Bill would have WalMart fire anyone worth less than $12.50?

pineinthegrass wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: The US taxpayers currently subsidize Walmart's low wages (and by association, their corporate profits) around $900,000 per store per year since many of their workers qualify for SNAP, health care and other federal and state subsidies. Is it unreasonable to require employers to pay sufficient wages so that their workers are out of poverty?

Do you mind producing a link for that?

Last time you brought this up you claimed full time (40 hrs) Walmart workers were near poverty line and I showed very few would be (unless they were the sole provider of a large family), but I see you've dropped the full time part.

Something the Dog Said wrote: Another important consideration is that businesses such as Regal and Walmart, who combine low wages with no benefits pass on the costs to the taxpayer by forcing their employees to supplement their existence with food stamps, inability to pay medical bills, etc. Even if Regal or Walmart employee a worker 40 hours per week, that translates to just over the poverty level or below in most cases, qualifying that employee for taxpayer benefits. Essentially Regal and Walmart are using taxpayer subsidies to reward their executives with multimillion dollar bonuses, while Costco and other companies who pay their employees with livable wages and benefits reward the taxpayer instead.

mymountaintown.com/forum/6-the-courthous...care?start=20#280255

If Walmart ends up not building the three new stores that were planned, isn't it going to cost taxpayers even more to continue to subsidize people with no jobs?

And why just pick on Walmart and other big box stores? If the Washington DC city council is really concerned about a living wage, why don't they raise their local minimum wage to $12.50 so everyone can have a "living wage"? I just don't get why only some employers get singled out.

Logic is not working in this thread...

Rick wrote: Logic is not working in this thread...

But it feels good.

There have been times I've scratched my head when a union would make wage demands which would end up making the company close shop and most all jobs were lost (Hostess comes to mind, not that it's the only one).

But at least in a union, the workers get a vote in that decision for better or worse.

In the case of Washington DC, it's a city council making a decision that will cost jobs if it goes through. Yes, the workers are voters, but just a small fraction of the total and they may of never known this would happen. Does the city council really think that Walmart workers don't want their jobs? How would they know this?

The article I posted said the raise to $12.50 would amount to nearly $5 an hour. They aren't super clear on the details, but if I use their minimum wage of $8.25, that's about a 52% wage increase (it's huge regardless). I don't know if it would be immediate or spread out, but who gets a 52% raise these days?

Again, why does only Walmart and other box stores get nailed with this? Is it just politics (duh)? If the city council had any courage or lack of hypocrisy they would of increased everyone's minimum wage to $12.50 instead.

LadyJazzer wrote: Nobody is telling Walmart to fire everyone who makes less... But you knew that.

It is requiring WalMart to pay a living wage of a minimum of $12.50/hour in area with higher living-expense areas... Boo-friggin'-hoo... And WalMart continues to try play the shell-game of cooking their numbers to hide how many employees are full-time vs. part-time.

I hope they hold their feet to the fire...And if WalMart wants to play "hard to get", wellll, Buh-Bye....

Please engage the topic at hand.

I too think it would be great if Wal-mart decided via the consuming public to raise wages because they are providing more value(those that make the real pay value decisions via their purchases and NOT their laws).

But no matter how it happens (increased pay beyond market rates) if the workers are not actually worth more, it will change WHO is working at Wal-Mart, not how much the old employees get paid. The law does not go far enough to address your concerns of the wages of the EXISTING wal-mart employees.

Dog pointed out 900,000 per store, which is kinda naive. Assuming the number is correct, that is the total for the current employees of the store. Once the wage goes up and these employees turn over and new employees are hired, AND THE OLD EMPLOYEES WERE FIRED, the number that we should compare is the amount of public assistance all the OLD employees that USED to work there before this MANDATED wage change that made the OLD employees no longer worth it.

YES the burden of that Wal-Mart's store will go down, but NOT the burden to society for all the OLD workers that have to go out and find new jobs. Just one other thing that will help my point - there are countless unemployed recent college grads that feel that $8/hour is below them. I bet a 50% increase in that will fill Wal-Mart up with recent college grads for employment....displacing the OLD EMPLOYEES.

So my point is that the OLD employees will go from being say 25% on welfare to being 90% on welfare and this is NOT a decrease in welfare expense....BUT if all you care about is the current employees at walmart and THEIR burden, then you can also fix the problem by closing Wal-Mart, this solution works for a Huffpost headline, but not for the amount of people and the dollar value of their Walfare in SOCIETY.

This is about the people that work there, not the moment by monent statistical specs of one or all Wal-marts, they are far from the only employer, but they are a big one of low skill workers.....WHERE they heck to you expect these people to work once fired because Wal-mart can now afford more skilled workers by law. The workers before this law and after at Wal-mart are simply not the same people, track the people.

And come on private sector wages vs. public sector wages......we all buy the same stuff. One cannot argue that both are actual jobs, fall into the same category, that govt creates jobs just like the private sector etc. etc. and then claim that the $100 that a private sector employee is different than the $100 a public sector employee gets. They both buy $100 worth of stuff.

Again, I suggest you track individuals vs. Walmarts. The people in a population group change, the group may have the same brand, but the people turn over.

