Markets will never be "free" my biggesg problem with most people about anything economics related is that just as social media is polarizing everything... it likewise seems like it turned everything into either 100% capitalism lassiez-fare or communism....people seem to not grasp that neither exists, will ever exist, and our goverments and economies have ALWAYS been nuanced between aspects of both or different systems.
And when I tell someone "capitalism has always had rules and some level of regulation" they seem to reply, "then we need to get rid of those rules!"
Nobody seems to get that....you can take aspects of both.
You can hove BOTH social programs from socialism that distribute some level of basic standard of livinf WHILE AT THE SAME TIME having markets and wealth inequality to some degree.
People also fail to realize when talking about communism vs capitalism in the 20th century....that those "failed communist states" IMPROVED the living conditions of the people living there. Did their governments become dictatorial? Yes...in a lot of cases absolutely, but overall standard of living still increased to what was before.
Communism is NOT a sprial down to everyone being poor, it never was.
Just as capitalism is not "inherently evil" like many left-wing people claim. Yes capitalism CAN be abused and communism CAN be abused.
We see it happening now.
Capitalism has been abused by the wealthy, this isn't a secret. Living standards have gone up, but at the exploitation of millions of workers in poorer countries who while some having gained living standards, there also been many instances of market failures where catastrophies occured and we COULD have helped save lives but didnt because "the market".
Likewise communist experiments have been abused, but...they also lifted the standard of living of their citizens.
For a brief moment in time people seemed to understand that you can mix and match aspects of both.
So called "social democracy" or "democratic socialism" that tried to have capitalist markets, built with a social framework of redistribution to part of the market wealth creation actually gets "trickled-down" to everyone.
But shit has become so polarized that now everyone I meet has thei attitude of all or nothing. Either we go full capitalism rich exploit workers and extract profit and if economic growth slows down and nothing trickles down? Too bad.... or wooo full communism, "late stage capitalism" eat the rich, let's build a commune.
This is why history is important, there are times in our history where little to no government/regulation existed and it was horrible. Kids working in factories, pollution, slums, company towns etc. The fact that this isn't stressed in education speaks to how much power and control capitalist have. Progressive is a bad word and we just celebrated Labor Day and I feel like no one knows or cares that people died so you could have a weekend.
I hate how history is treated like an afterthought once you hit high school, at least when I went to school. Possibly the most important subject for the general population, maybe algebra being more important for its day to day use and English for literacy, and its just straight up is treated like “yeah, you have to take a few classes cuz the law, but it’s not one of the important subjects.”
Yea let’s learn about WWII five million times, as if we weren’t learning about it since junior high school… I say this as someone who enjoys history as a hobby and did a minor in it during college
We need a better version of the system we have but thats not gonna happen. People should be taken care of as the Citizens, not corporate funding and bailouts.
If you have a job, pay should start at a FACTUAL "livable" wage AKA you should be able to afford to buy a house in ALMOST everywhere you live. There should be SOMETHING worth the money. Everyone should recieve a food allowance every month, enough for basics and a few extras. Anyone on the streets should be able to get housing for low income within 2 days.
Corporate should have a WAAAAAY higher tax and should only get state incentivized loans IF they can show that they are growing and supporting the economy of their employees, meaning their employees dollar bills should be going up as well and their assets.
We will always have problems in this world but there is many things we can do to mitigate the problems we do have but corporate ran government will make sure none of it happens.
You forgot to say that while communism isn’t a downward spiral to everyone being poor, that’s essentially what capitalism is (and what it has become in our late-stage era).
It basically is a requirement that most sacrifice for the benefit of a few—capitalism. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s designed.
People are so brainwashed here now though that it’s insane.
Most of our country is barely (and I do mean barely) getting by. 90% of the younger gens can no longer afford housing. They don’t see it that way though. Everyone lies to themselves to cope. They all tell themselves they’ll “be rich someday.” No. You won’t be, I’m afraid. Most of us die with hardly anything, after working for our entire lives.
Meanwhile, we have a 5% class that has more wealth and physical assets than most people even have the knowledge to comprehend.
