A relevant link
Why Wal-Mart can NOT afford to pay workers a $15 minimum wage
For additional citations, Google “Tim Worstall Forbes Minimum Wage”
Members of prominent conservative “think” tanks are doing this country a great service, saving us from the dangers of a livable wage, because quite simply, while it would be great if “the economy” could afford such a wage increase, the economy cannot afford such a wage increase, and even if it could, invisible hand, market, labor prices are what “the market” sets them to be. No people are involved here, and there’s nothing to be done. It’s not personal. I’ve spoken repeatedly and at length about the reasons why this is bullshit.
If you’re a person whose paid profession is to write media articles advocating for a point of view that supports your enormously rich employers, you’re not a neutral and unbiased source of information, Tim Worstoll.
Given that you’re simply a professional writer, not an economist, you have exactly as much actual expertise on the subject matter of the US minimum wage as I do. Except I’ve lived in the United States and *worked *for the minimum wage, and been a manager of other people who worked for the minimum wage. So maybe I, a fucking pizza guy, have more expertise on the subject matter than you. So you’re not an expert by any means, based on your own education or profession, and you are not a disinterested observer offering impartial advice or opinion, as you’re a member of a political party and have been a candidate for office in that party, and you write an article almost every single day about the minimum wage, and it seems to be your obsession.
Of *course *it is in the believed interests of extremely wealthy corporations to keep wages stagnant. But they’re not exactly a disinterested party, nor do they represent what’s best for everyone, are they?
How do you suppose the richest 1% have been doing so well, rain or shine, boom or bust? Because as long as they take care of themselves, by cutting costs wherever they can, it interests them personally. So yeah, I believe that the extremely wealthy, or at least certain members of that class, are fully ideologically opposed to minimum wage on grounds they believe to be in their best self-interest.
So of course it is in their best interest to hire as many writers as they can afford to have a one-sided debate with no one in particular in opinion columns, blogs, and newspapers. Just an expert with the knowledge you need, telling you like it is.
Moving off of Tim Worstall, who spams the universe with anti-wage-increase articles for a living, and onto the linked article by Michael Saltsman. “Research director at the Employment Policies Institute” (with extra scare quotes around the word ‘research’) who also writes articles about the minimum wage while being part of a conservative “think” tank. So definitely an expert on economic matters, right? Well, no. Not as such. But they’re doing research, which implies that this is an impartial science, not partisan or ideological hackery. Why, they contract actual universities and fund studies.
Kind of like how the sugar industry or the tobacco industry or the oil industry funds not-ideological studies with no specific outcome in mind when they say, here, let’s study this subject matter, and come up with a completely unbiased answer. Oh, and by the way, we have the money to fund research projects here for decades, if we decide we want to publish the results of your studies.
Yeah, there’s no conflict of interest there, and it’s definitely **impartial science **going on. I could go into how well *ACTUAL *economists do in their job. But leaving that aside, you guys are *not *those experts, Michael Saltsman and Tim Worstall.
But, you spend your life thinking about these things. And you have more wealth and potentially more information than I do. So let’s say we’re both lay morons but you’re an advantaged lay moron, so I should at least hear you out, hear what arguments you make, and see if I can’t be persuaded by the sheer logic and self-evident truth behind what you’re saying. Let’s see the history of the minimum wage, let’s see how the economy reacts to wage increases, and stagnant wages. Let’s see what happens when wages go up. Talk to me. Show me the evidence the world will come to an end.
I’m just a guy who saw the numbers behind the curtain while working for one of the major minimum wage employers. But even I admit, I’m only seeing a piece of the picture. Fill in the blanks for me, give me the bigger picture. Why couldn’t my company afford to give its employees a raise? Explain this to me like I’m five.
Go check out the linked article at the top.
The argument is framed thusly: Wal-Mart cannot afford to give its employees raises. Oh dear! Oh dear, oh dear oh dear. Don’t let that $482 billion number fool you, only a small piece of that is actual profit.
Oh yeah, I agree with that. So? How can Aldi pay their workers so much more money in the same industry, competing with Wal-Mart? How is that possible, when they’re a smaller company? Or let’s not even get side tracked. Tell me how poor, impoverished Wal-Mart can’t afford it.
