- The call is to force WalMart to raise its minimum wage to $15/hr, because some percentage of their employees use government assistance. Senator Sanders in particular claims that giving Medicaid and food stamps to Walmart employees amounts to welfare for the Walton family, and that the latter should pay their employees out of their own $100 billion in accumulated wealth.
This line of argument is entirely unconcerned with numbers, but the numbers are all right there on WalMart’s annual report.
WalMart makes $15B of profit on $480B of revenue, for a minuscule 3% profit margin. It has 2.3 million employees. Let’s assume that 2 million of those earn WalMart’s current $10/hr minimum or close to it. If their wage was raised to $15, that would mean a $5 per hour raise. With 40 work hours in a week that adds up to $200 per week, or $10,000 per year per employee, or $20 billion total for all of WalMart’s workers.
$20B is more than WalMart’s entire net income. There is simply no way for a company with such tiny margins to increase its costs without transferring the entire increase to prices. Even if the Walton family wanted to pay the higher wage bill without raising prices, the entire $100 billion they accumulated in 55 years would run out in 5.
The other option is to raise prices for WalMart’s 230 million weekly customers. Most of those are much poorer than WalMart’s employees, like the 95 million adult Americans who are out of the labor force shop and earn no paycheck at all. Raising the wages of WalMart employees will result in a massive wealth transfer from lots of really poor Americans to the few not-so-poor Americans who are lucky to keep a job at WalMart.
Even at $10 an hour, WalMart gets more applications per open position that does Harvard.
Fuck this author. He needs a punch in the dick. Walmart exists ONLY because of the US security safety net. They dropped their prices so low they couldn't pay a living wage, force out businesses that DID pay a living wage, and then push their employees to get welfare and food stamps and emergency room health care ... which is all paid for by all of the employees of companies that pay a living wage! The author points this out in his amazing calculations that show raising employee wages would cost more than Walmart makes in a year! Well, duh! No shit, sherlock. That's their entire useless fucking business plan! Step 1: Open a store in a small town. Step 2: Offer prices too low for any local competitor to meet. Step 3: Employ all the competitor's laid-off workers at 1/2 their previous pay scale. Step 4: Point out that if they can't live off the Walmart wages, that the Gummint will support them. Step 5: Move profits into overseas banks and manufacturing, to protect it from US taxation. Step 6: Let the American taxpayer pay the bills that Walmart abdicates paying. This isn't even interesting. Or hard to figure out. They do nothing to hide it. All the information is right there, out in the open, available to anyone who wants to look at it. And they STILL get away with it.
Do you agree that this one, specific effect, lower prices when Walmart comes to town, is good for the locals? General Merchandise Stores pay nonsupervisory employees an average of $12.72 per hour. Do you have a source for the 1/2 pay scale? One of the most interesting things I learned from Hubski, if I am not mistaken, is that government welfare programs put upward pressure on wages. I don't think this is a widespread view, but I believe it is true. If there are no public benefits, workers will have to make do with whatever salary they can get. Additional public benefits make them somewhat more comfortable, so they can be somewhat more choosy about employment, and if they receive sufficiently generous public benefits, they might choose not to work at all, unless they were offered a very high salary to make it worth their while. Or: imagine you receive a large inheritance. Now you don't need salary as much as you did before. Are you now willing to do the same job for less salary? Or are you more likely to quit, unless the boss offers a big raise to keep you around?Step 2: Offer prices too low for any local competitor to meet.
Step 3: Employ all the competitor's laid-off workers at 1/2 their previous pay scale.
Step 4: Point out that if they can't live off the Walmart wages, that the Gummint will support them.
