If Walmart Paid Its Employees a Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up? (video)

YouTube ^ | April 4, 2014 | Slate .Video

[EveningStar]

In the series "The Secret Life of a Food Stamp," Marketplace reporter Krissy Clark traces how big-box stores make billions from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps. What's more, the wages of many workers at these stores are so low that the workers themselves qualify for food stamps—which the employees then often spend at those big-box stores...

[DannyTN]

"That’s your answer to everything, period. You and Cringe, one note sambas."

Unemployment is the number one problem with our economy. It's driving most of our budget issues. It's enabling big government. it's driving most of our debt. It's making people dependent and destroying their work ethic. It's keeping teenagers from development work skills.

The main reason we have high unemployment is because of the rampant off-shoring of American industry. Immigration is a second factor.

And the reason we have off-shoring is because we lowered the import tariffs and effectively made our labor force compete with Communist China's labor force.

Worse China doesn't allow most of the funds spent on Chinese goods to come back to buy U.S. trade goods. Instead they buy U.S. equities and U.S. Debt. We are liquidating America because of our failure to address the predatory Chinese tactics and restore the protective tariffs.

[Smokin' Joe]

For one thing, it assumes all the costs of raising the wages would be in wages, as nearly as I can tell. It does not address specifically that there are employer paid taxes which would increase, nor worker's compensation insurance increases, nor any other increases which are not part of the wage. It is not specified whether these costs are factored in.

Another thing: the assumption that the living wage is the same in all areas, or that the wages paid are.

Last, I don't think the entire cost would be spread evenly to boxes of mac and cheese, and 1.4% of the price of an item that costs less than a dollar is a little different than the per item dollar increase in a big ticket item--say $7.00 on that $500.00 TV.

It also assumes that a part time job should pay a living wage. (a living wage on 30 hours a week?) While I understand people are getting by on less, generally a part-time job was supposed to supplement household income, not provide it.

Tie this in with the equal pay thingie, and pretty soon, the government will be mandating that part time cashiers make the same as commercial fisherman in Alaska.

[C. Edmund Wright]

You’re wrong TWICE:
One: Offshoring is not the MAIN reason we have unemployment. It’s just it makes good PR for economic liberals to glom onto when a certain business starts to offshore. But in reality, it’s only a tiny part of unemployment, and even so, interntional trade also creates jobs for others…..maybe even net positive.

Two: the main reason for offshoring are governments and unions, and until you realize that, your objections are absurd. Or, you could just STFU until you open up your own plant in this country and deal with the EPA, the IRS, INS, OSHA, and on and on and on…..oh, and unions.

knock yourself out….

[DannyTN]

You could eliminate all government regulations, unions, and taxes and you still can’t compete with communist Chinese labor at $2/day.

It would still make sense to offshore.

[bitterohiogunclinger]

“Are they not making their profits on the backs of taxpayers?”

That statement is based on the wholesale swallowing of a boatload of socialist propaganda.

Number one, the slogan “on the backs of” implies that in some manner the evil rich big company is exploiting workers unfairly and gaining something evil (profits) in the process.

Those are both great communist worker party talking points, and both are B.S.

The second fallacy is that they, you or me is owed anything in this world by virtue of our existence.
The whole concept that I and other taxpayers should be robbed at gunpoint to subsidize others standard of living is another socialist talking point.

When you say “by the taxpayers” you actually mean by those of us stupid enough to work for a living.

[FrdmLvr]

If they want to say Wal Mart costs taxpayers more in welfare payments, the answer isn’t to force Wal Mart to pay more, it’s to fix the welfare dole system.

[C. Edmund Wright]

No it would not make sense to offshore….at least not in the vast majority of cases. You know nothing about business logistics and reality. You’re the sgt schultz of economics.

Milton Friedman called for you. He said you flunked econ 101….again……and again…..and again……and again.

[DannyTN]

You’re stuck in Econ 101. You’ve never gotten past the most basic understanding of comparative advantage.

[redgolum]

Correct, at least at first.

