. They can go to someplace else to get pretty much the smae products.


40 posted on 04/09/2014 12:31:00 PM PDT by dblshot (I am John Galt.)
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