The purpose of business is to make a profit. Not provide a living wage.
/johnny
Government welfare programs are problems caused by the legislature, not WalMart.
/johnny
Are you sure you’re on the right website?
You're telling people to MYOB, yet you post a thread chastising Wal-Mart for low wages?
Where's your screed about restaurants, where waiters depend on tips for their living?
You know what make me the most angry about Walmart wages and practices?
It's the Walmart paid rooftop snipers, ready to pick off any employee who dares to leave for a better paying job.
If they were only free to leave, I might be more sympathetic, but no, they have to chose between continuing to work at Walmart, or dying.
I believe you are thinking about this from the wrong direction.
The salary paid by WalMart is enough to pay for the necessities of life if those necessities were not inflated by government policy.
You’ve said yourself on other threads that income inequality started to go crazy in the 1974 to 1980 era. It is not by chance that this is also the timeframe where “deficits don’t matter” became the mantra, and literal and de facto immigration amnesty became public policy.
In a normal economy, new wealth is created by private sector innovation and production of raw materials. Starting in the 70’s, government growth has risen hyperbolically. This absorbed all the newly created wealth and essentially replaced it with debt. This behemoth government then started creating economic bubbles first with the massive overspending, then with quantitative easing to hide the massive overspending.
At the same time, the Government decided that cheap labor was desirable, and so immigration of skilled labor was tightly restricted while unlawful entry by unskilled laborers was allowed en masse. And with their clients the teachers unions they corrupted the public school system and turned the stream of high school graduates into a glut of uneducated illiterate sheep.
It’s easy to single out an individual or corporation for blame, but they did not create the circumstance they are aligning themselves to.
Next time you post thoughts like these, perhaps you should ask yourself why there are so many people who are willing to work for such a low wage and why has the cost of basics like food and gasoline exploded?
WalMart did not create either of those factors. You and I and all other registered voters, we are supposed to be the ones to rein in government to prevent these tragic conditions. We failed, Big Time. The fault, dear Steelhead, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.
It seems like the WalMart employees have a CHOICE to work there or not. They are not much-abused. If they are so abused, they can go work elsewhere, and the free market will force changes to conditions or wages, if appropriate.
Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer are held up for alot of things, but those who work at WalMart are not “subsidized” by Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.
/johnny had it corect. Business is to make a profit. If they were not making a profit, there would be no jobs at all.
Then maybe the taxpayer should stop giving benefits to the poor? Maybe Democrats should stop using taxpayer cash to subsidize corporations too?
I love those who throw out these accusations about Wal-Mart. My son worked there for 4 years going to college. Yeah, crummy job, but, as it should be. Motivated him to move on.
No bennies? Please. His insurance costs were less than mine. He got a “guaranteed” pay raise every year, just for successful performance, of at least 0.40/hr. That is better than what I get at times. After he left, Wal-mart sent him a $400+ check from either a 401K or ESPP. He had no idea and it was a nice surprise.
Finally, tell me of how many other retailers are doing better? When he looked for another job closer to the college he was attending, JCP was offering $4 less an hour than he was making, and employment was contingent on his selling enough credit cards. Target was offering $3 less an hour.
$3 less an hour.
Please pay attention to this. Wal-Mart may not make employees on the ground floor rich, but they employ young men when many other retailers won’t. And they pay well compared to their counter parts. And there are bennies, as so many like to claim don’t exist, that are very affordable.
Asserting that a large corporation like WalMart doesn't pay its employees well or offer good benefits is fair enough, but, beyond that, your rhetoric closely resembles the routine and clumsy propaganda of the anti-capitalist left, and your assertion that WalMart is "fobbing" the costs on to Mr. & Mrs. Taxpayer is without any factual basis that I'm aware of.
You seem to have absorbed (and embraced) a fair bit of Marxist propaganda at some point during the evolution of your political views, and I'm sure that such sentiments would meet a receptive audience over at a place like DU, but to try to foment such transparent collectivist nonsense on a conservative, pro-business forum like FR is naive at best, and intentionally disruptive at worst.
There are ample examples of actual corporate welfare for We the People to be furious about in this country, but the WalMart situation you cite is not one of them.