How much should a Wal-Mart worker make, and how do you get them to make it?

[Helix]

Good, you should be forced at gun point to pay for it.

I support stopping public education at 16 yrs old, because, I don’t liked being forced at gun point to pay for YOUR crotch fruit!

I'm not on public assistance. Try a different shortcut to thinking.

 

[SoCal]

Walmart is a tremendous boon to poor people. Poor people save hundreds of dollars a month shopping there, the prices are cheap.

How much money can a store make when it sells to poor people?

A net income of $6.67 billion last year...

 

[Aberro]

I'm not on public assistance. Try a different shortcut to thinking.

Are you on drugs?

I am not on welfare.

 

[jimbo]

It’s the other way around, the worker is selling labor and the store is buying it. But otherwise yes

If you prefer. OK

 

[SoCal]

Do you think it is okay for Walmart to pay workers so little they have to go on food stamps to eat? And Walmart also keeps workers hours limited so they can not try and get health insurance, which is way to expensive for them to pay for even if they qualified, so they go on Medicaid? So we are in essence paying the benefits for Walmart workers through our taxes. And all you can say is cost -benefit.

Good point! These large Wall-Mart type corporate stores have really gamed the system. Underpaying their employees, forcing them to receive government benefits we all pay for. Except the large Wall-Mart type corporate stores who's highly paid tax lawyers ensure they pay little to nothing to our government. We pay their tax and they laugh all the way to the bank.

It's understandable that people who find this arrangement acceptable, find Trump acceptable...

 

[Dayton3]

The thing to remember is that no, Walmart does NOT pay everyone a living wage, NOT EVERYONE is working at Walmart in order to earn a living wage. That is they have no real intention of making it a career or using it as their primary means of support.

Thousands are young people still in high school even who want to make some money and gain some job experience.
Thousands are old people who have already had careers and just want to do something to make some money before they retire for good

And for that matter, thousands of Walmart employees take jobs there in the last quarter of the year simply to get the 10% employee discount which they use for Christmas shopping.

I can say with confidence that probably less than half of Walmart hourly employees are interested in working for the company long term and making it their primary means of support.

 

[Razoo]

Should a Wal-Mart maker make:

- nothing
- starvation wages
- below minimum wage
- minimum wage
- $10/hour
- $15/hour
- $25/hour
- $40/hour

Now, I'm not looking for a simplistic spewing of dogma about 'the free market decides'. How much do you think they deserve to make, apart from the 'free market' blather?

For the sake of this discussion, let's pick $25/hour, an upgrade from where they are.

Can that happen?

The Wal-Mart heirs are the richest family in the world, apparently. Nearly $200 billion apparently. They COULD pay workers that overnight if they wanted. But they won't, and probably shouldn't.

Here's where the armchair capitalists have a point. The 'system' matters. If the heirs simply paid that wage, and you saw Wal-Mart an outlier in paying more than other retailers, it could become a money-losing business, that didn't 'fit' the market. Essentially a charity operation. It doesn't 'work'.

No, the heirs have more money than they should, but the way to address that is taxation, not demands for paying workers 'well above market'.

To 'fix' Wal-Mart worker pay, to raise, it, needs fixing the system. And a main question is, where will the money come from, and how can the system change to pay workers more, and how can it be done across the industry?

That's where *systemic* issues like unions come in as one part of the answer. If the money simply isn't there, the wages won't happen. But what about when the money IS there, but the system just chooses not to pay workers much, and the money goes to executives and/or owners/stockholders?

If the company goes from making $40/worker to $75 to $100 to $200 to $500, what decides whether the workers gets any of that increase? I don't mean a technical answer - the company decided - I mean what factors affect the decision? And those factors are largely 'the system'. From tax policy to worker power.

And that's where what the issue comes down to is, basically, are the rules set up to serve the workers, the workers and owners, or the owners?