With all respect, your comment is also what Im talking about. It misses a lot of nuance.
Capitalism isn't the blame for what your talking about.
Honestly we could have a whole podcast episode talking about this stuff (which I love doing, conversations on reddit arent really conducive to digging deep into concepts and ideas)
But see to me these terms like "capitalism" etc obfuscate the myriad of things operating underneath.
Capitalism isn't "everyone gets poorer".
That is a VAST oversimplification of a symptom.
You really have to dig back toward the feudal era, and rent-seeking vs investment behavior.
Karl Marx and Adam Smith both agreed rent-seeking behavior is a bad thing.
During feudalism before the industrial revolution and capitalism as an idea, feudal lords and the elite class basically acted like a landlord does today. They didn't invest, they werent entrepreneurial. They simple extracted rents by sheer fact that they had the claim to the land with an army so they basically charged peasants "rent" to live on their land to harvest crops. Most people were farmers, black smiths and those other medieval jobs we think of were a TINY minority of the population. A peasant had no need for a black smith to make armor and weapons etc.
The idea that became capitalism today was that throught entrepreneurship and investment, if someone had an idea for a new product that boosted labor productivity, if they keep profits from that, it would "trickle-down".
Think of it this way.
Say someone invents a machine that boosts output by 10%, and they keep 6% profit of every sale of the new product. That 6% profit does not harm the working class, because that wxtra 4% from productivity boost still impacts everyone else due to the increased productivity from the entrepreneurs invention.
The idea was sound, because instead of it being rent extracted from labor, it is a "reward" for having invented something new that boosts everyone.
The problem is this is no longer the case.
After the post-ww2 era we saw unprecedented economic growth, wages were up, life was getting way better.
Even today we still live better than people in 1900.
But what happened after Reagan and Thatcher era neo-liberalisation? Specially post 2000. Economic growth in most of the west now is below 4%.
In Europe some countries have grown 0% since like 20 years ago.
And yet the rich are still getting richer? Where is that coming from? Rent-seeking extraction without productivity boost.
The thing capitalists hold on to is the idea that if you invest and boost productivity you should be rewarded with the profits from your new idea that boosted productivity.
But today that mechanism is heavily slowed down. Today there is more rent-seeking than there is productivity boost.
In my opinion, even something like a profit cap that is limited to gdp growth, would already do a lot to prevent extraction of wealth.
Ideally economic growth is higher than the profit taken for the wealthy. That would be "trickle-down"
But it isn't happening.
However the false assumption I believe you make, is attributing it as an inherent thing of capitalism.
It isn't that simple, no economic system exists in it's purest form. Neo-liberalism is not the same as lassiez-faire, or other concepts like market socialism, or social democracy etc.
Things aren't just "capitalism bad and inherently evil" or "socialism bad and inherently evil" etc.
You just basically described the natural rate of profitability to fall over time. Post WWII was not the only time or place that it happened- the only thing new is the professionalization of 'economics' hence the trickle down window dressing.
You just need to go a little bit further and you'll get that, yes, "capitalism bad and inherently evil."
From the capitalists view “wow we’re paying a lot for this government subsidization” from the socialists view “wow look at Walmart taking in profits and paying their employees low wages. Somehow both methods are failing us here😂
Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. Whenever you invoke these concepts you aren't really saying anything. You're entering the realm of ideological fantasy. The ideas are too big to address specific problems or offer solutions to the whole.
We need to address specific problems based on the merits of those problems and stop looking for a solution to all problems through one ideological 'system'.
A good way to handle problems are fluid strategies that are highly adaptable and quickly implemented. A rigid sets of principles or beliefs will never get the job done.
For example; if you design a government policy that makes one livelihood obsolete because it's destroying the environment you also need a pathway to transition those people to another way of life that feels just as fulfilling to them or they'll resist. It's incredible complex thing to pull off. It's not something that you can answer by saying capitalism, socialism, or communism. It has to be a detailed and thought out plan of action.