Except that Walmart has lobbyists looking to funnel more customers their way (they are not along). They also have identified people getting off food stamps as a large risk for their business model. Walmart found out that there was room at the trough, and stepped right up.

Again, many companies do this. Heck, most large companies use the Gov to either get customers or limit competition. But a lot of people doing it doesn't make it right.

[Smokin' Joe]

I'm hard pressed to cite an example where government regulations/legislation can create private sector jobs.

There are armies of private sector employees out there making sure their respective companies or assisting other companies in the area of regulatory compliance, from OSHA to the IRS.

Mandatory safety training alone employs dozens of people. Mandatory equipment requirement changes have created entire industries (aside with the industry of ensuring compliance), including NFPA 2112 compliant clothing (flame resistant standard for anyone on a drilling location), and tons of other mandatory safety gear.

Environmental compliance on construction sites (those runoff dams to limit sedimentation) are another sector.

So, yes government does create private sec`tor jobs, although they may not be necessarily what you would consider 'productive'.

[C. Edmund Wright]

You still flunk the Friedman test. If you think he’s wrong, you’re a liberal idiot.

[Smokin' Joe]

To pay a worker $11.81/hour means on average that worker will have to generate MORE than $11.81 of revenue for every hour worked.

By the time you add in costs for accounting, the other half of social security, management, etc. figure the employee should bring in 3 times their wages in revenue.

[nikotal09]

when I was in my teens a bunch of my friends went to work at bradlees (do you remember them) about nine of them..it wasnnt a job to support a family.....its the a-oles in d.c that caused this...I tell my friend all the time. has your overtaxed middle class life changed for the better financially the last 20 yrs...of course not, and it never will. just as long as commie,radical, global, fed reserve a-oles are runnin the show...the only reprieve we got was when the gipper used some common sense to get things rollin again....im afraid that’s not gonna happen in my lifetime.....pray for your children, and grandchildren

[tet68]

I would venture to say that if Wal-mart fired all
of it’s workers today, there would be lines a mile
long wanting those same jobs at that same pay.
That is how markets work.

All this is liberal hogwash.

[DannyTN]

Friedman was wrong. He did a lot of harm to America.

Nice litmus test you got there. Anyone who doesn't bow down and worship at the feet of Friedman is a liberal idiot according to you. Of course name calling and labeling like that is a liberal tactic.

Milton Friedman and the fallacy of good intentions

Milton's legacy includes (From link):

• a highly concentrated banking sector that is “too big to fail” (or to jail) despite rampant illegality and continuance of the very practices that caused the financial meltdown in 2008;
• large-scale off-shoring of manufacturing that has destroyed whole sectors of the U.S. economy; the undermining of the capacity of the U.S. economy to compete internationally;
• the continuing decline of the private sector, with rates of return on assets and invested capital now only one quarter of what they were in 1965;
• the undercutting of the economic recovery that should have taken place after the meltdown of 2008; and
• in a final irony, compensation for the C-suite and the financial sector that is not only inversely proportional to performance but so excessive as to constitute a macro-economic problem of the first order.

[arbitrary.squid]

That’s absolutely shameful, is what it is.

[Focault's Pendulum]

[tomkat]

             

d:^)

[ozzymandus]

The words “living wage” made me grind my teeth the first time I heard them. Of course, they came from a government employee complaining about his $50k do nothing job. He also claimed to have more education than an MD, but I later found he didn’t graduate from college. Whenever I see some whining leftist, I think of that idiot.

[Amagi]

Thank you for the examples.
You are right.
I thought there would be a few examples of private sector jobs created by government that I couldn't think of off hand.
Some are an offshoot of either aiding in the compliance with the government regulatory apparatus --- or the result of crony capitalism --- or involved in the processing of the paperwork of the taxing authority --- but little of it positively impacts the national wealth, and that's mostly what I was referring to in my diatribe against government at every level already grown too large, but growing larger by the day.
Moreover, I respectfully submit that the number of these private sector jobs so "created" by government do not compensate to the volume of private sector jobs lost because of government taxation/regulation.