Well, some companies with less than 100 workers can’t afford it. Okay, sure. Some companies might go out of business in a marketplace where small businesses come and go. So?
CEOs are paid a lot of money, but it represents a small fraction of what the company pays its employees, and if you were to hand that money out to each one, it wouldn’t even be that much. So?
Aha, we have some numbers. The company, after paying everyone, bottom line, is only making six thousand dollars in profit per employee! If you double the minimum wage, that profit is gone!
…So?
What in the bloody cunt fuck is your fucking point?
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*[/SIZE]Do you seriously expect me to believe that when a multi-billion dollar corporation experiences a situation where it is required to pay its employees more, it’s going to take that money out of its PROFITS, YOU JACKASS!?!?
Bad news, guys. Obama mandated a $10 minimum wage. We can’t afford that shit, so we’re packing it in.
We’re packing it up!
We’re pissing off home!
We are bravely throwing in the fucking sponge!There’s just no possible solution to this mess. It’s the end of capitalism as we know it. The liberals have won. It’s simple math, right, you progressive dumbasses. If Profit Per Employee is just over $6K, and you give employees a raise of more than $6K, the company goes out of business. It’s called subtraction. You subtract the raise from the company profits. It couldn’t be simpler.
You can’t argue with math!
Yeah, what would a business like that do, anyway? They’d just resign, obviously. There’s no *possible *path forward. None at all. Labor amounts to 100% of Wal-Mart’s operating expenses (wink) and the price point of the products at Wal-Mart is already too damned high (wink). You couldn’t increase the amount of money the company takes in to compensate for the additional expense, by raising prices, the consumer can’t fucking bear it. NOPE! GOTTA TAKE IT ALL OUT OF PROFITS!!!
So labor at the company I worked for was about 25% of the price point. That’s including management and their big salaries. Well, big for the managers above me, anyway.
So, if the wages of everyone in the company were to LITERALLY DOUBLE, the price point of the product would have increased by 25%. The workers would have been earning between $16 and $20 per hour. The salaried managers would have been earning close to $100,000 per year. And the price of the pizza would have jumped from an enormously insane $10 to an even enormously more insane $12.50.
People can’t pay that much for a pizza! Let’s see what the prices of pizzas are. Huh, that’s strange. Seems like some businesses operate at $20 a pie, in the nicer places. Nicer pizzas, ofc. Some other businesses offer buffet pizza for what amounts to like $5 a pie. These are smaller pies, ofc, and lower quality.
Seems like $12.50 wouldn’t make that much of a fucking difference. Sure, the people who order pizza every single day because they don’t have a car and can’t be arsed to walk to the store or get a ride from their friends and therefore have no groceries, and spend all their money on pot and never tip the pizza delivery guy, maybe those daily pizza shoppers will stop ordering, and what a SHAME that would be. I’m tearing up as we speak. But the economy would survive.
And what else? Suddenly all the low wage workers have enough money that THEY can afford to order pizza. Suddenly, all the low wage workers all across the country are… spending… money. Increasing demand. Businesses get more income.
Hell, even if they didn’t, they *already *covered their asses by raising the price of the fucking pizza. They are now earning exactly the same as they were before. The company, that is. The employees and managers of the company are earning twice as much. Owners get the same, employees get more. So what’s the problem?
**Whose **jobs are being cut? And **why **would they be cut?
Are you saying that if the employees of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Burger King and Wendy’s and Costco and 7 Eleven all across the country suddenly had more money, local businesses wouldn’t suddenly get a shit-ton more customers? 100% of that money will just not be a part of the economy anymore? It will all just go into savings. Stocks and bonds, right? Mutual funds? Or maybe they’d pay off their student loans, they’d pay their rent on time, they’d pay all their utility bills, they’d buy more things for themselves, they’d actually go on vacation, all these things are just fucking terrible for the ECONOMY, right?
When the government mandated employers offer health care, it was gloom and doom time in Pizzaland. Well, my manager said, looks like all of your hours are gonna be cut to 20 hours a week, so we can avoid having to cover your healthcare.
