If Walmart Paid Its Employees a Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up? | Tokyo
Information | History | View | Sightseeing | Video
READ MORE: http://slate.me/1j6hRyo 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. This video crunches the numbers on how much Walmart, the single biggest beneficiary of the food stamp economy, might have to raise prices across the board to help a typical worker earn a living wage. A note on methodology: Eligibility for food stamps varies according to income, number of dependents, and other factors. This estimate of Walmart's potential cost from raising wages is based on wages for a Walmart employee with one dependent working 30 hours a week, a typical retail worker based on federal data.
Comments
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save tax payers? it's not like the government is gonna give that tax back directly. And how about we tell ppl to work hard so they don't end up in one of these low skill low paying positions?
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Stop having kids when you don't have a partner to raise them, get better skills if you don't have enough money for your needs.
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Or 1.4% more than the total on your receipt. Not just 1 penny.
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Got here from PragerU's argument the minimum wage should be $0.00. Still feeling the Bern over here.
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I don't think this video goes in depth enough as to how a minimum wage would effect more people, but, if it is literally just talking about Walmart and now other company, then, I guess it makes sense...
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Except then the price of living would go up and we'd be back to square one. Wal-Mart wouldn't just raise the price one cent and say okay we've covered our losses and stop there. They would raise prices even more to profit off of the increased willingness to pay by consumers who now had a higher income. Food is more of an inelastic product. Consumers have to pay whatever the firm sells it at, and the firm will squeeze as much money from them as they can no matter how high the income.
I am the son of a single mother who works at Wal-Mart who grew up with 3 siblings so yes I know how its employees and their families are treated. Except now I can go to a fairly expensive University with most of the cost covered by aid and my meal plan is covered by Wal-Mart itself because of my mother's association. So it's fine please keep the wage down and keep me eligible to have far less debt than most college students. -
God bless you Slate Magazine
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Makes sense to me god damnit this shits gotta stop
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Duh this example works well for Walmart that's why Walmart lobbies congress for increasing the minimum wage. Try explaining how an increased minimum wage will affect small business owners.
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WoW
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Walmart pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars yearly. They are a massive company and would not be harmed significantly by an increase in a minimum wage. Walmart and single mothers working as Walmart cashiers are not the ones that suffer from a higher minimum wage (nor from the existence of a minimum wage). The people it harms, are small business owners who don't make anywhere close to what Walmart makes. Local businesses that don't employ millions of people, like Walmart does. This is an extreme example of a strawman argument. No one honestly believes that a raised minimum wage will harm companies like Walmart or McDonalds or any large multi-national company. Sebastian Siegloch, an associate proffesor at the University of Mannheim, found according to Forbes: "the best estimate of the elasticity of low-skill labor demand is -0.635, meaning that a 10% increase in the wage rate for low-skill workers should cause 6.35% of such jobs to be lost."
The concept of a minimum wage outright, is not only poor for small businesses; It, along with dependency-building welfare, is a root cause of high unemployment. Young workers, when they do get jobs and work for more than their labor is worth, it takes money from more experienced individuals, who deserve more money for their more skilled labor, in the form of a job. Inversely, if a business decides to select a higher qualified individual for employment, they are taking away valuable work experience from a younger, less experience young adult. A minimum wage forces employers to make a choice, and overall, hire fewer people. This is a poor system, it is clearly flawed, and this kind of government regulation is why our economy struggles as much as it does.
Forbes article by Jeffrey Dorfman, professor of economics at The University of Georgia-
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2016/04/08/the-lowest-wage-workers-will-be-biggest-losers-of-fight-for-15/#6d7685d7c611 -
Why can't we do this?
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People who work in a burger joint always getting orders wrong and snagging free food and smoking joints behind the building do not deserve 15 an hour. They pay people lower wages because the bar isn't set very high for the people being hired. If someone wants to get paid more they should get a degree or go into actual manual labor like the railroad. McDonald's and Walmart are cake walks and are meant to be starter jobs.
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Socialism looks so good on paper, it's amazing how it's never managed to build any truth wealth for the masses, but despite it's record of failures people are going to just keep flocking to it.
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In theory, that sounds great and I'm sure you haven't forgotten the governmental "middleman" that wants his cut for counting the beans before redistributing back to the people. The government would have to micromanage how much businesses pay their employees, in accordance with One's family size as opposed to productivity (creating greater bureaucracy and increased taxes to pay for it) and then reduce taxes somewhat, in order for this to still not work. LOL I just wish fairy dust, reason and granted wishes were as abundant as broken campaign promises.
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Why should I have to pay for that woman to buy her own son/daughter food? That's not MY responsibility. How about we stop incentivizing entitlement programs like those you speak of?
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You want a private business to spend 4.2B dollars in order to save tax payers 300M? Why would they do that?
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I find it amazing how okay so many people are in the comments with Walmart, a private company, subsidizing its payroll with Gov. assistance.
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300 million tax dollars implies an average of under $1 per person. Let's assume that I spend 100 dollars a year on groceries, using your 1.4% stat then I would spend $101.4; this means it would cost me more, 40 cents more... except i spend more than that on groceries; according to statistics I actually spend almost $2100 per year (based on 18-25 year old male averages). this means that my price would go up by 1.4% or $30 more.
Would you like to spend an extra $30 at the checkout stand every year for the rest of your life or keep with the $1 per year?
as a poor college kid who does file his taxes, I can say that that $30 is actually a lot of money to need to work around. I'd rather keep the less than a dollar tax.
Minimum wage affects small business not giant corporations. This is what happens when you have a degree in English and Graphic Design, but not economics.
Use your purchasing power to affect the market, not legislation.