My wife used to work for a local Wal-Mart, and she told me about this video she had to watch about why Wal-Mart “didn’t need unions.” Some shit about an open-door policy. Yeah, I thought to myself. I saw “North Country” too. Only stays open until it hits your ass on the way out. Seriously. I’d love to see that joint crippled by demands to unionize.
Freeman: I guess Wal-Mart in Canada wasn’t even allowed into the country without first agreeing to Unionize, and second agreeing to sell Canadian-made products. The people I talked to in Canada loved Wal-Mart, and it appears to be doing fine.
Mighty Ponygirl: From what I’ve read, most Wal-Mart stores in Canada are not unionized, and just as in the United States, Wal-Mart fights labor organization in its stores vigorously. As of last October, there were about 20 active UCFW campaigns in Wal-Mart stores. The most notorious case that I know if is in Jonquiere, Quebec, in which Wal-Mart closed the store after the workers unionized, claiming that the store was losing money. The Quebec Labor Board determined that Wal-Mart employed this tactic in order to bust the union.
Being able to afford cheaper products–food, child-rearing supplies, tires, music, clothing–is bad for the working class.
Neil — I am reminded of listening to an interview with one of the workers who was about to be laid off from the last T-shirt factory in the US. He described how he knew he was in trouble when he and his wife went to Wal-Mart and discovered that all of the T-shirts being sold there were made in China. While the interview didn’t exactly extend its scope into his own feelings about shopping at Wal-Mart at that point, it does underscore a very important point: If you shop at Wal-Mart, soon, the only place you will be able to shop is Wal-Mart (if you can affort anything at all).
If you go to Macy’s, Polo Ralph, Guess, etc., you will find that “all of the T-shirts being sold there were made in China” or at least some other lesser-developed country. What you’re criticizing is free international trade, not Walmart.
I saw a Wal Mart commercial the other day that made me want to throw up. They are touting themselves as being the socially responsible place to shop because you can get all your stuff in one place and SAVE GAS.
Of course Wal-Mart is good for the working class. The article even points out that Wal-Mart’s low prices, and the low wages of its employees, don’t translate into exorbitant gains for shareholders: Wal-Mart’s profits per employee are lower than the economy-wide average. For example, Slate’s owner, the Washington Post Company, makes $19,000 from each employee. Wal-Mart only makes $6,000 from each employee.) Further, the article points out: A single mother with two children making $18,000 a year at Wal-Mart gets $4,869 back from the EITC and refundable child tax credits. Her children are probably eligible for Medicaid, either instead of Wal-Mart’s insurance or as a wraparound to pick up the tab for some of her co-payments. In addition, she might get food stamps and housing vouchers, and can send her children to a public school that gets additional funding under Title I. Look, most of the Wal-Mart employees are low skill and they are paid what they’re worth. An employer isn’t going to hire a worker if the cost of the worker exceeds the value that they can produce. Wal-Mart hires these low skill workers because they can eek out some profit from having these people on staff. If the wages were doubled Wal-Mart, with the same calibre of employee, would be losing money on each employee and they would substitute those low skill employees with either higher skill, and higher productivity, employees, or with technology. They would have loads of incentive to invest in robots that stocked shelves overnight, computer systems which allowed customers to interactively search inventory, centralized product information processes where customers pressed a button next to a product and were connected with a customer service representative in India who knew that product in 1,001 facets, etc. There is no escaping the fact that the market will only reward employees in response to their productivity. Food for thought: Take a look at all of the gov’t subisdies that are paid to Wal-Mart’s low skill employees, and then consider what’s going to happen when we add 12 million low skill immigrants to the ranks of those who qualify for federal subsidies.
Basic reading for comprehension time, Neil. I just said it was the LAST. T-SHIRT FACTORY. IN. THE. U.S. And it was closing. If you have one apple, and I take one apple away, how many apples does that leave you with? So, no store anywhere is going to sell T-Shirts made in the USA anymore. And no, it’s not like Wal-Mart is the only store to offer goods from China. But it’s aggressive purchasing practices has repeatedly driven participating companies under even when they try to play by Wal-Mart’s rules.
Walmart is both the largest corporate employer and the largest retailer in the country. Their influence on both wages and prices is tremendous. Yes, the working class need cheaper products. One might ask why the working class are so poor that they can only afford Walmart, and an inescapable part of the answer is the pernicious influence of Walmart.
Actually I worked at Wal-Mart as a cashier for six months. It was my post-retirement job (I spent 20 years in the military) and I wanted to (a) experience a job in the non-government sector, and (b) experience a job wherein I had no responsibilities. I hated it. I worked hard at it, because that’s what the military trained me to do, but not having the responsibility attached to my job made me incapable of strangling the undisciplined workers and working through the bad attitude prevalent in the store. Then, my husband retired and guess where he got his first post-retirement job — Wal-Mart. He quit after 3 days. He then went to work at Lowe’s. He quit from there after 3 weeks (and they paid him $3 more an hour!). Fortunately we both had retirement incomes and/or spouses with other jobs and medical benefits, so we were able to survive financially. What we both learned from our experiences is that, primarily, Wal-Mart (and other stores of their ilk) do not pay their employees enough. There is no way a family can support itself on (approx.) $7 an hour. Not working 40 hours a week. The other thing we learned is that Wal-Mart (and other stores of their ilk) treat their employees like shit. But they don’t care if you quit, because their turnover rate is so high they expect it. So they continue to treat their employees badly and if you quit before you have been there (I think it is) six months, then they haven’t spent any money on you for benefits. (The only immediate benefit you get from Wal-Mart is mental health counseling – no lie.) So they win! I’ve decreased my spending at Wal-Mart and only go there when I have to. Otherwise I adopt the depression-era mentality of “make do or do without” rather than shop at this store.
Basic reading for comprehension time, Neil. I just said it was the LAST. T-SHIRT FACTORY. IN. THE. U.S. And it was closing. If you have one apple, and I take one apple away, how many apples does that leave you with? Well, thank you for that information, along with the always elucidating CAPITAL LETTERS, but that still does not negate the fact that that entire comment post had nothing to do with Walmart in particular. The garment industry has long been in decline, with Walmart playing a participatory, but hardly sufficient role in driving low-skilled labor towards, guess what, low-skilled labor-intensive countries. In other news, there is, and never was such a thing as the last T-SHIRT FACTORY. IN. THE. U.S since there are thousands of employers in the apparel manufacturing industry (more clear-cut here). If you shop at Wal-Mart, soon, the only place you will be able to shop is Wal-Mart (if you can affort anything at all). Considering that Walmart’s aggressive pricing drives down prices industry-wide, this makes no sense at all.
Eheirnrich’s “Nickle and Dimed” is an excellent discussion of just this issue. . “Wal-Mart hires these low skill workers because they can eek out some profit from having these people on staff.” God help us all of Wal-Mart is simply “eeking out” a profit. Their CEO makes, in the lowest estimate I found, $17 million a year – somehow I don’t think he’d be raking that in if Wal-Mart was hanging on by a thread. Wal-Mart might make $6,000 per employee but they are the single largest private employer in the country at around 700,000 folks. I don’t think the WaPo can make that claim. Of course, then, their per employee profit is higher – they have far fewer employees. That seems like basic arithmetic to me. Am I missing something? Wal-Mart pays their employees crap because they can get away with it. In many rural areas, where Wal-Marts began and thrive today, Wal-Mart is effectivley the only employer. Increasing their prices as little as 1% could allow them to increase their average wage to $9.56 – something approaching a living wage in most parts of the country.
There is no escaping the fact that the market will only reward employees in response to their productivity. Oh. Does that mean that (ignoring stock options, golden parachutes, and other off-the-books compensation) the CEO of Walmart is 1307 times as productive as the average Wal-Mart employee? That each minute of his working day is as valuable to Wal-Mart as the entire day’s labor of three stockroom employees? Bullshit. — ACS
Look, most of the Wal-Mart employees are low skill and they are paid what they’re worth. So you believe that there are people who are not worth a roof over their heads, food, reliable transportation, or even the chance to save up money to go to college or a trade school and get a better job? The fact that they “might” get a few government-sponsored benefits doesn’t cut it, because that doesn’t mean anything for the people who don’t end up with those benefits.
That seems like basic arithmetic to me. Am I missing something? Grace, yes you’re missing something, in that you’re mixing apples and oranges. Wal-Mart has to deploy a lot of capital, in the form of buildings, inventory, fixtures, etc in order to provide an environment within which those 700,000 employees can provide productivie labor. That capital isn’t free and it requires a positive return, so your argument about scale of profits is naive in that it completely ignores “what it takes” to make the profits, and only looks at the aggregate level of profits. Think of it this way – compare two people who earn money from the interest in their bank account. One person makes $100 per year and another makes a $100,000 per year. Is the $100,000 too much gain? Should it be reduced to some “fair level” regardless of the amount of capital each person has deposited in their bank account? Wal-Mart pays their employees crap because they can get away with it. There are two straightforward ways to solve this problem: 1.) When you shop at Wal-Mart you can approach individual Wal-Mart employees and give them some of your money, for it is you who feels that they are underpaid, not all of the shoppers who appreciate the lower prices, and in this way you can be true to your conviction. 2.) Alternatively, you can frequent stores that have higher prices than Wal-Mart and let them profit more handsomely from your patronage and allow them to distribute those profits in the way of higher wages. In the end, both strategies rely on wealth transfer from you, personally, to others. For a given good X, you’ll pay a premium and thus you’re going to have less money to spend elsewhere, but at least your conscience will be clear. That each minute of his working day is as valuable to Wal-Mart as the entire day’s labor of three stockroom employees? Andrea, the problem of CEO compensation is one for shareholders to address, for they are the ones that are footing the bill, not customers. The exessive CEO compensation simply reduces the level of profits that are due to the shareholders. If you could impose a wage cap of your design on CEO conpensation, all you would be doing is enriching the shareholders. So you believe that there are people who are not worth a roof over their heads, food, reliable transportation, or even the chance to save up money to go to college or a trade school and get a better job? Who said that? All I’m saying is that these people don’t have many marketable skills, therefore the market pays them what they’re worth. Their worth is determined by how much profit they can make for the employer. If you think that they’re worth more, then by all means seek them out and give them some of your money. This is the same thing as complaining about the plight of TV repairmen not being worth much. Why don’t you call up a local shop and take your TV in to be repaired for $500 instead of buying a new set for $350? If you want these low wage people to have all of the items and options you’ve laid out then by all means you’re free to send them as much money as you like. However, most people aren’t too hot on such forms of charity, and think that if people don’t have enough skills to produce economic value then they need to downsize on the quality of their home, food, transportation, clothes, etc so that they can save for trade school. No one is going to pay someone $20 per hour so that the employee can produce $5 per hour in value.
Why shouldn’t WalMart pay for the health care costs of its own employees? How is it that we (taxpayers) are getting stuck with the bill on that one? Paying their employees so little that they qualify for Medicaid!? Wow, that’s a neat trick. Doesn’t that piss you off at all? It pisses me off.
we should stop hating on walmart. instead we should foment to increase the wage from $5.15 an hour to $8.00 an hour. its unconstitutional to target one or two employers and make them pay more to their employees. we shouldn’t hate on walmart. it uses its monopsony power to extort enormously cheap prices for a lot of people. its awesome being able to buy cereal for $2.50 a box, and $4.00 for two.
Why shouldn’t WalMart pay for the health care costs of its own employees? They should, but with only $6,000 profit per employee, as soon as they institute a health plan you can be sure that there will be a massive shift of work done by employee to either technology or outsourcing. So, this scenario then leads us to ask what happens to the low skill employees that can’t generate enough profit to cover their wage+health care costs? Welfare, that’s what. At least this way some of the load is taken off of taxpayers and these people are being somewhat productive within society. Don’t get me wrong – I do favor mandatory health care for it will lead to rationalization and then taxpayers can honestly confront the situation of what to do with millions of low skill citizens and why we need to add 12 million more people to their ranks.
“what it takes” to make the profits, and only looks at the aggregate level of profits. Wal-Mart receives an average of $1 BILLION dollars in building subsidies every year. Subsidies, as in give-aways. As in free land, free site preperation, on-site infrastructure, etc. Poor lil’ Wal-Mart doesn’t really pay for its own buildings or the land on which they are built. So, really, that capital is largely free or at least at tremendously reduced cost. That’s the kind of charity I have a problem with.