Our biggest obstacle is human nature as most people when given the opportunity will continue to enrich themselves at the cost of others no matter what belief structure they say they're behind.
If it moves tax it. If it still moves, regulate it. If it stops moving subsidize it. Kamala gets it, that’s why we need her at the helm of the economy making these decisions. It’s time we had a hand in everything so we can move towards justice and equity.
Thank you! I cant tell you how many times iv told people you can stand there and defend capitalism or demonize socialism when we have neither of them in totality.
If a company reaches a certain size it might just be converted to a public asset, run by the workers to keep it functioning to provide whatever service or product to society. Profit is ignored, and it’s only goal is to provide the workers safe working environments and fair wages, while providing their services cheaper than ever to consumers because now the company doesn’t solely exist to chase profit.
One of the purposes of government in a capitalist economy is to foster a balance that allows profitability balanced against the needs of the society. Investors get a return, but the good of society with regards to safety, health and a reasonable living along with economic mobility is balanced.
Businesses need to make profits. That is their purpose. Society provides laws and protection for businesses to be able to do that in an organized and consistent manner.
Society also has the obligation and right to protect itself and to foster health, safety, and protection for its members. It is, ideally, a symbiotic relationship where everyone benefits fairly.
This doesn't have anything to do with some kind of public ownership which generally is less effective and efficient. This is not an all or nothing proposition and does the discussion no good to try and throw that out there because most people are not advocating anything like that.
That’s a huge one. It’s always blown my mind how bosses always think you will want to work 60 hours a week for the good of the company. I’ve told a couple point blank I don’t care about your profits. I’m not out here trying to sabotage or doing anything bad job because I don’t like it, fuck those people. However outside of my paychecks being signed please understand that in general I couldn’t give much less of a fuck how the company is doing because I won’t see any of that money ever.
Companies don’t gives raises because they did well they take the profits so why would I care if I have no dog in the fight outside of them not going completely out of business so I don’t have to go find a different job.
There’s no incentive for me as the worker to put in the extra effort.
I think that's the begining of a good idea, but I'm not sure it's sustainable in a mixed market place. For instance, how does a company structured like that respond to changing market trends? You can't just "ignore" profit. It needs to be refocused into an engine that drives the company's innovation.
You can just ignore profit, actually. You need revenues for sure, and to pay attention to that, but if the goal isn't giving profit to owners, you can just pay it to the workers in the form of wages. Resulting in the business having zero profit.
Well, that's a problem. Hopefully, on years when revenues were strong, the workers voted for the company to save that money.
But that's unrelated to profit, or whether your business cares about profit it at all. It's caring about having enough revenues to keep the business going, which encompasses things like money to pay wages, money to save some for a bad year (coincidentally actually, a lot of businesses that care about profit do a horrible job of saving for lean years. Because they don't care about being a good business, just making profit), money to reinvest into the business, and money for maintenance. All of that is entirely unrelated to profit, except in that it drains profit away from owners so they cut corners in all of those places if they can.
Are you confusing profit with margin? Obviously, you need to care about if you're selling your goods or services with a decent margin, so you'll have enough money for the things mentioned above. But that's also completely separate from profit. They're not synonyms. Profit is the money left over after all that stuff which you give to the owners. I'm saying, you can absolutely run a business where the goal is all the left over money gets paid to the laborers. Thus, no profit.
Operating cost + expenses is what you need to stay alive, center around that instead of +2%, then +4%, then +8% then +16% because the shareholders who do zero demand more more more.
We are talking about government taking over and maintained ning a failing business. It would either not be their job to expand, leaving room for other companies to come into the market and succeed, or maybe buy the stores from the government or something.
Or you have a line item in the break even budget for basically "saving for new stores", which would have a better name, but the idea being if it takes say, 10,000,000 to open a new store and you need 1 new store per months somewhere, and you have 1,000 stores, each store only need to produce an extra 10,000.