When they're set up for the owners, you see the workers keep making minimal wages, while the owners get all the increases, and great wealth. When they're set up with workers having some representation, the workers will get a larger share.

Competition will essentially always put a cap on the wages, outside of the government running things and setting wages other than the minimum, which has almost no chance of happening. If Wal-Mart just paid workers a lot and raised prices to pay for it, competition would sell for less and get the customers, and Wal-Mart would go bankrupt.

As a society, we can choose whether the system should represent workers almost not at all, or more. We can tax great wealth or not (or, as we do, undertax it so much our debt skyrockets every year). We can give workers some power across the industry, so there might be some price increases, but workers would make more.

Instead, society basically 'doesn't care', doesn't pay attention to the issue, and lets the owners have it their way. There are still some occasional pressures, and some changes; Wal-Mart pay has sometimes gone from very low to a bit less low.

But if we want to see 'hard work rewarded', if we want to see 'the American dream' happen more, we need to elect government that will create a system, including tax policies, that have a larger share of the wealth the company creates go to workers, and not practically all to owners/shareholders.

It's sort of that simple. It won't happen by blaming individuals like CEOs and boards and owners - the system doesn't leave them much room to do anything on their own, with competition waiting to crush them for it. It starts with voters understanding the issue and preferring to respect workers more, and that creates a demand for politicians who will, and they get elected.

And that needs voters not to be suckers for corporatist propaganda to oppose such changes, and that says nearly all the wealth going to the top is great. That 'Plutocratic Capitalism' is worse than 'Democratic Capitalism'.

These changes wouldn't be 'socialism', they wouldn't bankrupt companies, they can't make money out of thin air. But they could reduce the extreme seizure of the wealth created by the top, and have it go more to workers, and the rest of the country in taxes, even while the owners still get rich, but not as rich. And society tends to thrive more.

All workers should make $35 an hour part time

All full time hard workers should make $64,500 per year to live in the USA although not LA , San Francisco, Aspen, New York City, Boulder, Dallas or Seattle.

The Waltons would still have plenty of billions to split between themselves.

 

[Helix]

Are you on drugs?

I am not on welfare.

I take famotidine for heartburn. I also didn't accuse you of being on welfare.

 

[independentusa]

Ask yourself this.

WHY are things so expensive that citizen's HERE have to earn more to buy basic necessities, pay their rent, etc.?

Then ask yourself this.

How do guaranteed minimum wages change anything, when either the prices go up to meet the new costs, AND/OR the employer reduces staffing/only hires part-time workers to reduce expenses?

Are you are going to pass laws dictating limits on pricing? Dictating how many people MUST work at a job-site?

Go full-on "socialist" and nationalize all industry?

What kind of laws would make things "equitable" without going full-on "socialist?"

Is denying businesses the right to form monopolies socialism? If we can do that, we can make a minimum wage that allows for people to buy food and pay rent and maybe we should have a socialist health care system. The health care system we have now costs us twice any other country in the world and is ranked somewhere in the 30's for the best health care systems. Why you ask, because we think that the health care system will react to the market like any other business and it does not. I know, was involved for forty years. I am not asking for equitable, but for reasonable. The fact that the Walton's make billions each year from their companies and they still pay low and force people on food stamps and Medicaid means we are contributing to those billions with our taxes.

 

[Noodlegawd]

If Walmart gave every cent of its profits to its employees (which would be a batsh*t crazy thing to do), it could only pay each of its employees an average of about $6000 per year. That' equivalent to an extra $3/hour for a full-time employee.

Long story short, Walmart should pay its employees what they are willing to work for. It's not a charity organization.

 

[Razoo]

All workers should make $35 an hour part time

All full time hard workers should make $64,500 per year to live in the USA although not LA , San Francisco, Aspen, New York City, Boulder, Dallas or Seattle.

The Waltons would still have plenty of billions to split between themselves.

Wal-Mart lives on loop holes, preferential tax codes and taxpayers picking up cost of infrastructure and none to little in property taxes = we taxpayers are not charity organizations we want our money back.