So you believe that there are people who are not worth a roof over their heads, food, reliable transportation, or even the chance to save up money to go to college or a trade school and get a better job? The fact that they “might” get a few government-sponsored benefits doesn’t cut it, because that doesn’t mean anything for the people who don’t end up with those benefits. As cynical and cold as it sounds, Walmart, nor any business for that matter, is your daddy. It is not its responsbility to provide healthcare or facilitate a college education. As a business, its only responsibility is to its shareholders. If Walmart were suddenly to develop into a charity organization that provided make-work, lucrative pensions, and generous healthcare, it would be out of business in a couple of years and end up in a state similar to that of the airlines or GM in a matter of years. And overall, the percentage of Walmart employees who are on Medicaid (roughly 5%) is comparable to the national average for other large retailers.
plus walmart is the height of blue-collar american success story. its beautiful that sam walton from craptown arkansas created something out of his own hands that competes with exxon (which provides something yanked from the ground). by the way, i dont know if anyone say warren buffet on tv the other day. he said one of the most people things i have ever heard. “i don’t believe in dynastic wealth.” (as he gave away $37 billion). that’s just fucking incredible. saudi monarch a-holes, are you listening?
Oh. Does that mean that (ignoring stock options, golden parachutes, and other off-the-books compensation) the CEO of Walmart is 1307 times as productive as the average Wal-Mart employee? That each minute of his working day is as valuable to Wal-Mart as the entire day’s labor of three stockroom employees? He is compensated not for the value of his time but for the scarcity of his skills. Anybody can be a cashier or a clerk, so cashiers and clerks are entirely interchangable. There is a very small number of guys you want running the company where all your wealth is tied up. You have to pay them more. I think that executive pay is too high to the extent that the profitability of the company is not correllated to what executives do. But I don’t think boards and stockholders would tolerate executive comp if they didn’t feel they got their money’s worth
Listening to all this mindless chatter about the worthless walmart employees makes my head explode. Apparently all of you have forgotten what union organizing did for the wages and benefits of millions of working class men in the last century. Truck drivers, steve dores, dock men, union laborers, clerks at shipyards, government employees from clerks to the floor sweeper all unionized and no one seems to dispute the value of their work, or the wages and benefits they command. I’ve seen men with a tenth grade education or less be able to retain a job for twenty years and retire with a king’s ransom and no one now blinks an eye, its respectable where eighty years ago these people were the dregs of society. Fact is, service work has always been primarily a part-time or full-time (unfortunate for them) employ of women who haven’t the advantage of society seeing any of their labor compensable. Take also that men could argue that they had to ‘support a family’ the classic working class male mantra, as if somehow women or men stuck in the service class don’t have mouths to feed or similar responsibilities themselves. This is the same thing as complaining about the plight of TV repairmen not being worth much. Why don’t you call up a local shop and take your TV in to be repaired for $500 instead of buying a new set for $350? TV repairmen have long since gone away, so your analogy kind of sucks. And, TV repairmen required at least some training in order to ply their trade and in fact, because was demand was high for their skill, they could indeed earn a decent living. When you shop at Wal-Mart you can approach individual Wal-Mart employees and give them some of your money, for it is you who feels that they are underpaid, not all of the shoppers who appreciate the lower prices, and in this way you can be true to your conviction. Nope, it doesn’t work that way, that’s why we have a tax system that supposedly redistributes wealth in the interest of keeping the living standard above at least some bare minimum. We cannot call ourselves the land of opportunity when their exists a class of people delegated to survive on the streets because they must rely on the good will of the greedy. Keeping the living standard up above a bare minimum at least of meeting basic needs is more likely to allow us to have a more stable society. Such is proven time and again since when the economy goes down, crime goes up. Do we want have the income disparity of a corrupt third world country? Fact is, as Americans we continuously trumpet our superiority and how we’ve finally ‘got it’ as far as basic social justice turned into reality is concerned. Such comments as eeked out above show not only the blithering naivete about economics and the difficulties in living in poverty, but also the fact that many think their existence entails their getting as much as they can for as little as possible, frankly, letting others pay for the ride while they turn up their nose and do nothing. In one way or another, when a society allows a sector of their population to suffer the loss of even the most basic necessities needed for human decency, then how in the hell can we call ourselves a humane society?
Yeah, sure, Amy, Daniel. The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace is going to swoop in and fix everything, magically, because that’s always worked. The problem with CEO compensation is that corporate structures are not well-designed to prevent the abuses that are currently going on. The members of corporate boards of directors are, quite often, CEOs themselves. Most of America’s large corporations have loosely interlocking boards; many American industries have tightly interlocked boards. When boards interlock to that extent (and not just boards, but the social networks of board members), a “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” sort of exchange on compensation committees can make it more profitable for corporate executives to ramp up direct and indirect compensation for each other rather than maximize corporate profits. So: I run Company X. Company X is doing well, and my stock increases in value by 15% per year. I own $1,000,000 worth of stock. Unfortunately, at company X, my salary as CEO is only $200,000 year. I cannot gold plate my showerheads. I am a sad CEO. Fortunately, I sit on the boards of Company Y and Company Z, and CEO Y and CEO Z sit on my board! CEO Y and CEO Z came to my wife’s birthday party this year! They are good friends. So when CEOs Y and Z raise the issue of compensation, I say: let’s pay them $2,000,000 per year, and that’s the way my stock votes. Yay! CEO Y and CEO Z got a raise! They are such hard workers! But, uh oh, that just changed the prevailing wage for CEOs in the industry. I am sad that my board doesn’t want to pay me what I’m worth. So I tell the board that. CEO Y and CEO Z are such good friends! Yay! They say I do as good a job as they do, and should make $2,000,000 per year! Yay! But, uh oh. Some analysts say my board shouldn’t have done that. Analysts are mean. Uh oh. My stock just tanked. I am a sad CEO. I just lost $500,000 worth of stock, and so did my friends Y and Z! But that’s okay! I’m making $2,000,000 now! I can buy all new stock! Twice! And my friends Y and Z are happy! They make $2,000,000 too! They can buy all new stock! I am sad because I have to lay people off, but I am happy because all my showerheads are nice and shiny! — ACS
Nope, it doesn’t work that way, that’s why we have a tax system that supposedly redistributes wealth in the interest of keeping the living standard above at least some bare minimum. We cannot call ourselves the land of opportunity when their exists a class of people delegated to survive on the streets because they must rely on the good will of the greedy. Somehow it’s acceptable to denigrate the roughly 200+ million Americans that don’t belong to this class of individuals as greedy. Bravo.
Nope, it doesn’t work that way, that’s why we have a tax system that supposedly redistributes wealth in the interest of keeping the living standard above at least some bare minimum. Yes, I know it doesn’t work that way. Further, I know that you think that your way is better, you know, the process where people who don’t want to put up their own money, like you, to further their convictions are ready to spend other people’s money to further their convictions. Apparently all of you have forgotten what union organizing did for the wages and benefits of millions of working class men in the last century. No I haven’t forgotten about the effect of unions. Unions are fine in environments which are mostly closed to external competitive effects. As soon as a sector is open to product substitution, international trade, international labor mobility, or to technological substitution for labor, then unions go the way of the Dodo bird, for they become ineffective mechanisms of extracting unearned rent. This is why stevedores are in fine shape, mostly. You can’t outsource your dock to another country – it has to be there, on the shore, next to your city roads and raillines. Of course, as this labor is very expensive the dock managers have powerful incentives to substitute machinary for expensive labor, and they do. This unearned rent that unions extracted on the dockside had a powerful effect on the rise of containerized shipping – presto, no need for dockworkers to unload all of the items for now the containers can be packed by cheaper labor at the factory and then unpacked by cheap labor when the container reaches its destination. The result is a drastic decline in the number of stevedores working compared to 50 years ago. If stevedore wages had been lower, then that would have created a less favorable environment for the innovation of containerized shipping, which if you think about it is a massive undertaking involving the use of specialized vessels, specialized cranes, specialized trucks, etc. government employees from clerks to the floor sweeper all unionized and no one seems to dispute the value of their work, or the wages and benefits they command. I’m really curious what country you live in, for in most of the West, almost everyone disputes the wages of unionized employees who work in protected sectors when the free market wages for their talents are far, far less and in the case of governments the taxpayers have to pay for all the featherbedding for civil servants. TV repairmen have long since gone away, so your analogy kind of sucks. Sure, I can see why if you don’t understand the point of the analogy, why you would think it sucked. Look, if TV repairmen were willing to work for 25 cents per hour then they could provide a valuable service that would undercut the attraction of simply replacing a broken TV set, but when you attach some mystical concept like “living wage” to their work and divorce that concept from market forces, then what you see is that people with those skills can’t produce enough economic value to warrant the wage that they are being paid, and the result is that they need to find something else that they can offer in exchange for a wage. Such comments as eeked out above show not only the blithering naivete about economics Priceless 🙂
Yes, I know it doesn’t work that way. Further, I know that you think that your way is better, you know, the process where people who don’t want to put up their own money, like you, to further their convictions are ready to spend other people’s money to further their convictions. There’s nothing hypocritical about voting and/or agitating for widespread social change that you can’t make much dent in favor of yourself. That’s what governments are for. I don’t shop at Walmart, myself, but I also advocate raising the minimum wage so that the option of exploiting Walmart’s employees is off the table for everyone.
What Kate and Andreas said. My head explodes as well. “some mystical concept like “living wage” Now THAT is priceless. As a great man once said, all this free market crap would be great if we actually had a free market.
Ok Free market store is bad. So what do we name this new store. I know the peoples market. But wait it can’t compete and will go out of business. Solution make all other stores illegal. But wait people will cheat like prohibition on the black market. Solution make private market of any kind punishable by heavy sentences. ( Sadaam Husein cut off the hands of any merchant using dollars) But wait foreign countries will sell better products cheaper. Solution close borders and keep people in captive market…..Hmmm seems I Have heard of this before….
Wal-Mart simply puts a twist on the age-old capitalistic tactic of ripping of the customer. Instead, they rip off their employees.
So what do we name this new store. We’ll call it CostCo. It’ll be in a mythical, far-away land called America. Somehow, they’ll manage to have huge stores like Wal-Mart, pay their employees make an average of $16/hour, and their CEO makes $350,000 a year. $52 billion in profits. 462 stores across the country, and counting. See? It’s not so hard.
What Kate and Andreas said. My head explodes as well. “some mystical concept like “living wage” Now THAT is priceless. I’m just curious. Where, approximately, would you put that living wage? Assume 2,000 working hours a year (40-hour work week, 2 weeks off), and to give you an added benefit, assume that there are no dependents.
We’ll call it CostCo. It’ll be in a mythical, far-away land called America. Somehow, they’ll manage to have huge stores like Wal-Mart, pay their employees make an average of $16/hour, and their CEO makes $350,000 a year. $52 billion in profits. 462 stores across the country, and counting. $52 billion in revenue, not profits.
Yup. Here’s an article with more context. Still, the idea that it’s not a viable business model is just plain wrong.
If you want these low wage people to have all of the items and options you’ve laid out then by all means you’re free to send them as much money as you like. However, most people aren’t too hot on such forms of charity, and think that if people don’t have enough skills to produce economic value then they need to downsize on the quality of their home, food, transportation, clothes, etc so that they can save for trade school. As cynical and cold as it sounds, Walmart, nor any business for that matter, is your daddy. It is not its responsbility to provide healthcare or facilitate a college education. As a business, its only responsibility is to its shareholders. Great. It is, indeed, cynical, cold, and should not be something that’s tolerated if we want to have any kind of society at all. If either of you don’t believe in any kind of social services, then I’m not arguing with you because I have nothing to say to people who believe that the free market can solve everything. If you do believe government should aid its less fortunate citizens: how are these people supposed to be worth more if they can’t become worth more by doing an honest day’s, week’s, month’s, year’s worth of work? What if the only entry-level jobs they can get to are low-paying? If they are mentally disabled and can only work these kind of jobs, do they deserve to live in their vans or rat-infested apartments their whole life? If they’re someone with kids and have to work two jobs to keep those kids similarly rat-infested apartments, is the solution simply that they shouldn’t have had sex, ever, because there was a chance of having kids and they just have to deal with the rest of their life sucking? Why is it it fair that kids grow up in poverty and have their physical development and choices severely limited by it, when they have nothing to do with the talents or marketable skills of their parents? And how low should their standard of living drop in order for you (Amy) to be convinced that they’ve spent their money well and maybe deserve some help? Can they buy a few sodas from the vending machine each month? One soda? Is even one too frivolous an expense? Can they have cable tv? Spend a dollar for a library card? Buy some books? Is that apartment too much of an expense when they could be living in a perfectly nice van? I agree that there’s a practical reason many entry-level low-skilled jobs pay poorly, and that many people of all classes have been known to spend their money in unproductive ways. But I don’t agree that anyone who’s working full-time should just “find another job” if they can’t afford a place to live, because even if they can find another job, there will always be someone working the job they were able to leave.