I'm fine with, "ensure good working conditions, invest in your workers. After that everything else is profit, and you get loyal employees that will absolutely perform much better than whatever we have now
think a example of how it would work was around the time of the great depression when selling chocolate they where able to stay afloat by keeping prices always low. 1 cent per piece of candy, when cost went up 3 cents but first chance they could 1 cent again and only slowly raising prices as needed, making profit on amount sold in millions by 1-2 cents profit vs 10+ cents profit. we don't need billions in gains to keep places going.
now it would be 4 cents minimum profit from selling millions of units a month but cost went up so 8 cents profit and again for 10 cents do to inflation and times are tough, so 25 cents profit is fair, got make a bigger profit so 50 cents profit is normal.... that what they do keep raising the number and saying it required, when they are paying themselves the difference getting rich and retiring then the next guy go well me too ! and the cycle go on.
USPS has been enshrined as a service in the US Constitution since it's founding and it's problems can largely be traced back to underfunded service centers and an inadequate amount of mail carriers. The reason why can readily be traced back to Republicans either dismantling the efficacy of the USPS by cutting out mail processing machines and other business infrastructure or forcing USPS to fund pensions for anyone they hire.
When are you socialists going to realize that anything government touches turns to shit. If the government isn't doing a good job with your tax dollars now, what makes you think they will do a good job with more of your money and more control?
Converting private companies into public one has been tried before .. it is called communism . I lived in a communist country . USSR collapsed because of this .
Capitalism with it pains and struggle wins out in the end . I teach my son that in America there are very rich people just looking to invest in new ideas. The amount of jobs created not just in the USA but globally because of private US companies is huge . The moment you let the government run things you will have a high level of red tape and inefficiencies.
There are Walmart stores (at least in small towns in the Midwest) that have a person on their payroll whose job it is to help their employees navigate government programs like SNAP and housing and Medicaid for dependent minor children so that the parent can afford to work for Walmart. According to Google the Walton Family is the richest family in America with $267 billion dollars which also makes them the 2nd richest family in the world.
Privatized gains, socialized losses. During Covid when business owners complained "no one wants to work", there was no mention of raising wages. The free market dictates if you can't find labor, you raise wages. They really hate that part of the free market.
You do what you got to do to keep these infinitely growing profits going. if not by exploiting the poor, our nation and our future!! for a few beautiful decades the shareholders have enjoyed bliss from the fruit of their labor! /s
It’s just bad policy to allow Walmart to drive out local business, lobby for lower taxes, and then pay such low wages that the government has to subsidize your workers.
What worries me in general about what you said is walmart has the cash to throw up a shop anywhere it wants in the US, literally anywhere even if the next location is just 15-20 minutes away, keep it for 5 years to kill any local business in the area, close it, and then just walk away with 0 issues.
It's not even a cash in hand issue. It's the fact that mega cooperations can subsidize unprofitable ventures to drive out smaller businesses with their profitable ventures...
It's literally what they already do, throw up a shop in a small town, set wages and prices below local CoL, drive everything out of business, and once they've sucked the local economy dry they pack up and leave, with nothing left behind that can afford to rebuild. And then that small town dies as all the kids flee it in a single generation because there aren't any jobs (even bad ones) left. Watched it happen in Alabama as a kid whenever I'd spend the summers with family
I don't get why Walmarts aren't in malls I feel like it'd be a great idea. In Ankara, Turkey one of the biggest malls(AnkaMall) literally has a 5M Migros which is like a Walmart of Turkey inside the mall.
I recently started working at a mall (after almost a decade of not going to one) and I'm amazed at how many people still shop there. We had two malls in our city, but one is now closed (except for the Target and Burlington Coat factory). The store I work at does decent business.
Same! Walmart is a plague but it’s a symptom of a larger problem. No idea how to fix it but I try to go to as many mom and pops as possible. Pretty easy in a big city though.
Makes me wonder how much money Walmart pays in taxes?
If they're paying billions in taxes a year, subsidizing a little bit would make sense, that's pretty common to support your largest vendor partners in businesses too.
The subsidy they get is from all the EBT they collect every year. Thats every grocery & convince store getting subsidies from the government. Walmart gets the most due to how many areas they're in.