"Do you agree that this one, specific effect, lower prices when Walmart comes to town, is good for the locals?" Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave live in Plainsville, USA. Alice owns a general store. Bob owns a gas station. Carol runs a daycare. Dave is a gardener. Alice sells $1 worth of dry goods to Bob, Carol and Dave every week. She grosses $3 a week. Bob sells $1 worth of gas to Alice, Carol and Dave every week. He grosses $3 a week. Carol takes care of Alice, Bob and Dave's kids for $1 every week. She grosses $3 a week. Dave tends to Alice, Bob and Carol's gardens for $1 every week. He grosses $3 a week. We have no cost of goods sold and we're oversimplifying, but Plainsville has a GDP of $12 a week. It is a closed economy where everyone is break-even. Now let's say Edward comes to town from Bentonville, Arkansas. He's going to open a general store to compete with Alice. His dry goods cost 50 cents on the dollar what Alice's do because he buys it by the container-load from China. Alice is no longer making money. She grosses $0 a week. Bob sells $1 worth of gas to Carol and Dave because Alice is broke. Bob grosses $2 a week. Carol takes care of Bob and Dave's kids because Alice's kids are staying at home. Carol grosses $2 a week. Dave is still doing the gardening for Bob and Carol but Alice can't afford him anymore. Dave grosses $2 a week. Alice is assed out. Bob, Carol and Dave have taken a 33% hit on their income. Fortunately, Edward is selling for 50 cents on the dollar so they're actually coming out 17 cents ahead. Plainsville's GDP is now $7.50 instead of $12... except Edward is sending $1 of his $1.50 back to Bentonville because that's the whole point. So actually, Plainsville is at $6.50. Alice is out her entire income - $3. But Alice's town is down more than her entire income, even though Alice's neighbors are saving 17 cents. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ "If there are no public benefits, workers will have to make do with whatever salary they can get." For once and for all, why do you think that's a good thing? Had a friend. Her name was Jae Poon Rat. She lived in Bangkok. Here's her garden. Jae Poon Rat lived in a 2-story warehouse. The upper floor was a sweatshop. She employed 50 people to make knock-off clothing. They made about 400 baht a day, or about $12. And I was assured they were happy. After all, you can get a meal on the street for about 100 baht. Per capita income in Thailand is about 550 baht a day and there are plenty of people who do much worse. But the public benefits in Thailand don't include fire codes so when a fire broke out and the trucks couldn't get to the warehouse, all 50 people were unemployed. And they don't include healthcare so when Jae Poon Rat got breast cancer she just up'n'died. But over there, workers make do with whatever salary they can get. By the way, Jae Poon rat owned a sweatshop because she received a large inheritance. 50 people worked for her for 400 a day because they didn't. This is the atrium of the Central World Mall for the Queen's birthday in 2007. They had an orchid show in her honor. Here's Central World after the government shelled it to get the Red Shirts out in 2010. Allow me to quote from the article again: Some of us are advocating for a living wage because it discourages people from stabbing you for your apple. And some of us are advocating that just because you don't see any owner of the tree doesn't mean there isn't one. I actually don't mean to beat you up this time. I know that you can make better arguments than this. I simply don't see why... I don't see why. I don't see why workers should "make do."
If you want an apple and you pick it off a tree in the wild, that’s not economics because no one else is involved. If you want my apple and you stab me and take it, that’s not economics either. If you want me to give you my apple, we have entered the realm of economics.
No! Low prices are NOT good for people. And that's the point you are missing. The price of an item needs to account for raw materials, manufacturing, regulatory compliance, corporate taxes, shipping, and the salaries/benefits of every individual involved along the way, from the picker in the field to the factory worker to the delivery truck driver. If at ANY point along that way someone pays less, then someone else has to make up that deficit. For example: Senator Buttcheese gets Widget Factory to open their new factory in Senator Buttcheese's state capital of Sandusky. This is a big win for Sandusky, because there will be 500 jobs to fill at the factory. But to get Widget Factory to move to Sandusky, the Senator agrees to give them a 10-year break on taxes. STOP. Read that again: "...a 10-year break on taxes." Widget Factory can now lower their prices BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT PAYING TAXES. So retailers start buying Widget Factory widgets, instead of the old ACME Widgets, because Widget Factory's are cheaper, and paying less for products increases the profits for the retailer. 10 years later. The roads in Sandusky are destroyed. Potholes EVERYWHERE. Especially around the Widget Factory, which is booming and now employs 1000 Sanduskyites. A local ballot measure for road repair gets passed, adding a $1.00 surcharge to all automobile licenses issued in Sandusky. Now the 1000 workers at Widget Factory are paying increased taxes to repair the roads that have been destroyed by Widget Factory trucks, because Widget Factory is NOT paying into that fund, because of their tax break from Senator Buttcheese, who died several years ago. Dippy McShithead now runs for Senator Buttcheese's seat, on a platform of "Cutting Taxes!" to ease the tax burden on poor Sanduskyites. (And you have the last 30 years of the Republican Party, in a nutshell: Create a problem, blame someone else, and claim tax cuts will fix it.) So no, low prices are NOT a good thing. For anyone. They are short-sighted, and wind up hurting people in the long run. I said: "Step 2: Offer prices too low for any local competitor to meet."