And as I’m hearing these words escape my boss’s lips, and I look around, I realize we’ve been trying to fill driver, manager, and crew positions to acceptable levels for FIVE YEARS, during a RECESSION, and the employees that do show up are begged to work 50 hours a week or more to cover all the bases, because it’s fucking hard to find someone who is responsible who is willing to do the job for the shit pay we offer. Even in a market saturated with fucking unemployed and hungry people. Our turnover was 300%. That means we went through three entire crews in a single year, and our employees were always under-trained, and we were always under-staffed. The few people who were WILLING to work 50+ hours a week pretty much had to do so every week. So we’re gonna cut everyone’s hours to 20 hours a week, eh? How’s that gonna fucking work, you morons? Explain this shit to me like I’m five.
And lo and behold, it never happened. Hell, the price of the pizza didn’t even change that much. Did you notice pizza suddenly doubling in price recently? No? Then STFU with that noise.
If Wal-Mart is forced to pay its employees more, you know what they’re gonna do? Pay its employees more. And continue being the largest employer. And continue turning a profit.
Because these companies are not stupid, and they know to charge 5 cents more per can of creamed corn, and consumers are still going to EAT FOOD when the price raises so little that they didn’t even notice it.
Oh no, our grocery bill is now $120 instead of $110. Whatever shall I do about this horrific problem, now that my income has nearly DOUBLED?
:smack: I can’t figure this shit out, folks!
However will the consumers bear the terrible burden of small price increases when their wages are INCREASING MORE THAN THE RATE OF INFLATION?
The whole problem to begin with is that prices are increasing independent of wages being stagnant.
Healthcare costs everywhere have gone up.
Education costs everywhere have gone up.
Gasoline used to be a dollar a gallon. That’s all done now.
Rent costs are going up.
Child care costs are going up.
Commodities go up slightly.
Costs increase. It’s a fact.
** This is still a fact even when wages stay the same. Prices continue to go up. Not all prices are wage-related.**
That’s why when we talk about the minimum wage in the 1970s, we talk about how, although the dollar amount was smaller, the value of that dollar was so much higher. How, on a minimum wage job, a person could pay for an apartment for themselves and their spouse and kids. All you had to do to get ahead in America was to get a job, work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You could succeed if you try.
But that’s not the case today. Today, average rent is over $700 a month. If you take home $1000 per month from your job, how is it that you can afford to take a shit?
** There must be some underlying cause, right?**
The value of that labor must be going down, right? Market has dictated it to be so. Employees must be less productive than ever! It must be the ever-increasing cost of doing business by streamlining processes and automating and computerizing things and owning all the levels of production! Surely that **reduces **efficiency, right?
**Or maybe American workers just aren’t working hard enough anymore. **
Yep, that *must *be it.
That guy working 55 hours a week hauling 150 pizzas for pizza hut, he’s not valuable to the company. He’s lazy, he’s only bringing in $3 delivery charge for each of those 150 deliveries, and making sure 150 additional customers per week are being served. He’s worthless! The company cannot even afford to have him on staff! He’s lucky to have a job! He should be thanking God that the company pays him LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE to deliver pizzas, while collecting the majority of that delivery fee and paying him 12 cents a mile! He’s not working hard for the company, he’s not a massive source of income for the company, he’s not worth even a fucking BARE MINIMUM living wage, folks.
Oh, productivity has gone **up **since the 1970s? The wealthy have gotten wealthier, during economic boom or bust? The companies have gotten *more *profitable? Larger? More efficient? More automated? Less of the company’s reward for the greater productivity and greater worker efficiency has gone back to the worker over time? Why is that? Is that because workers used to unionize, so that when the company reaped greater rewards, part of that reward went back to the labor force? Is that where the middle class used to exist? Is that where workers got a fair deal, and could afford to feed their families on a single income or two incomes, rather than three or four incomes?
I don’t understand this, Tim Worstall!
I don’t understand this, Michael Saltsman!
The invisible hand of the fucking market should be saying that since labor’s VALUE has increased, the price of labor should be increasing!
What’s the discrepancy here? Talk to me like I’m fucking five years old.
Why is it so that the prices of goods and services can increase, but the minimum price of the living wage cannot increase? What’s the economic principle behind that idea?