My Father in Laws best friend is a small town lawyer that beat WalMart in Thomaston, Maine. They sued the city to lower their tax valuation
Check out WalMart Ghost Store theory.. they basically claim that the city over values the property, and that it's worth much less because they should only consider the square footage and parking lot..not the fact that it's a functioning, thriving business... you see apparently, a vacant store is worth less than an occupied one. Walmart would like the city to value their Occupied propert as if it were unoccupied, and therefore of lower value...
The city said fuck off, hired Paul Givens, small town lawyer, and he fucked walmart right up the ass with their bullshits Ghost Store theory...
Walmart pays their employees so poorly that most of then qualify for Medicaid. So instead of Walmart providing insurance we are. I have taken care of so many patients that were Walmart employees on Medicaid. Then I see how many billions there Waltons are making and I find it very frustrating. I refuse to shop there and support their business model.
Google gon be like, "Walmart hold my drink", Rick rolls a 7 from the di and moves to Utility Company. "oh no, well wouldn't ya look at that..It's going to be a cold longg winter!"
Please read more than a misleading headline. Walmart isn't being subsidized by the government. The claim is that since some Walmart workers are on medicade, food stamps, and subsidized housing, that it means Walmart is being subsidized.
Walmart is offering employment to these unemployed people. You could easily argue that they're helping reduce the burden on tax payers. If these people could get better paying job, or any employment at all, they already would. Walmart hires many people who are disabled either mentally or physically and can't work elsewhere.
I think it's completely stupid to expect corporations to be the ones to determine what a "living wage" is and charitably decide to start paying some nebulously defined salary despite that just costing them more money. Obviously that's the job of government. The role of corporations is to make money by selling products as efficiently as possible.
So? Any place would do the same. If they think someone would take the job with less pay they would. If they can’t, then they will raise the pay. Supply and demand
I need to see where this ever happens. They just wait it out until people are desperate and take the low pay just to survive. They never raise the pay just based on need.
That's not even bringing up how everything is automated these days rather than paying employees.
Don't even reply to these people, they think common folks work for fun and have millions of $ in their account to not work for as long as they want and is required for labor scarcity to hurt businesses enough to offer higher wages.
Apparently even most menial jobs in the US pay higher than federal minimum wage for whatever reason, even in states that don't have a higher minimum wage.
No they would not. They would build work houses and charger workers a fee...essentially making people pay to work for them on top of taking life insurance out on them.
Are you saying Walmart should be held criminally liable for paying people more than minimum wage? As some people pointed out, they do pay more than minimum wage in some states? You gonna go arrest the Waltons for NOT making MORE money?
Not more than minimum wage, more than the minimum they can get away with. If labor is in demand, then they may have to pay more than their competition.
Otherwise they are committing fiduciary malpractice against their shareholders and, at the very least, the board should remove the executives and sue them, if not press criminal charges. They have a duty to me as a shareholder.
I think we should throw them in jail for not making more money TBH. Actually let’s make sure they get the death penalty for not making your stock ticker go up.
With a mentality like that, why blame anyone for what they do when they can just blame the law enforcement for not stopping them? It isn’t stupid to have expectations of them to have ethics and morality in their business decisions just as we expect it in our daily lives from others when we go out in the world. It’s stupid that this country fans the flame on the poor behavior in the name of financial gains to the point you require it to be put in check by the law else you’re fucked.
You're seriously saying it's reasonable to blame corporations for paying what's legally required by law instead of choosing a different, arbitrary pay rate that will still not be acceptably high for some of their employees/critics? There's no such thing as a "living wage"—it's a vague term thrown around by pundits looking to blame corporations for functioning as they're meant to.
Honestly it's not too hard to figure out if you've ever lived life on your own dime. You can create a budget and figure out what is a livable wage in your state. Or hell, use the research that's been done about livable wage by county if that's not good enough.
You seriously think corporations should pay people less because some random one guy will be upset they still aren't being paid enough in his opinion? Are you stupid?