You said: "Do you agree that this one, specific effect, lower prices when Walmart comes to town, is good for the locals?"
I kinda lost hope in our ability to have a useful conversation that time you made a clear and plausible argument about charity, I responded, and you said I completely misunderstood your point. Though your statement that "The world will be a tyrannical and biased place if aid is determined by the charity of individuals" makes more sense to me now. I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's a true thing.For once and for all, why do you think that's a good thing?
So in other words all this progress over the past 400 years - the betterment of conditions for workers, the increase in the well-being of the middle class, the decrease in infant mortality, the gains in longevity... is all that stuff fruitless? Is all that stuff pointless? Is all that stuff an affront to capitalism? WHY? Why. Should. Workers. Make. Do.I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's a true thing.
"If there are no public benefits, workers will have to make do with whatever salary they can get. Additional public benefits make them somewhat more comfortable, so they can be somewhat more choosy about employment, and if they receive sufficiently generous public benefits, they might choose not to work at all, unless they were offered a very high salary to make it worth their while." It's just a thought experiment, I am not advocating anything in this paragraph. My intuition initially was that getting some public benefits made workers more comfortable, so they would accept lower salaries. To check my intuition, I imagined extending the size of the benefit to extremes in both directions, from "zero" to "very large," simply to make the consequences more obvious. It's not a proof of anything, nor a recommendation of anything.
Okay, thank you. We'll go ahead and leave that question unanswered. Next question, why are you reliant on your intuition and thought experiments? I mean, you're basically attempting to imagine "Sweden." This isn't quantum mechanics we're talking about, it's economics. People study this shit for a living, using economic data and empirical experiments.
1 result (0.53 seconds). In other words, that "old saying" was coined specifically for this essay. Thereby amply demonstrating the above adage. Minimum wage laws aren't about economics, they're about civics and welfare. From a capitalist standpoint, Dickensian workhouses and Calcutta sweatshops are the best economic approach to wages. After all, market forces will maximize efficiency. Minimum wage laws, by inspection, are inefficient from an economic standpoint. Their function is not to improve the economics of a society but to improve the welfare of a society. Workers want more benefit from working than from not working. Serfs ceased being serfs when they were better off putting noble heads on pikes than they were working land as chattel. Employers want a greater benefit from employing someone than from not employing someone. So long as there is benefit in paying a worker fifteen cents an hour and forcing them to sleep in flophouses, employers will do that. This is a maxim that has been held unassailably true from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman. Smith argued that regulations were necessary to keep businesses from being horrible; Friedman argued that because businesses were horrible it was proof that our society doesn't value non-horrible businesses. Color me shocked. I will wager, however, that you cannot demonstrate this in a logical, non-fallacious way. Left unsaid is the argument that if WalMart cannot turn a profit without reliance on government subsidy in the form of welfare and SNAP assistance for its employees, WalMart should not be in business. It's hilarious how libertarians and capitalists always assume as a maxim that Walmart is entitled to be in business regardless of the social cost. And, in those arguments so sweepingly dismissed, is the argument that WalMart managed to destroy many smaller businesses because as owner-operators they had to pay an equitable cost of living or go out of business. The argument made by minimum-wage proponents is that Walmart leverages public assistance to outcompete competitors that are not eligible to do so. This is an argument that the local economies inhabited by Walmart are depressed, not that Walmart is a more desirable place to work than Harvard. Talk about apples and oranges: those scrambling for minimum wage and a blue vest are somehow equivalent to those scrambling to pay 63 grand a year how, exactly? The simple fact that higher wages at WalMart would cause fewer poor people doesn't depend on any of it either. You would be mistaken. However, "doing the math" in our case means evaluating whether or not Walmart is a viable business without subsidy, not whether or not walmart is profitable. It's interesting how the author considers profits to be inviolate while making an economic argument against minimum wage. I'm going to make an assumption, ignore everything else, and then paint how this assumption is wrong, therefore my opponents are stupid. Actually, the argument is that Walmart removed $263 billion from local economies. That their prices were this much lower is an argument against Walmart because, again, they are only able to do this through government subsidy. I don't know what that has to do with Copenhagen. Nobody at Apple makes minimum wage because nobody at Apple does minimum-wage jobs. The liberal argument here is that if Walmart paid a living wage, more children of Walmart employees would be able to go on to college to work for Apple. This would increase productivity, GDP and wealth for all. _____________________________________________________________ This shit isn't hard. This shit isn't novel. And pretending this shit is about a fucking misinterpretation of quantum mechanics in service of alt-right neoliberal talking points will never make it insightful.There’s an old saying: “If you want to hear a dumb opinion, ask someone their thoughts on the minimum wage”.