I REALLY HOPE THIS LAW PASSES, just to make my point. I bet if it does, there is little analysis on tracking the actual people and much on Wal-mart's themselves.

If we are going to price fix something, let's price fix Wal-mart as a company's max profit. Let's say that once you make X billion, you cannot open another store. Since demand is still there, a smaller employer will open, they will be less efficient and thus they will HAVE TO MAKE MORE JOBS. But that is just as immoral, even if it would work better and be easier to enforce.

Again, I really hope this passes. People will hopefully start to understand price fixing and the negative effects of not being able to make your own choice.

Please engage the topic. What are your expectations for what will happen to CURRENT Wal-mart employees as individuals if this law passes. If they raised the min wage for my companies by 50%, most of my employees would turn over as now, if I don't close, I will go hire more stellar people. It is just that freaking simple. The wage change for my old employees would be to ZERO.

Boo-hoo is for all that will get fired if this passes. Again, this is a shift of money from the most desperate to the group sitting a notch or two above them. This is a tool to keep people poor or even better, make them even poorer. This will help the recent college grads that graduate with somewhat useless degrees. At least their basic social and math skills will get them more big-box jobs now, just at the expense of the uneducated looses you guys are trying to keep down.

Flame on and via your govt. have fun firing people (by the way, for those that have not done it, it is no fun).

Plus, after these folks are fired, literally 100,000's of them, if not millions, I wonder what % will go rogue and hurt family, co-workers and previous managers.....at least a few.

I also challenge anyone to propose the IDEAL min wage and why.

If it is not infinity, there is an ideal and it should be able to be calculated based on some logic.

What is that logic and what is the wage? That is the real discussion that again, folks don't seem to want to engage.

Good point.
I used to work at Target and still wasn't earning enough after raises and promotions so I found a better job.

on that note wrote: I also challenge anyone to propose the IDEAL min wage and why.

If it is not infinity, there is an ideal and it should be able to be calculated based on some logic.

What is that logic and what is the wage? That is the real discussion that again, folks don't seem to want to engage.

You'll get the exact same response from most on the left when you ask what the "fair income tax rate" should be. Silence. Those questions can not be answered based on emotion... only logic.

Though I'm an independent, let me address what the ideal minimum wage and income tax rate should be. I'll project myself to be a Democrat based on my informed observations and make pure generalizations (which some on this board are quite good at).

The ideal minimum wage and income tax rate is whatever the Democrats are asking for.

It doesn't matter if they asked for different rates yesterday, last month, or last year. Those rates were ideal back then and do not apply today.

The ideal minimum wage and income tax rate is what the Democrats are asking for NOW. And the ideal minimum wage for Walmart is different than the ideal minimum wage for everyone else because...well...it just is!

And if you don't support the Democrat ideal minimum wage and income tax rate then you favor starving our children, dirty air, and tax cuts for the rich.

Something the Dog Said wrote: The US taxpayers currently subsidize Walmart's low wages (and by association, their corporate profits) around $900,000 per store per year since many of their workers qualify for SNAP, health care and other federal and state subsidies. Is it unreasonable to require employers to pay sufficient wages so that their workers are out of poverty?

As I pointed out, Dog never gave a link for Dog's source. And I can see why.

Dog's source could of come from a number of articles or liberal blogs, but the actual source (which is usually pointed out in the blogs) is a Democrat staff report from a congressional committee. Here is a Huffington Post article on it...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/walmart-taxpayers-house-report_n_3365814.html

And the Democrat staff report...

http://democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/sites/democrats.edworkforce.house.gov/files/documents/WalMartReport-May2013.pdf

There are plenty of these reports from Republican's too. I've seen them on excess cost of Obamacare and global warming. But I don't post them because I know people like Dog would just laugh them off as being biased (not that I'd agree with the global warming stuff anyway) and ignore them. And if I did post one, I'd at least provide my source.

But Dog goes ahead and posts from a type of source that Dog would attack others for. And Dog doesn't even have the guts to provide the source either.

But know what else Dog does? Dog doesn't even accurately represent what the Democrat staff report is about.

No, the $900,000 is not per Walmart store. It's a "study" of just one Walmart store. And it's not even in Washington DC, it's in Wisconsin.

The report is highly biased with major assumptions made. Even the Huffington Post article sees some of it...

After accounting for the total number of Walmart stores and employees across the state and the per-person costs of BadgerCare, as the state’s health care program is known, the report's authors estimated that the cost of publicly funded health care comes to $251,706 per year for a 300-employee Supercenter.

The authors then added up the projected costs of other public-assistance programs available to families on BadgerCare, such as reduced-price school meals, Section 8 housing assistance, the earned income tax credit and energy assistance. Assuming all those workers avail themselves of those additional programs -- granted, an unlikely scenario -- the report extrapolates that the final tab would top $900,000.

If someone Dog disagrees with posted anything even close to this, Dog would call them a liar (and usually group the person with all conservatives). Dog gets my vote for the poster who calls more people liars and racists than anyone else on this board.

But let's be civil here. Have a nice day, Dog.

Dog does not have to post sources, Dog is God (just a bit backwards) <evil grin>