Well, the poverty level for a single person is roughly $8500. The general figure for a living wage is $8 to $10, which yields about $16,000 to $20,000 a year. Obviously this goes further in certain parts of the country than others. Assuming no dependents doesn’t give me any benefit when most people who are wage earners do have dependents of some kind, whether it’s parents or children or disabled family members. Additionally, there seems to be some assumption that “poverty level” is somehow acceptable. It’s not. Poverty level wages only cover the cost of generic food (including about one meat dish at week, prepared at home) and averge market prices for a one-bedroom apartment. If you want to have transportation of any kind, pay for daycare, pay for medicine or other medical costs, your SOL when you’re in poverty. The idea of a living wage is that people don’t have to sacrifice their health and well-being because they are “low skilled”. I can’t belive I have to explain that to people.
Costco is great. Are their workers just that much more skilled than Wal-Mart’s? For some jobs, maybe. But I don’t think that the people working the mini-food court or the people handing out free samples are worth about twice as much as Wal-Mart’s food court workers and greeters.
I can’t stop. Amy says and I quote: No one is going to pay someone $20 per hour so that the employee can produce $5 per hour in value. So then, you believe that those good ole’ unions are the most productive, paying out an average of $35/hour for anything from street sweeping to line striping on highways? Fact is, the Wal-Mart employees, like other low paying service sector jobs, are highly productive. They must be, no retail establishment is interested in maintaining any low production employee for any rate. Their goal is to maximize as much as possible from their efforts for the maximum gain. That Wal-Mart would prefer to pay its executive staff and shareholders more speaks only of what they are able to get away with, but speaks nothing of their actual productivity of its workforce, which I’d say again, is highly productive. That Wal-Mart and other establishments have a high turnover rate only speaks to this, that workers are pushed until they burnout or reach a crisis that forces their unemployment. That no one here can even demonstrate, save for those who have worked at such a place or lived on such an income, even a shard of comprehension of what poverty is like, speaks volumes and I think cancels out your ability to speak about it all. Also, government subsidies as they are, do little to assist the worker in their daily living needs. Childcare assistance does not pay immediately upon the receipt of services, but often either the client must find a daycare willing to handle the subsidy themselves, or the client must tolerate waiting up to six or more weeks for the paltry reimbursements. By that time, often, childcare is a long gone priviledge and employment is thus destabilized. Never mind that childcare subsidies do not pay the market rate for childcare; another low paying, female oriented sector the job market. Medicaid reimbursements are also difficult in that fewer and fewer medical providers are willing to take the medicaid patients due to the high paperwork requirements and the low return (at least one third market rate). Not to mention that dental and many services which middle class people take for granted and which can easily mark an individual in their class status and thus hamper their hope for upward movement, are not even available. Couple this with the fact that in these families, the workload required to meet living expenses leaves little to no time for child rearing which means the streets replace parental control. How much does it cost for us to pay for juvenile and then adult crime? Add to that that such children have a higher incidence of trouble in school due to no help at home and social ostracization by teachers and peers, who can be surprised that many opt to discontinue their education? And since most decent paying jobs require some acquisition of skills and still to this day, by and large, trade skills are dominated by males, if one is a working class female, the social pressure to conform to a patriarchal norm is greater and thus feeds the cycle of poverty with early pregnancies and marriages and then jobs at Wal-Mart. Making judgement will not solve the problem and it does cost everyone either way. So washing one’s hands and claiming the ‘benefit’ of cheap goods and cheap labor at the hands of the disposables of society makes one complicit in oppression which brings us all down.
I’m not a fan of Wal-Mart, for many, many reasons (the way they treat their employees is on that list) and yet I still end up shopping there, mainly because its awesome being able to buy cereal for $2.50 a box, and $4.00 for two. What can I say? I’m a single-mom, work full-time, don’t qualify for gov’t programs but only barely. I suppose I’d be considered lower middle-class. My grocery budget is static. For some, shopping elsewhere menas that they will end up seeing an increase in their grocery budget. For me, and many others, it just means I will get less of what I need. In terms of cereal, its the difference between second helpings or one bowl each. I don’t at this time have the luxury of boycotting them and spending $4.00 or more for one box of the same cereal at the local grocer. Its damn hard to pass up the prices when the alternative is cutting down on how much food you buy. Or clothes. Or shoes. I take pause everytime I walk into Wal-Mart and know I shouldn’t be there, and yet for the time being its what I can afford.
Jeeze, where do you guys live? $2.50 is about avergage for a name-brand box of cereal in my area – store brand is as little as $1.75.
’m really curious what country you live in, for in most of the West, almost everyone disputes the wages of unionized employees who work in protected sectors when the free market wages for their talents are far, far less and in the case of governments the taxpayers have to pay for all the featherbedding for civil servants. But unions continue and everyone seems to still be enjoying their way of life. The world hasn’t collapsed and frankly, I’d hardly think it the union’s fault if it does. I cannot believe that someone can assume 1) That people work at Wal-Mart or other retail outlets only because they lack skills to do otherwise, when a plethora of factors impacts on people, many of them very skilled and talented, or intelligent with high potential that is wasted for lack of being able to stop one minute from the constant struggle for survival to improve their individual labor value. but when you attach some mystical concept like “living wage” to their work and divorce that concept from market forces, Not once did I say that ‘market forces’ should not come to play or that the government should intervene to command that all people’s attain some imposed wage level. Contrary to that, I support the notion that corporations that take from the community, should put back and not be allowed to expand and exploit at the expense of middle class and working class people, who make up the majority of this country. Fact is, the upper ten percent of the population never suffers the consequences of their actions, by their wealth they are able to insulate themselves and leave the consequences of their irresponsibility and unfettered greed (yes I said it GREED) for everyone else. Whether shouldering the cost of poverty subsidies, the increasing prison population, juvenile crime, they don’t care. They don’t shoulder the burden. The middle class and working class does. Why so many middle class people align themselves with millionaires and billionaires who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about their interests puzzles me. Perhaps some of you could explain how tax give aways to corporations, endless subsidies and obscene executive payrolls serves the interest of regular folk.
That Wal-Mart would prefer to pay its executive staff and shareholders more speaks only of what they are able to get away with, but speaks nothing of their actual productivity of its workforce, which I’d say again, is highly productive. That Wal-Mart and other establishments have a high turnover rate only speaks to this, that workers are pushed until they burnout or reach a crisis that forces their unemployment. A good portion of Wal-Mart’s business success has been due to incredible increases in productivity. A 1995 study put Wal-Mart’s value-per-worker at 40% above the national average, due to just-in-time logistics and oligopsony power. And while I understand that in a company that’s traded in the public market, it should be unreasonable to expect that that productivity gain would return to the workers, it is utterly unethical that, in fact, none of it has. In fact, the labor cram-down has resulted in a net lowering of real wages since 1995.
There’s nothing hypocritical about voting and/or agitating for widespread social change that you can’t make much dent in favor of yourself. No one can make any change alone, we work collectively. The argument that someone should do nothing because in fact their actions mean little more than pushing against the mountain, is at the very least the maximum cop-out. At worst, it is the siren call of those who have little interest in making improvement and see much to lose. Yes, I know it doesn’t work that way. Further, I know that you think that your way is better, you know, the process where people who don’t want to put up their own money, like you, to further their convictions are ready to spend other people’s money to further their convictions. Are you telling me that you hold all the wealth yourself? Is that what you are defending? Is some poor worker going to run you dry? I pay taxes, I buy goods, I work, I vote, so I’m in also. So first, don’t attempt to marginalize or minimize the importance of what I say by saying that a) your point is more important because you [imagine that] you hold all the wealth and someone is taking it away. b) that you have a right to horde your wealth or whatever and think only of your interests and of course, make sure their is a class of people waiting to serve your interests, I assume at someone else’s expense besides yours. Like I said, I pay taxes and I have no problem with putting in my share to make sure we don’t have anyone suffering poverty that we were supposed to think doesn’t exist in a ‘first world’ educated, democracy. Maybe some millionairess will have you over the dinner for your fine support of their lifestyle no?
Does anyone remember those stories a while back about people being payed by companies to chime in on blogs where said companies were criticised?
Does anyone remember those stories a while back about people being payed by companies to chime in on blogs where said companies were criticised? Well, at least we know Amy can’t be making much, right?
No one can make any change alone, we work collectively. The argument that someone should do nothing because in fact their actions mean little more than pushing against the mountain, is at the very least the maximum cop-out. At worst, it is the siren call of those who have little interest in making improvement and see much to lose. Yes, it would be, if that were the argument I was making. Didja see the part where I talked about how I boycott Walmart personally? Individual action is a good thing, but–like you said, because you apparently don’t read too carefully–collective action is much better. One of the ways we act collectively is through the government. That’s why there’s nothing hypocritical about advocating for collective change.
There’s nothing hypocritical about voting and/or agitating for widespread social change that you can’t make much dent in favor of yourself. That’s what governments are for. There is indeed nothing hypocritical about the situation that you’re describing. Let’s take DV for example. It’s fine to affect social change by advocating for the introduction, then stringent enforcement, and lastly widespread cultural adaptation of measures to reduce DV. Further, pursuant to this agenda of social change, it’s fine to advocate for the funding of women’s shelters so that the victims of DV have a place of safe harbor. You’re right that one person alone can’t bring about this degree of social change. However, if I ran across an advocate who was pushing this agenda and purposely made a point of not following the philosophy of anti-DV by beating on their spouse, I’d certainly call such an advocate a hypocrite. Further, if they weren’t donating some money to the cause that they were advocating then there too I would call the person a hypocrite, The situation that I was talking about had people calling for gov’t to spend money on people’s welfare when these advocates are certainly in a position to walk up to a Wal-Mart employee and give them $10 in recognition for the low pay that they receive. These types of people are all happy to have others spend money on their causes but won’t do a damn thing about it themselves. Somehow, they’ll manage to have huge stores like Wal-Mart, pay their employees make an average of $16/hour, and their CEO makes $350,000 a year. $52 billion in profits. 462 stores across the country, and counting. Oh the magic of that word “somehow.” Once the word is invoked then all sorts of issues can be smoothed over. Somehow. What happens though when you stop to take a look at what underlies the magic behind somehow? A typical Wal-Mart store stocks about 100,000 items compared to about 4,000 at Costco. Somehow, when you stop at Costco in search of one of the 96,000 items that it doesn’t stock, then it’s great prices don’t mean much. Further, with fewer items to stock, each employee can be more productive, somehow. Also, when items at Costco are transported through the store, and displayed on pallets, then the productivity of each worker can be increased. Also take a look at Costco store hours compared to Wal-Mart’s hours – being open longer translates into convenience for the customer, but a lower level of operating efficiency for the store. Pop over to your local Costco and see if you can find a store employee to cut you some fabric. Try to buy a single car tire. Try to buy a single can of tomato sauce. The Wal-Mart workflow for processing a can of tomato sauce, in terms of stocking the shelf, ordering the item, and processing it through checkout is the same as what Costco does for a caseload of tomato sauce, yet the profit on the caseload is far greater than on a single can. Lastly, it shouldn’t be too hard to factor out the revenue from what Costco charges for membership. Also consider that those people who buy a membership will be sure to use it so that they get their money’s worth – not like Wal-Mart, where you’re free to walk in and buy whatever you’d like as infrequently as you’d like. Wal-Mart has no mechanism to pull the customer into the store, other than convenience, low prices and large selection. Costco has a captive audience with their membership. It really astounds me that there are people out there who advocate that a low wage earner who shops at Wal-Mart should have to pay higher prices so that Wal-Mart employees can be paid at levels above what they are worth, when it’s likely that the shopper would have income that is less than the proposed inflated Wal-Mart wage.
The situation that I was talking about had people calling for gov’t to spend money on people’s welfare when these advocates are certainly in a position to walk up to a Wal-Mart employee and give them $10 in recognition for the low pay that they receive. These types of people are all happy to have others spend money on their causes but won’t do a damn thing about it themselves. …So because they aren’t putting your pretty goshdarn petty solution in practice–never mind what they might actually be doing to alleviate poverty on a personal level–they’re hypocrites? Right.
Great. It is, indeed, cynical, cold, and should not be something that’s tolerated if we want to have any kind of society at all. If either of you don’t believe in any kind of social services, then I’m not arguing with you because I have nothing to say to people who believe that the free market can solve everything. If you do believe government should aid its less fortunate citizens: how are these people supposed to be worth more if they can’t become worth more by doing an honest day’s, week’s, month’s, year’s worth of work? It’s almost as if you quote me without reading what I actually said. Here it is again: As cynical and cold as it sounds, Walmart, nor any business for that matter, is your daddy. It is not its responsbility to provide healthcare or facilitate a college education. As a business, its only responsibility is to its shareholders. Now, tell me, is Walmart the government, or is it, like i said, a business? Grace: Well, the poverty level for a single person is roughly $8500. The general figure for a living wage is $8 to $10, which yields about $16,000 to $20,000 a year. Obviously this goes further in certain parts of the country than others. The average Walmart wage is $10/hour. How much should it increase to provide a “living wage,” as I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that believes that to be sufficient to fulfill the costs of food, housing, healthcare, etc.