In a series of three posts, I’m going to describe a few economic approaches to analyzing minimum wage laws.
Workers want a lot of things from employers. Mostly they want wages, but also a pleasant workplace, stability, good conditions, and respect.
Employers want several things from workers too, mostly labor but some of the above as well.
I won’t keep you in suspense – I think that minimum wage laws are a huge mistake, both economically and morally.
The call is to force WalMart to raise its minimum wage to $15/hr, because some percentage of their employees use government assistance.
$20B is more than WalMart’s entire net income. There is simply no way for a company with such tiny margins to increase its costs without transferring the entire increase to prices.
Even at $10 an hour, WalMart gets more applications per open position that does Harvard.
There is going to be a lot of economic theory in parts 2 and 3 of my essay, but the simple fact that higher wages at WalMart would cause a lot of pain to a lot of poor people doesn’t depend on any of it.
I’m pretty sure that it never crossed the mind of people attacking WalMart’s wages to do the math on WalMart’s income statement.
I think it’s because the core of their argument is about ethics, and not about making workers richer. Unfortunately, the ethics of the argument are just as perverse as the numbers.
WalMart is a very convenient scapegoat for American poverty because WalMart does more for poor Americans than pretty much anyone else. In 2004, WalMart saved its customers $263 billion, which is more than all direct government welfare programs (food stamps, EITC, TANf etc.) combined.
In contrast, a company like Apple doesn’t employ any poor Americans and doesn’t make things for poor Americans.
Oh, hey, I'm reading him right now and stuff. Here, have a quote: But WAIT! It is Walmart we're talking about. I mean, come on. We can do better than regurgitating a random quote. Take a look at that last bit again: Yep. That's right. Because of course they would.Adam Smith
Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favour of the masters. Thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money, and not in goods, is quite just and equitable. It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods.
Thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money, and not in goods, is quite just and equitable. It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods.
I had to stop reading this. Regardless of any problems with the argument, logically or from an economics or policy standpoint, this guy makes a lot of assumptions about the people who work at Walmart and their lives. I worked at Walmart. After college. Full time. As my primary income. It was humbling. Ever been to Walmart and wondered why the service is piss poor? Because everyone is miserable. Ever been part of the working poor? It's fucking miserable. Without the benefit of going to a shit job and being managed by people who worked their way up from cashier to salaried manager based on sycophantic behavior and resignation to a career at Walmart. The managers are miserable too. Ever wonder why you can't find an employee? Because corporate decides the stores need like four sales people. Some of this is probably alien to the author and other people so far removed from the realities of actual working life outside of a job you had in college that built character or some shit. To the point that you have no practical empathy or common sense that might get in the way of your Ayn Rand bullshit theories based on a world that does not exist. Unless you do this shit and it's your life to raise a kid or two on $10/ hour, no experience in hourly service employment is comparable. When you are poor every fucking thing in life is stressful. When your job does not provide basic security for things like food or shelter your life is not well described by a philosophy or economic model that is naive of how the world actually works for people who have no use for understandings of corporate profit margin or the theoretical utility of a minimum wage.