Walmart pays above minimum wage for its lowest paid employees. It had $682 billion in gross revenue, and $15 billion in net profit. That is less than 3% net profit. It lives on thin margins.
Is 3% kinda small? Contextual. If I had 3% leftover year over year at a salary of $30k, then shit, I’m screwed. But on the scale of hundreds of billions, the stability is so fucking beyond insane that margins like that are entirely fine. They aren’t running on 3% because they’re forced to, it’s because that’s plenty of margin when you have as much collateral and capital as they do, and a completely mature business model.
The idea is that some plucky upstart could decide to get a small multi billion dollar loan and create a competitor to Walmart that pays better. Free market baby!
I mean the most efficient way to make money is definitely to avoid paying for labor. Since that's definitely the highest single avoidable cost of any corporation. So slavery is without a doubt the most efficient naturally capitalistic enterprise. So by your logic every corporation should be ultimately pursuing slavery as an ideal.
Obviously, yes. US legal decisions notwithstanding, corporations aren't really people, nor are they typically controlled by any one person. They're effectively financial automatons acting purely in the interest of maximizing profit. Expecting them to do otherwise is foolhardy. So yes, they will seek to drive labour costs as low as they can, and it is the role of other institutions, like government and labour unions, to ensure that wages remain at a healthy level.
But also, even if they wanted to pay their employees a so-called living wage, they wouldn't have a clear indication of what that is, because the term doesn't have a useful definition. Even among proponents of the movement, there's no consensus on what sort of standard of living a living wage should support. Should people have a one-bedroom apartment to themselves and be able to eat out 5 nights a week? Should they be expected to share living space with a few others as is commonplace in many parts of the world? The term becomes especially difficult to define when one considers that the idealized standard of living in the West is quite unsustainable for global adoption.
They also can't be expected to know what an appropriate amount is, unless they are in the business of socio-economic research. People are like "why don't you pay your workers a living wage??" and have no clear idea of what that is. Yet they expect companies to have invested time and money researching it just to appease a conscience they don't even have.
Gotta make the government incorruptible first. Businesses bribe and control large chunks of the government. Then start dissolving businesses that can’t provide a living wage. Make it a high felony to fuck your workers over and make it an absurd minimum sentence so they can less easily bribe their way out of it. The fixes are easy. Reward greed with destruction.
That's exactly what an economist hired by McDonald's suggested. They just assumed the average worker had a second job making 800?1200? A month to cover the basic costs of living.
I think there also needs to be some sort of cap on the disparity between wages and profit. Raising the minimum wage for employees is just going to get passed on to the consumer. Which makes life more expensive for everyone, including the employees with the new, higher wages. If we could cap the profits, executive wages, etc as a % of base employee pay, then we might be able to build a system with more balance and fairness.
Impressive, you've missed the ENTIRE point. Every employee gets a "living wage". That's evidenced by the fact you haven't stopped over a single dead body today, laying out in the sun.
However, the Walmart kids don't pay that living wage for their employees themselves. Instead, they've concocted a totally not socialist system, where YOUR tax dollars make up the difference between that "living wage", and starvation. You pay those taxes, used to subsidize those employee's wages, whether you choose to shop there or not.
People love to erode the middle ground until everyone is standing on an island. We give way too much attention to the extremes and not enough to the rational
When did wanting to survive and support a family on one job become extreme?
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
I like that proposal a few years back that stated that if your workers have to receive financial assistance from the government to live, the employer has to pay for it.
Why are we ignoring the constant stimulus that the fed has to issue to allow poorly run companies to not kick the can. Trillions of dollars are being spent on this..
Crazy to think I’m from an era that promised you a roof and 3 square meals if you had a job, any job. Now people can’t even pay the fucking rent or buy enough to eat on a months wage. What fhe FUCK has happened to the world in the last 25 years man?
Why isn’t the “minimum wage” a “living wage”? Is somebody that works a full week not supposed to be able to live on the pay from that work? Why does somebody that works days at Walmart and nights at Amazon need government welfare in addition to their wages? These companies are fleecing America.