The average Walmart wage is $10/hour. How much should it increase to provide a “living wage,” as I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that believes that to be sufficient to fulfill the costs of food, housing, healthcare, etc. Oh, for fuck’s sake. That figure implies that there are a lot of people at Walmart making less, right? That’s what “average” means: the middle value. In fact, there are a lot of people at Walmart making scarcely more than half of that.
Now, tell me, is Walmart the government, or is it, like i said, a business? It’s a business. I didn’t say it was the government, and I didn’t assume you said it was the government. Be polite. I said that I believe it’s okay for the government to insist that Wal-Mart pay each employee who works full-time a living wage. That’s all.
Do you want to know what the analysts on Wall Street think about Costco? They think they’re squandering higher profits because they “overpay” their employees. There. Any argument you will ever need against Wal-Mart’s blatant abuse of their employees exists within that declaration. If Wal-Mart decided to raise their wages and/or what would happen? 1) Wal-Mart would enjoy a higher employee retention. 2) Wal-Mart customers would have a more enjoyable shopping experience because they’d interact with employees would cared about their jobs. 3) Wal-Mart employees (and their families) would enjoy a better standard of living. Just imagine! The lower-middle class might be able to afford dental insurance and send a kid to college. Oooh… 4) Wal-Mart might actually make a couple billion less dollars in the short run, but since they’d be putting more money in the pockets of millions of their best and closest customers, they’d may actually enjoy their decision in the long run. Is this so bad? These huge corporations are in this endless Goddamn paper chase. It just fucking kills them to give up a few coins from the bottoms of their pockets to help out the working-class. Sure, like their whole goddamn company’ll go down the fucking tubes if Joe Average makes 100 more dollars a week. And people just can’t understand why the rich get richer and poor get poorer. Gee, I wonda why? And I’m not the only one who feels this way. “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” –Theodore Roosevelt
The average Walmart wage is $10/hour. How much should it increase to provide a “living wage,” as I think you’ll be hard pressed to find someone that believes that to be sufficient to fulfill the costs of food, housing, healthcare, etc. Last I heard, it was $13 an hour for a family with one kid. What is more important to ask is what is the minimum living standard required for one to have the resources in time left to rear their children properly and/or gain the additional education or skills needed to compete better in the market place? No one seems to mind agreeing that quality of life starts when one has the spare time available to improve the quality of life for themselves or their children. Nobody minds that is until one brings up poor folks, then suddenly, they aren’t worthy of the investment. Amazing.
1) Wal-Mart would enjoy a higher employee retention. Likely true, but only a benefit if the cost of training new employees is greater than the wage premium you propose. As it is now I would guess that the interview and training processes aren’t too cost intensive. Remember we’re not talking about folks with a lot of skill nor about jobs which demand a lot of skill. 2) Wal-Mart customers would have a more enjoyable shopping experience because they’d interact with employees would cared about their jobs. How do you figure that customer satisfaction increases? I’m plenty happy with the service I receive from Wal-Mart employees. “Somehow” I figure that management gets rid of the surly employees pretty quickly. 3) Wal-Mart employees (and their families) would enjoy a better standard of living. Just imagine! The lower-middle class might be able to afford dental insurance and send a kid to college. Oooh… Yes they would, and contrawise the shoppers who frequent Wal-Mart would suffer a lower standard of living. 4) Wal-Mart might actually make a couple billion less dollars in the short run, but since they’d be putting more money in the pockets of millions of their best and closest customers, they’d may actually enjoy their decision in the long run. Yeah, like I said above, it’s no problem when it’s not your couple of billion dollars that you’re agitating to squander. Why not simply avoid shopping at Wal-Mart or invest your retirement savings in “socially progressive” companies that eschew profit and shareholder dividends, then when you’re old and frail and have no retirement savings maybe you can go and work for some of these “socially progressive” companies, that is if they’re not yet bankrupt. It just fucking kills them to give up a few coins from the bottoms of their pockets to help out the working-class. Would if kill you to give up a few coins from your pocket to every Wal-Mart employee whose path you cross?
“it’s no problem when it’s not your couple of billion dollars that you’re agitating to squander.” So raising wages = squandering money. I get it now.
I’ve noticed that critics of wal-mart tend to simply ignore to issue of lower prices and focus entirely on wal-mart’s treatment of employees. An extra $50 at the end of a month might not seem like a lot to everyone, but it is to someone on a tight budget. I haven’t made up my mind about Wal-Mart for precisely the reason that it is the POOR who benefit most from marginal savings on necessary items (food, clothes, etc.).
2) Wal-Mart customers would have a more enjoyable shopping experience because they’d interact with employees would cared about their jobs. I’m an in-and-out shopper who likes to keep the chit-chat to a minimum. An enjoyable shopping experience, for me, is one where I get in and out with the fewest hassles. Happier employees will only help me if it moves the line, and I’m not sure it will do that much. I’ve worked at several jobs from TacoBell to Software Engineer, and I’ve seen about the same amount of lazy/surly behavior regardless of salary level. Raising pay will provide a temporary boost in morale and behavior, but it rarely lasts long before employees resume their old habits.
What the fuck! Are these some of those paid trolls? I don’t see how anyone can be born that obnoxious.
In my experience, they aren’t even really that inexpensive. They keep saying “low prices, low prices,” but I walk into Walmart and see junk, junk food and stuff that costs the same as anywhere else. Maybe y’all got better Walmarts than we got here. All of those big piles of stuff with the smiley faces and the big price banners just make me feel like I have to buy stuff I really don’t need but might use someday because the “price” is so low. And don’t they intentionally advertise low prices on low quality items because they know when most people get to the store they’ll buy the brand name they’ve heard of once they see the junk up close? The labor practices/China issues are just the icing on the cake for me.
I don’t see how anyone can be born that obnoxious. I agree. When those trolls mix hypocrisy, economic illiteracy and social progressivism they do concoct an obnoxious brew. It is hard to continue reading through their comments.
Funny. A discussion of Wal-Mart on a feminist blog, and — all of the sudden, out of the woodwork — a bunch of free-market crusaders show up. Where did you come from? Why haven’t I seen any of you before? When did Ayn Rand become a feminist author?
Actually, really, I’m not quite done. Though, frankly, I doubt that anything I have to say will make a dent. Wal-Mart is China’s eighth-largest trading partner. This includes nations. While, frankly, don’t care about the xenophobic argument that we’re sending all our manufacturing jobs to other countries, there is a certain amount of irony in free-market crusaders arguing that it’s somehow a huge capitalist coup to harness a command economy in service of providing Americans with cheap consumer goods. The assumption behind that is, of course, that what the American working poor needs are cheap consumer goods, and not things like, say, food, housing, and transportation, which Wal-Mart either does not provide or cannot undersell. This assumption is flatly idiotic. There’re a lot of micro-level arguments to be made about the wages Wal-Mart pays to its workers. This is bad for 1.3 million Americans, and 1.3 million Americans are a lot of Americans, but the microeconomic arguments are really pretty irrelevant. Parts of Wal-Mart’s success have been due to great logistics. Other parts of Wal-Mart’s success have been due to the fact that it doesn’t pay it’s employees for shit. One is a good idea. The other sucks. But that’s not really the problem. The biggest problem is the fact that Wal-Mart is he sole buyer — or the majority buyer — for so many companies. This means that they can set the prices at which they’ll buy to whatever they like. This would normally increase market efficiency, but it’s a shell game like the trick GM pulled by spinning off Delphi: the monopsonic company takes the profits of the dependent company, and the dependent company eventually goes bankrupt, spreading the consequences of its default throughout the rest of the economy. Or, alternatively, Wal-Mart drives the actual manufacturing component overseas. This wouldn’t make so much of a difference if “overseas” weren’t a synonym for “China,” and the value of the yuan weren’t artificially pegged to the American dollar. This doesn’t even mention their abyssmal labor standards, which are important in an entirelly different way. The net effect is reductions in wages across the economy. The reason is their willingness to exploit market inefficiencies, and the government is complicit in allowing them to do so. — ACS
Funny. A discussion of Wal-Mart on a feminist blog, and — all of the sudden, out of the woodwork — a bunch of free-market crusaders show up. Where did you come from? Why haven’t I seen any of you before? When did Ayn Rand become a feminist author? I’ll vouch for Neil. He is not a paid troll, he’s a friend from NYU. The others, I have no idea. But I agree, it is funny that whenever left-leaning blogs talk about certain businesses (Wal-Mart, American Apparel, Budweiser), a few new commenters show up to defend the corporations and call us all stupid and humorless (although to this thread’s credit, I have yet to see the “humorless” accusation). So just out of curiosity, Amy J, how’d you find us?
Funny. A discussion of Wal-Mart on a feminist blog, and — all of the sudden, out of the woodwork — a bunch of free-market crusaders show up. Where did you come from? Why haven’t I seen any of you before? When did Ayn Rand become a feminist author? Though I’m hardly a dues-paying member, it never occurred to me that feminism coincided with anti-free-market crusaders, nor that free-market crusading began with Ayn Rand.
I really really hope Amy J. is being paid to shill for the Satan store. Doing it for free strikes me as the sad waste of a life. My family has run a business for over twenty years where employess are paid a starting wage of double minimum wage, given healthcare (even part-timers) and provided any amount of personal/sick/vacation days that could possible be desired, along with an atmosphere free of racism, sexism and ablism. The company also contributes 10% of all it’s profit to charity. As do many of the employees. Each of the employees will retire with benefits, a pension, and the comraderie formed from working with the same people their whole lives. Our product is competetively priced, obviously, and our ethical business practices are the admirable. Of course, none of us is spending 10 million on our daughter’s sweet 16, or gold-plating our showerheads, but we all get to sleep at night anyway, *somehow*. What is truly funny is that my family is full of un-educated people who pretty much live what people believe is the American Dream – my grandfather left school in 8th grade and became the East Coast CFO for a huge company, my dad’s 2.0 let him barely finish high school yet he has sold several businesses for millions and now teaches a Master’s course at an ivyversity. Someone should tell them he is being paid more than he’s worth as an uneducated lout. Oh yeah, he’s fat too, so let’s just assume it’s cause he’s lazy as well. Somehow despite all their hard work and good fortune, people who actually pull themselves up by their bootstraps (as it were) who have a tiny glimmering of the priviledge they posses in even being allowed to succeed, can actually carry that with them as a business philosophy. Where you mostly hear the argument about “being paid what they are worth” and the word charity being referred to re:wages instead of say, coporate welfare is from a-holes who have never been poor a day in their lives and continue to live as if they priviledge they were born with is the privledge they deserve rather than should earn. This whole pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain BS makes me tired. Simple fact – 99% of employers who have a low retention rate suck as places to work. Thus speaketh myself, who has had over 100 jobs, from CEO PA, to gas station attendant, and, because Im quirky like that, probably both at the same time. Boycott the Satan store!
Jill, EPI recently re-affirmed your impression (via Maxspeak): http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/002321.html Short version: while low prices assist those who make low wages when it comes to staples, a greater percentage of wages is going towards things that walmart does not sell (e.g. housing).
So just out of curiosity, Amy J, how’d you find us? I’m usually a lurker though I did comment on a post once before. The utter presumption of the post, with no commentary, is what struck me, and then the in vogue comments from other commenters inspired me inject some facts and reason into the conversation. I find it extremely funny that people think any dissent to the party line must be the result of paid commenters, like any company would want my unvarnished writing representing them. Don’t you think that they’d have more success with a strategy of coming across as being more diplomatic and try to win dissenters over with politeness and sweetness?
Walmart is a business, but it’s a business comprised of people. As people, we all have a responsibility to the less fortunate. Give me a break from this sanctimoniousness. Every business on the face of the planet is staffed with people, so is every Army and every prison. Simply because they’re staffed with people should each organization abandon its prime purpose and devote itself to serving up charity? Should the soldiers of the Army who are engaged in a firefight, you know, being mean to people, drop their weapons and run towards their enemies so that they can offer a group hug and inquire into the mood and aspirations of the people who are trying to kill them. If you feel you have a responsibility to the less fortunate people, then by all means sell your house and divide the proceeds to these folks. Don’t however presume to tell others where their responsibilities lie for we’re all capable of deciding these issues on our own terms. The biggest problem is the fact that Wal-Mart is he sole buyer — or the majority buyer — for so many companies. My head just wants to explode here. Whose fault is it that these companies can’t find anyone else to buy their products? Wal-Mart’s? Why don’t these companies try sending out sales staff to call on other retailers so that they can diversify their marketing channels?