I have no idea what it is like to live in Burkina Faso. I imagine it is very hard for most people. But I believe Burkinabés (had to look that up of course) would be better off if they rely on vaccines rather than witch doctors, if they use condoms instead of potions to resist AIDS. My lack of experience with their situation does not make my ideas wrong. Nor would a lack of empathy, though I don't see how a lack of empathy is revealed by starting conversations about how to help the poor, rather than talking about video games. My experience in retail was unpleasant, but yes, it was one of those high school jobs that built character. At the same time, I was teaching ESL for fun and often drove a group of Togolese and Ghanaian students to and from their jobs at Walmart. There was a whole clan that passed through the modest townhouse of an early immigrant, and they were all wonderful, decent, hardworking and generous people. I developed a profound respect for their determination to overcome difficult circumstances, similar to the respect I have for you. I don't believe that hard work and determination will guarantee everybody good results, but I think it goes a long way. I was a poor teacher, and didn't do much to improve their English, though they helped me with French and taught me some phrases in their local dialects. But they all found work at Walmart, those with better language skills in more people-facing positions, others doing stocking and cleaning. They weren't getting rich, but they were getting by, and over the years they moved on to better situations. I have no doubt that being paid $15 per hour is better for an employee than being paid $10. I hope that no one assumes my alleged allegiance to ideological celebrities or movements blinds me to that obvious fact. Walmart can pay two employees $15 per hour or three employees $10 per hour. One option is clearly better for two employees, and worse for the third. Economic theory is utterly uncontroversial in predicting that a price floor promotes a supply surplus. In the case of wages, this surplus is expressed as unemployment. Opposition to minimum wage, in my case at least, is not motivated by some abstract worship of economic efficiency, but the very real effect on human welfare that policy can cause in the form of unemployment.
And if you're ideologically opposed to vaccination you might not want people in the third world to vaccinate their children. Disregarding the on-the-ground reality of suffering children and the visible results of vaccination. What point are you making? You know what a price floor is? You worked in retail? My point is if you're an ideologue who holds certain naive notions about the world based on academia and unrealistic theory, you're going to willfully ignore reality to fit your worldview or ignore it out of ignorance. Ignorance that shaped your worldview. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. To the point that he corrected his math based on a 40 hour work week for employees. The math isn't the problem. The problem is he thinks workers at Walmart get 40 hours.
True, and if I were honest I would admit ideology, not reality, is my motivation. My point is that a policy like minimum wage has costs as well as benefits. We should try our best to do the hard work of understanding the complexity on both sides so we can make an informed judgment. I learned a little about what working in retail feels like when I was a cashier. I learned a little about price floors reading Wikipedia. Both of these experiences inform my still-incomplete understanding. I think that admitting an error and correcting one's math is a sign of openness to evidence, rather than a stubborn disregard of on-the-ground reality. The author (now) recognizes that "many of them don’t work 40 hours a week". I also mentioned my belief that the math "has too many assumptions to be very useful" earlier. I believe that minimum wage contributes to unemployment on the simple principle that when stuff costs more, people buy less of it. I recognize that it also benefits some workers. I think the discussion should be about whether the benefits justify the cost. But it always ends up being about Ayn Rand somehow.And if you're ideologically opposed to vaccination...
What point are you making?
Here's a depressing, if probably more than a bit biased, read. I think one of the most eye opening arguments I ever got in was with a guy who basically tried to say that the underclass are underclass because they don't try to buy their way up the social ladder. He actually had some good ideas and strong points that made sense in context, but where he kept on getting lost was that he didn't seem to want to accept the fact that buying your way up takes at least a little money and a lot of bravery, vision, and drive. Not everyone has those qualities and just because they don't have those qualities it doesn't mean they should be viewed as failures.
Our landlord at the birth center is a very nice guy. He's also a very active Republican. I've had a number of conversations about social justice and inequality with him; from his perspective, if you succeed you deserved it and if you failed you deserved it and it's only fair that those who succeeded have more benefits than those who failed. Our conversations usually end up with me pointing out that deserve or not, his life is better if those who failed are incentivized to not erode the social structure within which he succeeded or else he'll have to succeed all over again within a newer, meaner social system. Which, now that I think about it, is the philosophy of every post-Revolutionary French philosopher I've had stuffed in my ear for the past three weeks. A healthy republic and social welfare is essential to keep the proletariat from rising up and guillotining you. Perhaps that's the trouble with the modern Republican party. They're too far removed from rebellion.
With early Libertarians like Rothbard trying to make common cause with anti-authoritarian leftists in the 60s and 70s and guys like Bannon and Schwarzenegger openly admiring Lenin, I'd say the trouble with the modern Republican party is they're attracted to rebellion but they're on the wrong side of the barricades.Perhaps that's the trouble with the modern Republican party. They're too far removed from rebellion.