Wal-Mart is a tax dollar leech.

 

[Aberro]

Wal-Mart lives on loop holes, preferential tax codes and taxpayers picking up cost of infrastructure and none to little in property taxes = we taxpayers are not charity organizations we want our money back.

Wal-Mart is a tax dollar leech.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) has no obligation to contribute to charitable causes or to give a single dime, any in-kind donations, or a even a minute of employee time to those in need. However, the world's biggest retailer does do those things. In 2016, it contributed more than $1.4 billion in cash and in-kind gifts (donations of goods and services) to various causes, according to the company's 2016 Giving Report (link open PDF). In addition, Wal-Mart employees ("associates," in company lingo) "contributed more than 1.25 million hours of their time outside of work to volunteer causes."

This Wal-Mart Number Will Surprise You | The Motley Fool

Name one other place I can buy beer, bullets, underwear and food in the same store.

 

[Court Jester]

this is what freedom is for, to allocate resources efficiently. Someone’s subjective idea of what someone “should” make is irrelevant to what they are worth.

Price signals in a free market inform people. If Walmart isn’t paying enough, people find other jobs and avoid Walmart until they do pay enough.

Arbitrary price fixing will always lead to inefficiencies and misallocation of resources.


For example if government decided that doctors were overpaid, and mandated lower wagers, there would be a shortage of doctors, and a black market that pays doctors more.

I always chuckle at all of the people who whine about a Walmart coming to town, and how they are such an evil company. And then when the new local Walmart starts taking applications for what is usually 250-300 jobs at that location, about 3,000 people apply for a job there... and that at $8-9 per hours. So clearly Walmart IS paying people enough.

Personally I hate shopping at Walmart. Not because I hate the company, I just hate the experience.

Its not irrelevant to what they are worth.

You make the case that if Walmart isn't paying enough, people will find other jobs. The problem with that thought process is that it doesn't take into consideration that Walmarts competition isn't simply going to pay better to get the workers either. Its a de facto monopoly on wage scales.

NO! It's a defacto reality about what certain job skills are worth. Nobody is going to pay anyone more than what they are worth, anymore than most shoppers aren't going to pay for a product or service that is more than it is worth.

If Walmart, Safeway and Costco basically agree not to undercut one another on wages, they can essentially cap what they have to pay out. At that point, its really not as simple as finding another job, now is it?

But Walmart, Safeway, and Costco DON'T do that because it would be illegal. The fines and penalties are not worth the risk. Upper management could even get jail time for something like that, so why would they risk their freedom for being involved in a conspiracy like that? This isn't 1890.

All of those stores you mention are in competition with each other; they aren't working together. Some Costcos.. and I believe all Safeways are generally union shops anyway, so you aren't even comparing apples to apples in your post. No offense, but you seem to understand very little about how retail works.

Price fixing isn't going to create any more problems than letting those with the power decide what those without it are worth.

Or how about this novel idea: People "decide" what they are basically "worth" by their lack of personal preparedness before entering the work force. If a person's goal was only to get a high school education---maybe. And then hope to get a full time minimum wage job-- maybe. Then didn't THEY decide their worth for themselves?

Its not a price fixing problem.....its a greed problem.

You call it greed, what it actually is called is 'profit incentive'---which is NOT immoral. Because for every upset part time minimum wage worker at Walmart, there are thousands of retired investors living off their investment portfolios who are not upset about their returns. I kind of despise Jeff Bezos and his liberal politics. And then when I see my stock portfolio--- I don't feel so bad about him. These are for profit businesses--- they aren't public schools or the DMV existing off of taxpayers.

 

[Aberro]

I take famotidine for heartburn. I also didn't accuse you of being on welfare.

My bad, I thought you were implying I was on welfare.
Apologies

 

[Helix]

My bad, I thought you were implying I was on welfare.
Apologies

nah, though i don't really care one way or the other. no worries.