The article even points out that Wal-Mart’s low prices, and the low wages of its employees, don’t translate into exorbitant gains for shareholders: Wal-Mart’s profits per employee are lower than the economy-wide average. For example, Slate’s owner, the Washington Post Company, makes $19,000 from each employee. Wal-Mart only makes $6,000 from each employee.) I’m not sure comparing retail giant WalMart, which employs well over 1 million people, with a newspaper is valid reasoning. Let alone stating exorbitant gains are thus not being made. And not to mention comparing anything to an economy-wide average is more than just silly, its utterly stupid. Can you tell I hate macroeconomists?
Give me a break from this sanctimoniousness. Every business on the face of the planet is staffed with people, so is every Army and every prison. Simply because they’re staffed with people should each organization abandon its prime purpose and devote itself to serving up charity? Change the words business and organization to corportation and you’re on the right track. Otherwise, transhistorically, businesses were started simply to provide a means for living.
My head just wants to explode here. Whose fault is it that these companies can’t find anyone else to buy their products? Wal-Mart’s? Why don’t these companies try sending out sales staff to call on other retailers so that they can diversify their marketing channels? Look, I just explained oligopsony to you, and you ignored it. The reason that Wal-Mart controls the demand over so many fields is that Wal-Mart controls an incredibly large plurality of retail sales in America, and — for many industries — controls a majority of retail sales. Manufacturers of consumer goods ignore that at their peril. Manufacturers can’t just invent new retailers to sell products to. The reason that sales staff don’t call on other retailers is that the “other retailers” you’re referring to don’t exist. As a businessperson, you’re an idiot if you make a deal with Wal-Mart, but, frankly, you’re even more of an idiot if you don’t make a deal with Wal-Mart. And, again, with this sort of decision, you run into perverse incentives and short-term payoffs. For example: Imagine you are a relatively small supplier. Wal-Mart approaches you with an order that exceeds your capacity. You, being a good business owner, do an economically sensible thing and take out a loan for capital investment. If Wal-Mart has a five year purchase contract, it’s not at all unreasonable to take out a capacity-building ten year loan for slightly more than the contract, in anticipation of the fact that (if your sales are good), you’re likely to have your contract renewed, and — if they’re not — you’re screwed whether or not you decided to take a loan to build capacity. Wal-Mart may demand an exclusivity contract, or at least exclusivity for certain products. But this is your big break! All it does is prevent you from seeking out other purchasers for your goods, or at least to give Wal-Mart a better price than other buyers*. When it’s time for you and Wal-Mart to renegotiate your contract, if you’re a small supplier, Wal-Mart will demand a smaller margin for you. In many cases — say, for instance, the case of the three-dollar Vlasic pickle jar — they may demand a higher margin than the supplier can offer. Wal-Mart is likely to ask you for your private financial records, tell you your margins are too high, and tell you to reduce them. You’re a small supplier. Your loan payment is due. Wal-Mart is 90% — or 50% — or 30% of your business. If that gets cut out, your widget factory is operating at less than capacity. Wal-Mart offers you a deal that may put your margins to very little — or into the negative — but you might be able to make it up in the next fiscal year. Not everything is bad. You’ve still got good growth numbers. You’ve got great sales numbers. In a normal world, your books are reporting that you’re going through a normal period of capital investment that’s eating up your profits, except — if Wal-Mart is your only potential buyer, or has half of your market — you’ll never be able to wield enough market leverage against Wal-Mart to worm your way out from under them. Those growth and sales numbers mean nothing, because — so long as Wal-Mart is cramming your margins down — those numbers are never going to produce profits. And when Wal-Mart decides that your product would make a good loss-leader, your business is utterly fucked. Of course, since stock prices and executive compensation (in the short term) are driven more by instant growth and less by 20-year sustainability, the executives are given a perverse incentive to take an unsustainable but growth-inducing contract over winning small retailers one-by-one. When the cram-down comes, hopefully you’ve already bailed on your company, taken your money, and run — because, once they have you over a barrel, Wal-Mart will decide how much of your profits you get to keep and how much they want on their own. When you go bankrupt, it doesn’t matter to your supplier — it’s the financial services industry that takes the hit, not the buyers. This kind of slash-and-burn capitalism is utterly unsustainable and, even if you’re a die-hard capitalist, indefensible even on capitalist grounds. — ACS
Look, I just explained oligopsony to you, and you ignored it. I ignored it because the issue is irrelevant. An oligopsony arises due to competitive advantage and while it directly affects the supplier-retailer relationship it is immaterial in the retailer-consumer relationship, where the cost savings extracted from the supplier are distributed to the consumer, allowing the consumer to stretch their purchasing dollars. Wal-Mart is simply the intermediary which takes diffuse consumer power and concentrates it via its agency on behalf of the powerless actors in an otherwise oligopilistic framework. If you look at the financial reports of Wal-Mart it is quite clear that they are not reaping the financial benefits of their oligopsony position, therefore the costs savings are being passed through to consumers. I’m curious as to why you think that an oligopoly landscape, where there are many buyers and few sellers, is a more natural and beneficial, outcome?
If you look at the financial reports of Wal-Mart it is quite clear that they are not reaping the financial benefits of their oligopsony position, therefore the costs savings are being passed through to consumers. I’ve seen this argument before. It’s bunk. Comparing profit margins across economic sectors is strictly an apples-and-oranges comparison. Wal-Mart had a 3.6% yearly profit margin in 2005. If we were talking about the biotech industry, sure: that’s shockingly low. But we are talking about retail, and the average net profit margin in retail is 2.4%. That 50% larger profit margin comes from: supplier cram-down, everyday low wages, and awesome logistics. Number three is a business innovation. The other two are simply brute force; a function of size, not of mobility, innovation, or market efficiecny. I’m curious as to why you think that an oligopoly landscape, where there are many buyers and few sellers, is a more natural and beneficial, outcome? This is a false dichotomy. The reason we have anti-trust laws is to keep large corporations from doing exactly what Wal-Mart is doing. Also, there’s plenty of good evidence that oligopsony is a cause of oligopoly, not its opposite. Take a look at radio and record company consolidation: oligopoly power developed in order to ensure equal footing between partners in business deals. — ACS
I’ve seen this argument before. It’s bunk. No, it’s not. Wow, this method of argument by pulling stuff out of our asses is pretty fun. Comparing profit margins across economic sectors is strictly an apples-and-oranges comparison. Where did you pull that from? I never made such an argument. That 50% larger profit margin comes from: supplier cram-down, everyday low wages, and awesome logistics. Number three is a business innovation. The other two are simply brute force; a function of size, not of mobility, innovation, or market efficiecny. You’re ignoring the point that Wal-Mart was not birthed as an oligopsonistic entity, and that it arose in a competitive environment dominated by behemoths like Sears, K-Mart, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, etc. As a small-fry it didn’t have oligopsony power, yet it maintained healthy enough margins, better than it’s competitors, that enabled it’s stock price to grow, which in turn allowed it to continue to expand. It met with success in that it served customer demands and you never saw Wal-Mart erect something like the Sears Tower as a monument to its own glory. Wal-Mart was very cost conscious and this practice allowed more money to flow to profit, rather than to be expensed for rents, corporate travel, windoe displays, etc. It’s quite clear that bashing Wal-Mart has now become as fashionable as bemoaning the exploitation of thirld world labor, and just as in the latter case, any points that veer from the message of compassionate liberalism are ignored. Thirld world labor = bad. No thirld world labor = good. Workers having to prostitute themselves because of losing their jobs due to liberal activists = who cares.
Where did you pull that from? I never made such an argument. Here ya go: Of course Wal-Mart is good for the working class. The article even points out that Wal-Mart’s low prices, and the low wages of its employees, don’t translate into exorbitant gains for shareholders: Wal-Mart’s profits per employee are lower than the economy-wide average. For example, Slate’s owner, the Washington Post Company, makes $19,000 from each employee. Wal-Mart only makes $6,000 from each employee.)
Rather than wallow in your progressive and stale talking points about Wal-Mart operations, why don’t you actually spend a moment and see whether they actually reflect reality. You can find Wal-Mart financial statements here http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/statemnt.asp?Symbol=WMT You can find Sears financial statements here http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/statemnt.asp?Symbol=SHLD A moments examination yields that for every dollar of goods sold, the goods actually cost Wal-Mart 75.43 cents and they only cost Sears 72.28 cents. So right off the top, Sears takes a larger profit on goods than does Wal-Mart. Next up, Wal-Mart pays out 6.15% of its gross profit for Depreciation and Amortization compared to 6.84% for Sears. Sears has more expensive real estate, more expensive store design, more expensive fixtures, etc and consumers are paying for these niceties. Also, Wal-Mart expenses 2.27% of its gross profit as interest expenses compared to 3.95% for Sears. Right there we’ve more than surpassed the 1.2% profit margin difference between the two retailers, and this from a position where Sears has a fatter profit margin within which it can be inefficient.
You’re ignoring the point that Wal-Mart was not birthed as an oligopsonistic entity, and that it arose in a competitive environment dominated by behemoths like Sears, K-Mart, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, etc. As a small-fry it didn’t have oligopsony power, yet it maintained healthy enough margins, better than it’s competitors, that enabled it’s stock price to grow, which in turn allowed it to continue to expand. Uhh, the innovation in manufacturing, shipping, and site-selection logistics Andrea alluded to allowed Wal-Mart to leapfrog that nuisance called competition. In business years, their market dominance practically happened overnight. It’s quite clear that bashing Wal-Mart has now become as fashionable as bemoaning the exploitation of thirld world labor, and just as in the latter case, any points that veer from the message of compassionate liberalism are ignored. Thirld world labor = bad. No thirld world labor = good. Workers having to prostitute themselves because of losing their jobs due to liberal activists = who cares. It’s also quite clear that bashing criticism of Wal-Mart as fashionable is…
Piny, do you know what a profit margin is? Yes, thanks. It covers details like this as well as more general statements, so this qualifies as comparing profit margins between economic sectors.
A moments examination yields that for every dollar of goods sold, the goods actually cost Wal-Mart 75.43 cents and they only cost Sears 72.28 cents. So right off the top, Sears takes a larger profit on goods than does Wal-Mart. Next up, Wal-Mart pays out 6.15% of its gross profit for Depreciation and Amortization compared to 6.84% for Sears. Sears has more expensive real estate, more expensive store design, more expensive fixtures, etc and consumers are paying for these niceties. Also, Wal-Mart expenses 2.27% of its gross profit as interest expenses compared to 3.95% for Sears. Sears is not a discount retailer, as is Wal-Mart. Try again.
Sears is not a discount retailer, as is Wal-Mart. Try again. No problem. Target is a key competitor to Wal-Mart in the discount market. Here is their financial data http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/statemnt.asp?Symbol=TGT Notice that their cost of goods sold is 66.38% thus leaving them a larger gross profit than both Sears and Wal-Mart. They also pay out 7.96% of their gross profit in Depreciation and Amortization and they pay 2.62% of gross profit in Interest expenses. They take a larger slice of profit for every dollar of goods sold and then manage to be less efficient in their execution of business operations than is Wal-Mart. At the end of the day Target nets a profit of 4.25% compared to Wal-Mart’s net profit of 3.6%. And in case Andreas missed it, the “supplier cram-down” that he/she posits is responsible for Wal-Mart’s profits is not captured by the gross margins – the benefit flows entirely to the customer, for Wal-Mart has lower margins than either Sears or Target. So much for that conspiracy theory. It must bother these fashionable progressive activists when reality comes thundering down on their beautifully constructed boogey-men theories.
Yes, thanks. It covers details like this as well as more general statements, so this qualifies as comparing profit margins between economic sectors. I don’t think you do understand. Margin and metrics are not the same thing. A margin will always be a metric, but a metric is not a margin.
You’re ignoring the point that Wal-Mart was not birthed as an oligopsonistic entity, and that it arose in a competitive environment dominated by behemoths like Sears, K-Mart, Woolworths, Montgomery Ward, etc. As a small-fry it didn’t have oligopsony power, yet it maintained healthy enough margins, better than it’s competitors, that enabled it’s stock price to grow, which in turn allowed it to continue to expand. It met with success in that it served customer demands and you never saw Wal-Mart erect something like the Sears Tower as a monument to its own glory. Wal-Mart was very cost conscious and this practice allowed more money to flow to profit, rather than to be expensed for rents, corporate travel, windoe displays, etc. History is nice. I’m not discussing history. I am discussing Wal-Mart’s behavior in the market since it attained the market share that it currently holds, not the logistics innvations that gave it a market share at all. Again: apples and oranges. And I am baffled at why you think that profit and executive compensation is less morally suspect than gold-plated showerheads. — ACS
thus leaving them a larger gross profit than both Sears and Wal-Mart. Gotcha. Wal-Mart’s stated gross profit, for 1/2006, is 76,753 million. That is much smaller than Target’s stated gross profit, for 1/2006, of 17,693 million.