To be fair, in a lot of ways that's a very fair perspective. I can see in my own life where I have made poor decisions and suffered from them and good decisions and benefited from them and while hindsight is 20/20, I do know the good decisions came about because I wasn't being rash or giving too much into emotion and the bad decisions came about cause of the other. I worry that if I thought otherwise, I'd stop trying to do better, maybe even slide backwards. At the same time, I think it's fair to expect some kind of reward for succeeding, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in trying to do better. Why try harder if you know you're gonna have the same as someone who doesn't try hard at all?from his perspective, if you succeed you deserved it and if you failed you deserved it and it's only fair that those who succeeded have more benefits than those who failed.
I have come to the conclusion that Republicans value fairness while Democrats value compassion. Both positions are admirable and defensible. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with either mentality. Civilization is hard work. It takes the cooperation of differing opinions to succeed at it.
There are some good comments on the post, better than average internet quality, and they make me feel that the $20B calculation has too many assumptions to be very useful. We don't know how many workers make $10/hr; Walmart claims an average of $13.36. Many workers are overseas. We don't know how many are part-time. Noncash benefits are left out. The comparison to Apple is a stretch, but even other retailers like Costco have very different profiles. Costco has far fewer employees, and far higher revenue per employee than Walmart. Perhaps satisfied employees work harder, or perhaps Walmart operates in different demographic areas with different shopping patterns. It reminds me of an old conversation. Say a Walmart wants to make a small expansion and has a budget of $30/hr for additional labor. What are the options? Option 1 Hire Alice, Bob, and Charlie at $10/hr each. The Harvard comparison, claiming that there are many more applicants than open positions, suggests that this is what the unfeeling textbook would call oversupply. The market-clearing price is below $10/hr, so the textbook says to maximize market efficiency and ignore everything else Walmart should hire more people at a lower salary. Option 2 But we can't ignore everything else. We want Walmart employees to be able to eat. So the alternative is to hire Alice and Bob at $15/hr each. Question: What happens to Charlie? In practice, Charlie fades away into the crowd of unemployed Walmart associate wannabes, and does the best he can with Plan B. Nobody blames Walmart for what happens to Charlie. But Walmart's decision to use Option 2 is what made Charlie switch to Plan B. It's not obvious to me that two people making a living wage and one on the street is better than three people making less than a living wage.
The argument against Walmart is that its $30/hr additional labor budget comes from $10 worth of externalities provided not just by Alice, Bob and Charlie's taxes, but also Dave's, Edward's, Franks, Gary's, Hester's, Ignacio's, Janice's, Katherine's, Lisa's, Mark's, Nancy's, Oliver's, Peggy's, Quincy's, Richard's, Sam's, Theresa's, Ulysses', Verna's, Walter's, Xerxes', Yolanda's, and Zach's. And that if Walmart can't turn a profit without sucking money out of every pocket in Alphabetsville, Walmart shouldn't be in business. From a capitalist standpoint, a business that cannot operate without subsidy should not operate and Walmart is a subsidized corporation. From a socialist standpoint, a business that does not enrich the social fabric with its subsidy should not be subsidized and the preponderance of evidence holds that Walmart does not enrich the social fabric of the communities it enters.
It occurred to me that biggest reason I like the a large minimum wage increase is because Settlers of Catan is boring as fuck when there's one person doing astronomically better than everyone else. I don't really know much else about it, but I do like the idea that at least some places are trying it so we can see how it actually plays out. The reigning champ in my mental model is this Marketplace piece on the radio about a mall pretzel franchise that doubled its income since the raise. I'm definitely biased towards the NPR radio style, something where they suggest that something is going a direction but it's always too inconclusive to say for sure.
Don't let a bad essay by a simp with a John Galt tattoo convince you these are the only two choices. The argument isn't "make Walmart increase its wages" it's "make everyone increase their wages". It's super-funny how these discussions are always about Walmart and "company completely and utterly unlike Walmart" when they could much more easily be about Walmart and Costco. Walmart has a 3% profit margin and pays their employees shit. Costco has a 2.5% profit margin and pays entry level employees $13.50 an hour. But it just wouldn't be libertarianism without some cynical, sophomoric sleight-of-hand.
Only if anti-corporatism is ethics. Which of course it is, these days. Somehow.I’m pretty sure that it never crossed the mind of people attacking WalMart’s wages to do the math on WalMart’s income statement. I think it’s because the core of their argument is about ethics, and not about making workers richer. Unfortunately, the ethics of the argument are just as perverse as the numbers.