 

[Simpletruther]

I always chuckle at all of the people who whine about a Walmart coming to town, and how they are such an evil company. And then when the new local Walmart starts taking applications for what is usually 250-300 jobs at that location, about 3,000 people apply for a job there... and that at $8-9 per hours. So clearly Walmart IS paying people enough.

Personally I hate shopping at Walmart. Not because I hate the company, I just hate the experience.



NO! It's a defacto reality about what certain job skills are worth. Nobody is going to pay anyone more than what they are worth, anymore than most shoppers aren't going to pay for a product or service that is more than it is worth.



But Walmart, Safeway, and Costco DON'T do that because it would be illegal. The fines and penalties are not worth the risk. Upper management could even get jail time for something like that, so why would they risk their freedom for being involved in a conspiracy like that? This isn't 1890.

All of those stores you mention are in competition with each other; they aren't working together. Some Costcos.. and I believe all Safeways are generally union shops anyway, so you aren't even comparing apples to apples in your post. No offense, but you seem to understand very little about how retail works.




Or how about this novel idea: People "decide" what they are basically "worth" by their lack of personal preparedness before entering the work force. If a person's goal was only to get a high school education---maybe. And then hope to get a full time minimum wage job-- maybe. Then didn't THEY decide their worth for themselves?




You call it greed, what it actually is called is 'profit incentive'---which is NOT immoral. Because for every upset part time minimum wage worker at Walmart, there are thousands of retired investors living off their investment portfolios who are not upset about their returns. I kind of despise Jeff Bezos and his liberal politics. And then when I see my stock portfolio--- I don't feel so bad about him. These are for profit businesses--- they aren't public schools or the DMV existing off of taxpayers.

Gods post, I would add that in general wage price fixing will fail in a modern economy , as there will always be a competitor willing to step in and pay just a bit more in wages and reap extra profits buy getting all the best workers, forcing everyone to “cheat” on their agreement and the whole fixing scheme falls apart. That is part of the beauty of competition.

 

[Simpletruther]

Whatever the fair market value of their labor is worth. :shrug:

Now the problem with places like Wal-Mart is that they try to make the utmost profit with the very least expense.

That's why they use Chinese (and perhaps other overseas) labor, where population density allows for extremely minimal wages. Such that the other costs to ship, etc. are affordable.

But when the product comes to the USA for sale in their "warehouse" stores? That's where the big expenses accrue. Energy costs, OSHA requirements, building maintenance, taxes, and of course wages.

The more they have to pay to get the product sold, the greater the increase in prices to cover those costs and still give them their expected profits.

I do support buy American, work American, but have yet to hear exactly how laws can balance these cost-benefit equations.

the only reason I can see to support “buy American” is geopolitical considerations. We might go to war with China or whoever one day, so it might be wise to retain a certain level of diversity of industry, we Cant very well ask our enemy during war to supply our steel.

In a perfect world, buy American emotionalism would be counterproductive to optimized wealth.

 

[Craig234]

All workers should make $35 an hour part time

All full time hard workers should make $64,500 per year to live in the USA although not LA , San Francisco, Aspen, New York City, Boulder, Dallas or Seattle.

The Waltons would still have plenty of billions to split between themselves.

But did you read the rest of the post? The answer is not simply 'the Waltons pay more'. That will not happen.

 

[Court Jester]

Gods post, I would add that in general wage price fixing will fail in a modern economy , as there will always be a competitor willing to step in and pay just a bit more in wages and reap extra profits buy getting all the best workers, forcing everyone to “cheat” on their agreement and the whole fixing scheme falls apart. That is part of the beauty of competition.

Exactly! And many people don't realize this, but Walmart is already investing in robots to do many tasks in the stores. They have a robot that goes up and down aisles doing inventory and ordering for the next delivery. They have already taken out half the check-stands and replaced them with self checkout. Every time minimum wage goes up, they cut hours, layoff people, and look to new technology to replace people.