And in case Andreas missed it, the “supplier cram-down” that he/she posits is responsible for Wal-Mart’s profits is not captured by the gross margins – the benefit flows entirely to the customer, for Wal-Mart has lower margins than either Sears or Target. Yeah, except that the benefit — cheap DVD players for people who can’t afford rent — flows to consumers from entrepeneurs and the blue-collar American middle class, and it does so by (1) capitalizing on market inefficiencies caused by China’s iron-fisted control of its monetary policy, and (2) a “slash and burn” attitude toward manufacturers that focuses on tightening the screws and, eventually, screwing the financial sector. This is not sustainable capitalism. And I would remind you, of course, that you are cherry-picking examples from particular competitors to attack an aggregate statistic. This is dishonest citation. — ACS
Does anyone remember those stories a while back about people being payed by companies to chime in on blogs where said companies were criticised? Yep. Experienced it myself with American Apparel. Ironically, the shills’ defense was “Well, we’re better than WALMART!” even though both companies are union-busters. AA is just a hipster version of Big Daddy Corporate Suit. Anyone care to tell me how locking staff in a store, making them work unpaid overtime, and telling them to apply for Medicaid (while the corporation itself avoids paying its fair share of taxes) is legal and ethical conduct? Seriously–making as much money as possible for the executives isn’t a good excuse for this shit. And if you think those workers are worth nothing, are not worthy of decent pay and benefits, I suggest you go without. Since frankly, folks, the same justifications can be made for anyone. Jeez.
Gotcha. Wal-Mart’s stated gross profit, Good eye. You did get me for slipping up on not including the world “margin.” So let me correct my error “thus leaving them a larger gross profit margin than both Sears and Wal-Mart.” Yeah, except that the benefit — cheap DVD players for people who can’t afford rent — flows to consumers from entrepeneurs and the blue-collar American middle class, You could have saved us a lot of back n’ forth by stating at the outset that you believe economies should be run by the dictates of your commands for you know better how the poor unfortunates who can’t afford rent should spend their money, and you know that the welfare of consumers must come after the welfare of entrepreneurs and the blue-collar American middle class, like these categories are all mutually exclusive. The fact that consumers seem to disagree with you as evidenced by their growing patronage of Wal-Mart is of no consequence, for your command economy dictates must take precedence. What a load of hubris you’re dumping here implying that you’re smarter than all of the consumers who patronize Wal-Mart. Frankly I’m not sure who is feeding you your economic theory for you do manage to get some big words and concepts down but you mix them up in the most nuttiest way to further your conspiracy laden progressive agenda. Are you reading some underground press, or worse, Indymedia for your understanding of the world of business and economics?
Honestly, now. It’s not a dichotomy between, say, Third World Labor Good! vs. Third World Labor Bad! It’s disingenuous to present it so. The progressive argument is much simpler: if you’re going to use “Third World” labor, don’t murder their union organizers, force their families into prostitution, make them work more hours than human stamina will allow in order to give them enough money to eat, and let them, I don’t know, take a lunch break now and then. Treat them like the human labor they are. Similarly, it’s not necessarily Wal-Mart Good! vs. Wal-Mart Bad! It’s Dear Wal-Mart, Behave Better. Then again, if you really think that a little extra profit on top is really a much more important goal than obligation to others or helping society as a whole do well, I can’t imagine us agreeing on any other aspect of reality, either.
Seriously–making as much money as possible for the executives isn’t a good excuse for this shit.> It’s because of reasoning like this that I’m confining my comments to this topic, for I find it bothersome that feminism has allowed nut’onomics to be grafted onto itself. As a feminist I’m embarrassed everytime some ill-informed feminist starts spouting off with Greenpeace inspired economic theory. As Neil pointed out with his comment “it never occurred to me that feminism coincided with anti-free-market crusaders.” When someone writes that Wal-Mart’s goal is to make as much money for the executives as is possible then they’re telegraphing that they don’t have the faintest clue about the world of business or economics. Rather than bring disrepute onto feminists why not simply concentrate on issues that we all know more thoroughly and leave the anti-trade, anti-business, anti-commerce, anti-capitalism tirades to the nutcases. Look here for executive compensation for Wal-Mart and for Target http://www.companypay.com/executive/compensation/wal_mart_stores_inc.asp?yr=2005 http://www.companypay.com/executive/compensation/target_corp.asp?yr=2005 Do you see that the executive compensation for both firms is about equal. Do you also see that the compensation is paid out of the gross profit margin, you know, that small sliver that’s left over after the firm pays for the item that it is selling to the consumer. Executive compensation doesn’t come out of the consumer’s share, it comes from the shareholder’s share. Wal-Mart charges the consumer the least amount of mark-up of its competitors.
Good eye. You did get me for slipping up on not including the world “margin.” So let me correct my error “thus leaving them a larger gross profit margin than both Sears and Wal-Mart.” Let me put it another way; Wal-Mart’s gross profit is $59,060 million larger than Target’s. Are you really going to argue they don’t hold sway because their gross profit margin is smaller? Because that is ridiculous .
Yes, Amy, but Target doesn’t treat its workers like shit. And I’m sure you’re aware that there are hundreds of factors that go into a balance sheet and financials, and that profits per worker may not mean anything in the whole grand scheme of things when you have a labor-intensive industry like retail. So, please do spit out your point here.
You could have saved us a lot of back n’ forth by stating at the outset that you believe economies should be run by the dictates of your commands for you know better how the poor unfortunates who can’t afford rent should spend their money, and you know that the welfare of consumers must come after the welfare of entrepreneurs and the blue-collar American middle class, like these categories are all mutually exclusive. The problem isn’t that the poor don’t know how to spend their money. The problem is that Wal-Mart is causing a cross-sector decrease in median wages, and gutting the blue collar middle class. While it’s cool that they’re driving the prices for manufactured goods (their largest price advantage) through the floor, it’s not doing anything about the inflexible costs of rent, health care, and basic services. This is why, for instance, the Weekly Standard suddenly decided that the best metric for poverty was now ownership of manufactured goods. The fact that consumers seem to disagree with you as evidenced by their growing patronage of Wal-Mart is of no consequence, for your command economy dictates must take precedence. What a load of hubris you’re dumping here implying that you’re smarter than all of the consumers who patronize Wal-Mart. Consumers are making a smart decision by patronizing Wal-Mart. Each individual consumer is maximizing his paycheck by patronizing Wal-Mart. I’m not criticizing their decision. I’m criticizing the failure of the government to make Wal-Mart’s labor abuses and exploitation of market failure painful for them. I’m also wondering why you prefer the utilization of China’s command economy to market controls in our own? — ACS
That’s swell, except that Wal-Mart isn’t operating in a free market, what with the subsidies and the anticompetitive practices and the shifting of worker costs such as health care onto the states. You know, a friend of mine worked in a small regional discount retailer in western Mass in the early 90s, when Wal-Mart was just beginning to make inroads into New England. Their strategy was to undercut competitors’ prices for a year or two, ruthlessly, hoping to drive the competitor out of business. Hell, they didn’t care if the store lost money doing it, because the rest of the corporation could support that store, and once the competitor was weakened or killed, they’d just jack their prices again.
Let me put it another way; Wal-Mart’s gross profit is $59,060 million larger than Target’s. Are you really going to argue they don’t hold sway because their gross profit margin is smaller? Because that is ridiculous . It’s no more ridiculous than someone with a $100,000 in their retirement savings account expecting to earn more of a total return than someone with only a $1,000. The net profit for Wal-Mart in 2005 was $11.231 Billion compared to Target’s net profit of $2.408 Billion. What you’re neglecting is that Wal-Mart’s profit was built on an infrastructure that was funded by their investors, who have $53.171 Billion sunk into the company compared to Target’s shareholders who sunk $14.205 Billion into their company. So, for every dollar the shareholders of both companies invested, the Wal-Mart shareholder earned 21 cents compared to the Target shareholder return of 17 cents. Are you prepared to crucify a company because it earns 4 percent more on it’s equity than its major competitor? The aggregate amount of profit is immaterial.
piny said; –like you said, because you apparently don’t read too carefully– I said my head was about to explode didn’t I? Amy J., you will fight to have the last word on this topic, but regardless of your endless justifications and professed knowledge of business, your arguments seem a bit autistic. You still lack the ability to comprehend the human cost of pushing labor compensation lower and lower. This all while the government supports activities and business decisions with further diminish the standard of living for the majority, which frankly, is unjust and unwise. Your arguments never address the moral issue and its import because you obviously cannot grasp it.
Are you prepared to crucify a company because it earns 4 percent more on it’s equity than its major competitor? And that’s relevant to Wal-Mart’s relatively worse treatment of its workers how?
It’s no more ridiculous than someone with a $100,000 in their retirement savings account expecting to earn more of a total return than someone with only a $1,000. But you’re arguing that because that investor has a lower rate of return that that $100,000 is immaterial. Stupid. What you’re neglecting is that Wal-Mart’s profit was built on an infrastructure that was funded by their investors, who have $53.171 Billion sunk into the company compared to Target’s shareholders who sunk $14.205 Billion into their company. So, for every dollar the shareholders of both companies invested, the Wal-Mart shareholder earned 21 cents compared to the Target shareholder return of 17 cents. You’re convoluted logic is making my head spin.
“it never occurred to me that feminism coincided with anti-free-market crusaders.” Marxist feminism anyone?
Ack, I took your argument below to mean that you were pointing out Wal-Mart’s profit is larger than Target’s profit and that is what counts, not the fact that Wal-Mart takes a smaller slice of the consumer dollar to run it’s operation. Is that right? Wal-Mart’s gross profit is $59,060 million larger than Target’s. Are you really going to argue they don’t hold sway because their gross profit margin is smaller? Because that is ridiculous . But you’re arguing that because that investor has a lower rate of return that that $100,000 is immaterial. Stupid. I’m not what you think I’m arguing. Can you take a moment and rephrase this comment because I don’t have a clue what you’re trying to get across. You’re convoluted logic is making my head spin. Let me try this then: It takes money to make money. The shareholders of Wal-Mart have put more money into the company than Target’s shareholders put into Target, therefore the overall profits of Wal-Mart should also be larger. Has that unconvoluted the logic a bit?
Let me step away for a moment. This entire time, I’ve consented to fight Amy J on her own grounds, which is to say “totally amoral capitalism”, but it absolutely beggars reason to argue that paying the poor less is actually good for the poor. If you don’t care about the poor, say so, and we can start an argument about that. — ACS
Ack, I took your argument below to mean that you were pointing out Wal-Mart’s profit is larger than Target’s profit and that is what counts, not the fact that Wal-Mart takes a smaller slice of the consumer dollar to run it’s operation. Is that right? No. My argument, clear enough as it is, is that… oh wait, here is my quote: Uhh, the innovation in manufacturing, shipping, and site-selection logistics Andrea alluded to allowed Wal-Mart to leapfrog that nuisance called competition. In business years, their market dominance practically happened overnight. Let me try this then: It takes money to make money. The shareholders of Wal-Mart have put more money into the company than Target’s shareholders put into Target, therefore the overall profits of Wal-Mart should also be larger. Has that unconvoluted the logic a bit? Uhh. I’m beginning to think you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Uhh. I’m beginning to think you have no idea what you’re talking about. Fine then, I’ll withdraw my gesture of seeking to find a common understanding of some of the concepts we’re talking about here, and just continue to show you up for a fool who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Uhh, the innovation in manufacturing, shipping, and site-selection logistics Andrea alluded to allowed Wal-Mart to leapfrog that nuisance called competition. what with the subsidies and the anticompetitive practices and the shifting of worker costs such as health care onto the states. As I’ve already stated up thread I agreed that the cost shifting is an unfair tactic and should be abolished. I also stated that when this happens the utility of some Wal-Mart employees will fall below the cost needed to keep them employed and they’ll be let go as technological means are brought to bear as a form of substitution. Now the State and its taxpayers will have to find something for these low skilled workers to do so as to get them off welfare. Good for them, but I can see the wisdom of your intent – far better to make innovation illegal and hold all business competitors to the lowest common denominator. Uhh, the innovation in manufacturing, shipping, and site-selection logistics Andrea alluded to allowed Wal-Mart to leapfrog that nuisance called competition. Andreas can you quote to me what text you are basing your summary on?
“seeking to find a common understanding” This tends to be hindered by calling fellow commenters “fool”, “naive”, “illiterate”, etc.