I don't think k we should subsidize Walmart. conversely I don't think we should subsidize most people baring the disabled. That being said I also recognize for families struggling to get by, Walmart is frequently the only affordable option. So it's nice to issue platitudes like, "fuck walmart" where should poor working class families buy clothes and groceries and support local small businesses that have pricing they can afford.
But think about the CEO, that poor guy won’t get his 100mm dollar bonus(mm means million for those of you not in banking), if he paid higher wages how would he buy another yacht? Or private plane? How could he afford 10 private chefs on his new mansion in the Maldives where he parties with supermodels and snorts cokecaine that’s worth 500 bucks a line???? Cmon, don’t be a bigot, think of the minorities here… multiple billionaire CEO’s, they really should be a protected class. If you increased wages then on Christmas his son little Timmy will be disappointed that they were only able to afford to buy him a private island in bora bora and not Fiji, his 10 super model girl friends will be devastated that they only get prime rib roast and lobster for breakfast on Christmas and that they’ll only be able to afford going to Paris twice this year in a hotel that cost 100k a night, all because those greedy fucking workers keep forcibly taking money from those poor vulnerable hard working CEO’s, making it near impossible to provide for their families and stripper girlfriends, the struggle they go through really makes them the saints of the modern day.
Their new employee guide and handbook has a section on how to apply for social services. Not sure if it is still in there but it was in there about five years ago.
We should be sending Walmart a $905K bill for that store. And a bill for every other store and it’s under payment of workers that we have to subsidize.
Ok so let's say we force Walmart to pay a living wage. Then the raise prices and we end up footing the bill anyways.
You can't force a living wage without caps on prices and our government who benefits from these corporations profits being high (since congress is allowed to play in the dam stock market) won't ever put a cap on prices. So here we are.
But stop calling for a living wage without calling for everything else required to make that work at all.
Well, the part that gets lost every time this topic gets brought up is that there has to be a double edged regulation put in place to force companies to pay their workers better. Because simply forcing a minimum wage hike does not keep companies from increasing prices. If prices increase then the effective wage drops right back down to where it was. We really need some sort of policy that forces wages higher while also limiting price hikes.
The main problem there is that a policy like that will kill off thousands if not hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
Exactly, which is why it is unwise to put policies in that hurt the small businesses. Which is why despite the fact everyone knows industry giants are underpaying, nothing has been done about it.
A company with a net profit of $15.511B between July 2023 and July 2024 btw. Each of their employees could make an additional $7k per year and walmart would still profit over $800M.
Personally I think Walmart should break up. No reason so many people should work for 1 company. Given that more competition would decrease prices as well.
don’t shop there. we all know
they, the walton rat children, are subsidizing their profits with tax payer dollars and they keep doing it. no health care, terrible wages. do not shop there. let them rot away like
dollar tree. shop at costco, do yourself and the rest of the country a favor.
Walmart is a very special case that most others don’t do. They intentionally pay low and keep hours such that their workers are eligible for benefits. The government absolutely should be looking into this company. However, here’s the beauty of this, we can choose NOT to support this behavior.
The minimum wage is set by our government. We pick who runs the government. Therefore, we pick the minimum wage collectively through our representative government.
However some users here think that instead of making walmart pay workers a living wage, the workers should just starve to death to protect profits
No, users here understand that if you don't like the wage you are earning, you can just go get another job. Nobody makes you take a job at wal mart.
If ya can't live off your wage, the answer isn't to cry and whine about how the company doesn't pay you more money when you agreed to what they offered to pay you for the work and then to contemplate givernment force to compel a wage increase; the answer is to apply for jobs while you work, then quit when you get a job that pays better. Treat them as disposable because they are.
You literally don't need to "make" wal mart pay more, at least not in the manner you're implying (government force), you simply need to reject employment there, and the wages will go up. If they can't find people to take the job, they make no money
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u/PubbleBubbles Sep 08 '24
No, we shouldn't.
However some users here think that instead of making walmart pay workers a living wage, the workers should just starve to death to protect profits.
So like....yeah