Sorry about the poor pasting job on the last comment. This is the same comment but properly formatted. Uhh. I’m beginning to think you have no idea what you’re talking about. Fine then, I’ll withdraw my gesture of seeking to find a common understanding of some of the concepts we’re talking about here, and just continue to show you up for a fool who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Uhh, the innovation in manufacturing, shipping, and site-selection logistics Andrea alluded to allowed Wal-Mart to leapfrog that nuisance called competition. Good for them, but I can see the wisdom of your intent – far better to make innovation illegal and hold all business competitors to the lowest common denominator. what with the subsidies and the anticompetitive practices and the shifting of worker costs such as health care onto the states. As I’ve already stated up thread I agreed that the cost shifting is an unfair tactic and should be abolished. I also stated that when this happens the utility of some Wal-Mart employees will fall below the cost needed to keep them employed and they’ll be let go as technological means are brought to bear as a form of substitution. Now the State and its taxpayers will have to find something for these low skilled workers to do so as to get them off welfare. but it absolutely beggars reason to argue that paying the poor less is actually good for the poor. Andreas can you quote to me what text you are basing your summary on?
Amy, There are two separate issues here. First: could Wal-Mart raise compensation for low-tier employees, paying for it out of a more flattened compensation scale overall? Second: even if not, could they do it through lowered profits? For various reasons highlighted above, it seems quite likely that low-tier employees could indeed be compensated better without raising prices, through a combination of these things. It’s not clear whether you are claiming that all the employees are in fact being paid their marginal product, but this is almost certainly not true; there is almost certainly some surplus on the table, and if you think bargaining strength has nothing to do with how it gets divided, well, I’m not sure what more to say. Suppose profits are somewhat reduced as a result. Why is this so tragic? You seem to believe a corporation has a moral duty to maximize profits. I would dispute this. Note that very few shareholders actually ‘put money into the company’; most simply bought their shares from others, etc. etc., until we go back in time to early investors who bought them for very much less and have already sold. Moreover, equity investors are hardly guaranteed X level of profit, the way that banks making loans might be said to be. They are simply buying a share of a company. It is true that, were profits to be reduced, the management team would feel a great deal of pressure. Perhaps the shareholders might revolt. But it is clear that these things are all the result of the norms of our society, that have made it reasonable to expect maximization of returns without considering how they are made–and these norms could be otherwise. Perhaps one way of seeing this conversation is as an attempt to change such norms. PLN
Um, actually, I don’t remember much about what I’m actually referring to, because I read it as part of an argument almost a year ago It’s McKinsey’s, et. al’s study of the changes in the sectors experiencing rapid productivity growth between — I think — 1996 and 2004. The gist of it is that while the productivity gains in the mid-90s were due to technology, and in sectors that were rapidly adopting technological solutions, productivity gains between 2000 and 2004 could be traced to just-in-time delivery and other developments in logistics. In any case, it talks about the huge upticks in service industry productivity, and the role of Wal-Mart’s logistics in that. Also: note that, despite the increase in the value of each individual worker, service industry wages actually fell during that period. — ACS
Fine then, I’ll withdraw my gesture of seeking to find a common understanding of some of the concepts we’re talking about here, and just continue to show you up for a fool who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Are you also made of rubber and me glue? And seriously, don’t peddle the bullshit that you’re trying to seek a common understanding. You’re a goon. Note that very few shareholders actually ‘put money into the company’; most simply bought their shares from others, etc. etc., until we go back in time to early investors who bought them for very much less and have already sold. I was going to point this out before I decided to just give up on doing line-item corrections. And seriously, Wal-Mart has been in a constant state of expansion for years now– so of course “gross profit margin” is going to be low. Ignoring that fact and implying shareholders are godly benefactors to the poor is just classic bullshit spin.
It’s not clear whether you are claiming that all the employees are in fact being paid their marginal product, but this is almost certainly not true; there is almost certainly some surplus on the table, and if you think bargaining strength has nothing to do with how it gets divided, well, I’m not sure what more to say. There is marginal product remaining from employee labor but what I’m arguing is that management has a stronger claim to capturing the suplus. If Wal-Mart employees want to unionize then they should be prepared to make the sacrifices that such a decision entails. No one is going to hand them surplus value and a tool that they will likely use to wreck the company by extracting unearned rent, that is value for their labor above that which they can trade in the market. Suppose profits are somewhat reduced as a result. Why is this so tragic? Considering that the largest institutional shareholder of Wal-Mart stock is the California Public Employees’ Retirement System we’d likely see either the retirement contribution limits for Cal. public employees raised, thus lowering their take-home pay, or we’d see their retirement benefits lowered as a result of the compounding effect of lower annual returns to shareholder equity. I’d say the widespread effects are more tragic than the localized effects. Further, the employees are free agents who can find higher paid work elsewhere if they feel that they are undervalued at Wal-Mart. Also: note that, despite the increase in the value of each individual worker, service industry wages actually fell during that period. I think that you’re glossing over the point – the source of the productivity gains was the technological investments, not an enhanced stock of human capital. Therefore, the technology allowed each employee to become more productive rather than, let’s say, employee experience, employee innovation, etc. Thus it is to be expected that the gains from productivity should go to management. Further, as the productivity is apportioned, Wal-Mart likely saw that technology was making a greater contribution to profitability than their employees, so I could see why employee compensation would fall in such an environment. Of course the levels must reach an optimization point for all the technology in the universe won’t work with people behind it, though we can get pretty close like we see in modern “Dark Factories” which have absolutely no humans working within them, though there are company wide service personnel on call.
Note that very few shareholders actually ‘put money into the company’; most simply bought their shares from others, etc. etc., until we go back in time to early investors who bought them for very much less and have already sold. Moreover, equity investors are hardly guaranteed X level of profit, the way that banks making loans might be said to be. They are simply buying a share of a company. If you stop to think about this for a moment you’ll see that it is immaterial. What is the value of your home? Is it what you paid for it years ago, or is it what the market prices it at? If you want to extract value from your home will the bank lend you money only on what you paid for the home years ago, or will they lend you money on what it is worth today? When you insure your home do you value it at what you paid for it years ago, or do you assign a current market value? When you buy a home today that was built 50 years ago, do you argue that you should only pay for the cost of the material that was put into the home back then, or do you accept that you’re paying for current replacement value?
So what you’re saying is that “$53.171 Billion sunk into the company” is immaterial because Wal-Mart’s IPO (which actually only netted $4.5 million) was 36 years ago? Gotcha.
There is marginal product remaining from employee labor but what I’m arguing is that management has a stronger claim to capturing the suplus. If Wal-Mart employees want to unionize then they should be prepared to make the sacrifices that such a decision entails. No one is going to hand them surplus value and a tool that they will likely use to wreck the company by extracting unearned rent, that is value for their labor above that which they can trade in the market. This puzzles me a bit. Where is the moral principle behind this claim? If the idea is that managers, rather than workers, were the driving force behind the productivity, I don’t see why that wouldn’t be incorporated in a principle of the form “pay roughly in proportion to marginal product.” If you have a general dislike of economic rents, does this spread to managerial pay? The wide disparity of CEO pay that is unlinked to performance seems to show that CEOs use their bargaining leverage to extract as much of the surplus as possible, just as unions do. Note that I’m not looking for state interventions or laws to deal with this, though many other commentators probably are; I’m a libertarian. I simply think that we need moral principles and widespread social norms that are able to condemn a manager who sets a payscale that allocates “just enough so they don’t quit” to his underlings, but “as much as I can get away with before the board revolts” to himself. Is this really so farfetched? As an aside–honestly, the argument that everyone who has invested in WalMart will be hurt if its price goes down is really fairly weak; while it shouldn’t be ignored, it applies with equal force to every case where innocent people have their well-being tied to those who are not-so-innocent, and is overridden in most of our social practices (sending lone-providers to jail if they murder, etc., etc.).
Further, the employees are free agents who can find higher paid work elsewhere if they feel that they are undervalued at Wal-Mart. The point is they can’t. When local economies are despressed, manufacturing is moved overseas and local industry bleeds jobs, when they aren’t paid enough to save and move elsewhere or improve their educational credentials, they cannot find work elsewhere to improve their situation. When it’s Wal-Mart or unemployment, it’s pretty easy to choose exploitation over starvation. And it’s pretty easy, when your employee base faces those choices, to choose to continue to exploit them. And kate in #100–I’m not sure ‘autistic’ is a fair way to put it. I know autistic folks with a sense of morality that works just fine in spite of their communicative difficulties. Enshrining maximum profit while utterly disregarding the welfare of others might better be called ‘sociopathic.’
There is marginal product remaining from employee labor but what I’m arguing is that management has a stronger claim to capturing the suplus. Perpetually allocating surplus based on technological advancements, unless those technological advancements involve a direct increase in necessary skills, is idiotic. Plus: who makes the decisions about where to allocate the benefits of a productivity increase? Hint: it starts with ‘m’ and isn’t ‘market’. What are these peoples’ interests and how do they conflict with the interests of the market itself, not to mention the basic principle that wealth should be derived from work? Further, the employees are free agents who can find higher paid work elsewhere if they feel that they are undervalued at Wal-Mart. This is so utterly ignorant of the way the working poor live that I’m not quite sure what to say. But you seem to only respond to economic arguments, so let me make one: The fungibility of unskilled labor is vastly over-rated, and is directly correlated with basic cost-of-living and savings rates. Cost-of-living has gone up, savings rates have gone down, and income volatility has increased. When these things are true, as they currently are, the amount of financial risk involved in switching jobs — and, in the case of the working poor, physical and health risks — is unacceptable. This issue is much more of a problem in rural areas, where the cost of switching a job may also involve household-setup costs. If Wal-Mart employees want to unionize then they should be prepared to make the sacrifices that such a decision entails. No one is going to hand them surplus value and a tool that they will likely use to wreck the company by extracting unearned rent, that is value for their labor above that which they can trade in the market. What’ you’re doing here is arguing against a market inefficiency. If you believe that the market should be left alone, its inefficiencies intact, then the market should be left alone, its inefficiencies intact. If you believe that bargaining from a position of overwhelming strength is unethical, then bargaining from a position of overwhelming strength is unethical.If you’re arguing maximalist positions, you get to pick one: anti-union or pro-monopsony. You don’t get both. — ACS
If the idea is that managers, rather than workers, were the driving force behind the productivity, Let me just tweak that a bit “If the idea is that capital rather than workers” Managers are the allocators of capital provided by shareholders. Their decisions on using capital to increase technological infrastructure is the primary cause of Wal-Mart’s increased productivity per employee. The employees of today can’t lift twice as much weight as the employees of yesterday, nor can they move twice as fast, etc. The wide disparity of CEO pay that is unlinked to performance seems to show that CEOs use their bargaining leverage to extract as much of the surplus as possible, just as unions do. I could quibble with you about how to gauge CEO productivity compared to a stock clerk’s productivity, but I’m not sure that that would lead us very far, for I do agree with you that CEO total compensation is at too high a multiple to other workers in the same firm. However, the funds that are wasted on CEO pay come directly from shareholder returns because most of the pay is in the form of stock options, and all they do is dilute the value of each share outstanding. If you want to argue that the salary component of CEO compensation is too high at $1,200,000 then I’d disagree with you. As to the comparison of bargaining power of CEO compared to unions, have you seen the turnstile to the CEO suite in some companies. CEOs can’t hold a company hostage like a union can. Union power is anti-competitive, whereas CEOs can be dismissed at will. That said, there is a lot to complain about with do-nothing Boards who rubber stamp CEO initiatives. When it’s Wal-Mart or unemployment, it’s pretty easy to choose exploitation over starvation. A wee bit of over dramatization, don’t you think? Starvation? The point here is that most of these jobs at Wal-Mart don’t require much skill, and low skill jobs don’t create a lot of economic value, therefore they don’t pay very well. I’m not minimizing the plight of people who have no marketable skills other than a willingess to show up, do repetitive work, lift boxes, etc, but to give them unearned handouts means that we have to take away through force of law the earned benefits of others, and those others probably would have a use for the money we’re confiscating from them. This is why it is insanity to be encouraging the unskilled from Latin America to migrate here and become citizens – our own low skill citizens can’t earn enough to live comfortably, so why add to the numbers. I simply think that we need moral principles and widespread social norms I think it was Piny who was doing the most effective thing one can to change these social norms – vote with your pcoketbook. Reward the companies that conduct themselves according to the norms that you favor and don’t patronize the companies that violate those same norms. I have no overarching problem with Wal-Mart so I don’t appreciate your norms taking precedence over my norms. If you can get enough people to think like you, and be willing to spend more money elsewhere for the same service that they can get at Wal-Mart, then Wal-Mart will likely respond to you and I’ll be on the outside, with my norms, looking in, and wondering what happened. I’ll have to go along with the majority, just like you should now, for people are indeed voting with the pocketbooks and Wal-Mart is winning their favor.
… This is why it is insanity to be encouraging the unskilled from Latin America to migrate here and become citizens – our own low skill citizens can’t earn enough to live comfortably, so why add to the numbers. That is a truly ignorant thing to say, especially economically, where it has absolutely no relevance. Illegal immigration is a mighty good template for large influxes of low-skilled workers, and even this phenomenon has had little significance in depressing said wages. You know, a friend of mine worked in a small regional discount retailer in western Mass in the early 90s, when Wal-Mart was just beginning to make inroads into New England. Their strategy was to undercut competitors’ prices for a year or two, ruthlessly, hoping to drive the competitor out of business. Hell, they didn’t care if the store lost money doing it, because the rest of the corporation could support that store, and once the competitor was weakened or killed, they’d just jack their prices again. Big whoop. Why is price-undercutting, or dumping exclusive to Walmart? What if that little mom and pop shop was a local wholesaler being driven out by … drumroll … CostCo? The fact is that any firm of a decent size could drive out smaller, less efficiently scaled businesses based solely on their size. Moreso the retail industry, where wholesaling is key. This is all of course ignoring the fact that Walmart’s default price would still undercut that of the smaller store while at the same time maintaining a profit.
Big whoop. Why is price-undercutting, or dumping exclusive to Walmart? What if that little mom and pop shop was a local wholesaler being driven out by … drumroll … CostCo? The fact is that any firm of a decent size could drive out smaller, less efficiently scaled businesses based solely on their size. Moreso the retail industry, where wholesaling is key. Uh, because it’s a deliberate strategy of undercutting, followed by jacking up prices? And, yes, it would be just as sucky if CostCo did it, but CostCo doesn’t, unless you have some evidence to the contrary. More to the point, CostCo isn’t in direct competition with, say, a Hills or a Bradlees, because CostCo is a membership-based warehouse/wholesale club. Not just anyone can walk in off the street and find everything they can find at a Wal-Mart at a CostCo. CostCo’s competitor would be Sam’s Club (or BJ’s), not Wal-Mart.
That is a truly ignorant thing to say, especially economically, where it has absolutely no relevance. No, it’s not an ignorant thing to say, especially economically. Look back at comment #8 where a quote details all of the government benefits that flow to low skill workers. Now take the 12 million illegals in our midst who don’t qualify for those benefits, and then calculate how much additional welfare we’ll be directing at them when they do qualify for the same benefits.
Amy J said: I’m not minimizing the plight of people who have no marketable skills other than a willingess to show up, do repetitive work, lift boxes, etc, but to give them unearned handouts means that we have to take away through force of law the earned benefits of others, and those others probably would have a use for the money we’re confiscating from them. 1) You are techincally correct IF you use the most narrow meaning of “marketable skills” – meaning skills not marketable at a particular time and place. But your language seems to imply a more haughty perspective and makes it sound like you are saying they lack even “potentially marketable” skills (aka. no real skills at all). There is elitism underneath a lot of anti-consumerist/anti-Walmart talking points, but I think I’m seeing some here too. A lot of them are actually educated people who lost better jobs and needed to work there “temporarily” but even that can end up being a few years) to make ends meet. “I think it was Piny who was doing the most effective thing one can to change these social norms – vote with your pcoketbook. Reward the companies that conduct themselves according to the norms that you favor and don’t patronize the companies that violate those same norms.” I agree completely, but this isn’t going to make any impression at all with those motivated by Anti-Consumerism more than concern for the treatment of workers. Except for a small libertarian-oriented fringe, the anti-consumerism movement is largely populated and lead by those inclined to a more collectivist mindset. Arguments like this tend to be casually dismissed with reference to “Externalities” that justify restricting individual choice.
Now take the 12 million illegals in our midst who don’t qualify for those benefits, and then calculate how much additional welfare we’ll be directing at them when they do qualify for the same benefits. The Social Security situation strikes me as much more ridiculous. Frankly this country needs all the new blood, and tax payers, it can get.
Frankly this country needs all the new blood, and tax payers, it can get. How much taxpaying do you think is going on in this scenario? A single mother with two children making $18,000 a year at Wal-Mart gets $4,869 back from the EITC and refundable child tax credits. Her children are probably eligible for Medicaid, either instead of Wal-Mart’s insurance or as a wraparound to pick up the tab for some of her co-payments. In addition, she might get food stamps and housing vouchers, and can send her children to a public school that gets additional funding under Title I. All I’m seeing is subsidies to the horizon. And in terms of the pay as you go SS funding formula how many low skill Mexicans paying into SS is it going to take to fund the retirement benefits of a pharmacist, lawyer, physician, teacher, business executive, etc?
Uh, because it’s a deliberate strategy of undercutting, followed by jacking up prices? In case it wasn’t clear in my previous comment, the sheer size of Walmart is such that it can lower prices while actually maintaining a profit and that this price would still be lower than that of a smaller, less efficient local store. Whether they engage in predatory pricing or not, in the medium to long-run the idea that they exorbitantly “jack up” prices would naturally be remedied by other firms entering the market and engaging in, guess what, undercutting those prices. It’s all a downward spiraling race to the bottom, and the result is lower prices for base goods that are disproportionately burdensome on the poorest in society.
The Social Security situation strikes me as much more ridiculous. Frankly this country needs all the new blood, and tax payers, it can get. Oh, Lord. Are we going to have to get back into why Social Security forecasts are based on abnormally low productivity and immigration projections and why alarmist rhetoric is … alarmist rhetoric?
In case it wasn’t clear in my previous comment, the sheer size of Walmart is such that it can lower prices while actually maintaining a profit and that this price would still be lower than that of a smaller, less efficient local store. This is real deep econ-geekery, but, um, actually, I suspect that a great deal of Wal-Mart’s competitive advantage, and supposed “productivity” gains, would disappear if the Robinson-Patman act had ever been enforced against them.
I still want Amy J, who is at the ready with every figure known to man to defend WalMart to tell us WHAT previous story she posted a comment on. Anticipating her convienantly not remembering, then let her point us to another blog where she has commented before this on some topic. I would also like to point out that she remains suspicious because while Neil seems to be defending certain business principals that Wal-Mart uses, Amy J is not defending business principals so much as she is defending Wal-Mart.
I just want to make the point that in Ireland. We have a minium wage you can actually live on and while american companys cheat with a ‘six months training time’ where they dont have to pay the full amount and have a use people and throw them out policy. You can actually live even on that. Not as well as the minium wage. Not as healthly, but live on. We dont have walmart, we do have macdonalds, burgerking, krc, dell and other poor wage companys.
Now take the 12 million illegals in our midst who don’t qualify for those benefits, and then calculate how much additional welfare we’ll be directing at them when they do qualify for the same benefits. Boy, you don’t know much about the way stuff works, do you? Illegal aliens pay taxes on their wages and pay into Social Security, unless they’re getting paid under the table. They do qualify for some benefits, but generally don’t take advantage of them because a) they don’t know they can or b) they don’t want to draw the attention of la migra.
I just checked, and Amy J never posted a comment here, at least under that name, prior to commenting on this post.
The only time a person is released from their obligation to the underprivileged in their society is when they cease to exist in and benefit from the societal structures that create that underprivileged class. I don’t see why you should expect that others should suffer to keep you comfy and happy. Are you really that important? Let’s see if I got this straight, every intrusive measure that requires compelling people to do something you want them to do is “social responsibility” so I surmise that you’d have absolutely no problem with others, let’s say the Pro-Life people, mandating that pregnant women must continue with their pregnancies because of their “social responsibility” to the present and future citiziens. Fill in the remainder with standard Pro-Life boilerplate. Just as the poor have no personal responsibility, the pregnant women doesn’t either. Just as society must be responsible for the care of the poor, so too must society take over responsibility for pregnant women. If you work to underpay your workers There is no such thing as underpaying workers. No worker is forced at gunpoint to continue in servitude to an employer. If the worker feels that the employer is undervaluing them then they are free to arrange a more beneficial employment contract with another employer, one who will pay them what they are worth. You really have no concept of how other people live, do you? I’ve just explained to you that I personally have experienced extreme poverty. I very much doubt you’ve experienced extreme poverty, for I’ve seen extreme poverty when I worked in Africa. There’s nothing approaching extreme poverty anywhere in the US. Boy, you don’t know much about the way stuff works, do you? Illegal aliens pay taxes on their wages and pay into Social Security, unless they’re getting paid under the table. They do qualify for some benefits, but generally don’t take advantage of them because a) they don’t know they can or b) they don’t want to draw the attention of la migra You missed by a country mile. Take a moment and actually read what I wrote and then your response could be focused on what happens to the eligibility of illegals when they become legalized. Qualifiying for the EITC is just the least of the subsidies that we’ll have to finance.
Amy, you keep talking about “we” and “us,” but I can see that you’re not posting from the US. Care to explain that?
Amy, you keep talking about “we” and “us,” but I can see that you’re not posting from the US. Care to explain that? Maybe she lives and works outside the U.S. temporarily, much like Jill does. Maybe she’s an ex-pat, like you plan to become. Or maybe, this ad hominem is the best you can come up with after 136 comments.
Care to explain that? You really should refrain from feeding red meat to your conspiracy minded trolls, for it’s likely beyond their ability to imagine mundane things like travel. I do however see your strategy of focusing on the trivial when the alternative is to admit that you encourage the grafting of nut’onomics onto feminism. I’d be ashamed of that position too.
Shankar, did I ask you? I did not. So put a sock in it. I’m asking for clarification from Amy, which she appears disinclined to provide. Instead, she’s just vomiting up more bullshit.
Take a moment and actually read what I wrote and then your response could be focused on what happens to the eligibility of illegals when they become legalized. If, when. Let’s focus on the fact that they’re currently putting more into the system than they take out, given that they pay taxes but tend not to file returns or collect benefits. Do you have an answer for that?
Do you have an answer for that? I sure do, and that’s quite surprising for being a gosh darned four-in-ore who knows nothing about Amerika. Read up some on the US-Mexico Totalization Treaty http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/WaysMeansmexicofacts.pdf Where, even with ratification of the treaty, all of the contributions of illegals, even those made under fake names, are recorded and will be claimable when the the illegal becomes a permanent resident. With the ratified treaty, they can claim life-time benefits after contributing for only 6 quarters, even if they move back to Mexico. You’ve really boxed yourself into a corner here, for the only advantage you can point to is the financial benefit to US taxpayers by keeping the illegals illegal and thus unable to make claims against their FICA contributions. Once they become legalized then all of those unclaimed contributions that have been contributed become claimable.
Shankar, did I ask you? In all fairness and not b/c I have a crush on anoushka shankar, zuzu, this is a comments section, anyone can jump in. if you didn’t want shankar to answer you could have emailed amy directly. i love you shankar (anoushka). i do think amy’s libertarian point of view has to be addressed.
If, when. Let’s focus on the fact that they’re currently putting more into the system than they take out, given that they pay taxes but tend not to file returns or collect benefits. Do you have an answer for that? I have an answer. Returns and benefits provided by the government are not all perfectly discriminatory, that is, you cannot provide a benefit to one person and not provide it to another (public vs. private goods). Prime examples are police and fire protection, air quality, clean water, and, guess what, public school education. Though they are not eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, they are able to receive, for instance, free treatment at emergency rooms, much like anyone else, while simulatenously dodging state and federal taxes. Even the payment of payroll taxes is wholly incomplete, as it assumes that one is not being paid in cash, which is not wholly outside the bound of reason for people that wish to go undetected.
Again, Amy, you’re talking about a future event that may or may not happen. Why don’t you deal with the here and now? Hey, you’re the one who whined about illegal aliens being such a drain on the economy, yet all you can come up with that someday-maybe-possibly-conditionally they might actually get to collect on the benefits they’ve been paying into the system for all those years. You know, like everyone else.
Just thought that I’d also mention that the title of this post was “Is Wal-Mart Good for the Working Class?,” and that, unless working class is redefined solely as a million or so individuals out of almost 150 million people that work every day, this is a no-brainer. The gains to the gainers by way of lower prices more than outnumbers the losses to the losers, which are in the form of relatively lower wages (even though Walmart’s average wage just happens to exactly be the retail industry average, as is their provision of health benefits).
Maybe she lives and works outside the U.S. temporarily, much like Jill does. Maybe she’s an ex-pat, like you plan to become. Or maybe she’s using anonymizing software to mask where she’s posting from. I do that on a fairly regular basis when I’m posting from work, because otherwise my work isp, complete with company name, is clear to the blog owner. Tor is very easy to use and makes it look like I’m posting from somewhere in Central Europe. Not to get all conspiracy theorist or anything…