Well, the idea behind that is that every time the minimum wage has increased, people have lost jobs in America.
http://pushprofile.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/
And every single time the wage has increased, the economy collapsed, remember?
Wait, no… I am pretty sure economic booms and busts happened in a way that does not at all correlate to these increases. There was not a recession and sudden downturn in employment after all of these increases.
And why would there be?
For all the doom-saying about paying people what the “market” should dictate what they are worth…
If a labor “market” was even a thing anymore, and workers could gather together and set the prices of their labor collectively in much the same way the 7-Eleven corporation sets the prices for its shitty hot dogs, so they’re negotiating on a level bargaining table for once…Why is the price of labor not increasing with increased productivity and rising inflation?
Is the argument that workers don’t need the additional money?
Clearly, due to inflation, they do. Some things have increased in price far, far faster than others, particularly things that people just starting out in the workforce actually need, such as rent, fuel, and education.
Is the argument that workers don’t deserve the additional money?
Why not? The wealthy class would earn precisely zero fucking dollars without the army of workers personally selling their products or offering services on their behalf. You don’t see the CEO running the cash register, do you? If their productivity is up, and the company can make more money with less of them, then why not compensate the clearly more and more individually valuable worker? If I can run the pizza restaurant with just myself and my cook, doing multiple tasks that used to be assigned to multiple people, but are now more automated and computerized so skilled workers can do multiple tasks, aren’t we the fucking **backbone **of your company? If we’re so easy to replace, how come you’re always hiring even with high unemployment rates?
Is the argument that the company cannot afford to pay them more?
Gee, what did companies do to turn a profit after the minimum wage increased before? Cry into their fucking tomato soup bowl and bemoan the end of fucking capitalism, you corrupt soulless jackass?
Is the argument that the economy will collapse if you pay them more?
Yeah, millions and millions and millions of low-income workers suddenly spending vastly more money on products and services would be fucking devastating to the economy, wouldn’t it?
By the way, how are those shopping malls across America doing right now, with the economy-boosting benefits of stagnant wages and no consumers willing to spend?
How is that shit working out for you, supply-side jackass?? is it going well? i bet it fucking is!!! enjoy having no one who wants to shop at your fucking stores, “job creator”!
Q: you know what creates jobs?
A: demand
Q: you know what creates demand?
A: consumers with some fucking spending money
Q: you know who a lot of consumers are?
A: they are wage earners
Q: what happens when wages increase?
A: capitalism still works
Q: how is that possible?
A: billion dollar corporations can *add *as well as subtract!
It’s math, supply-siders. Figure it out.
Oh wait… you already have. That’s actually the entire problem.
You’re just an army of paid writers and “researchers” who are meant to convince the workers across America that it would be in their own best interest to get poorer and poorer due to inflation, and pay no attention to the always-increasing wealth of the 1%, saturating the marketplace of the commercial media, newspapers, websites, blogs, book stores, TV talk shows, and radio broadcasts with your shitty articles, books, screeds, rants, and lectures abo[SIZE=2]ut how awful it would be if workers earned a wage that paid their fucking bills.
And we, the collective body of wage-earning Americans, are total fucking dumbasses for ever having listened to you. And some of us became supply-siders too, just not the wealthy kind that benefits from it.
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Enjoy reading Forbes magazine, America. Enjoy all the financial news networks, New York Posts, Fox News channels, and conservative media outlets and mainstream ones like CNN or MSNBC who are all owned by gigantic multinational conglomerates, and think tanks and their deep-pocket funding “research” all designed to convince you, the lay person, how fucking stupid it would be for you to earn more money.
Listen to them explain it to you like you’re five.
It’s that I’m tired of them fooling you, my fellow Americans.
Could you please grow up, and stop being financially five years old?
You know how these people get rich? They separate fools from their money. Stop being a fool, get together, and collectively (since that’s the ONLY way it will ever happen) ask for your well-deserved raise.
Don’t ask for it from your boss. Your boss is owned by his boss, who is owned by his boss, who is owned by the owner of the company, and he and all the other owners in America have decreed that they will lay you off if you so much as hint or whisper about unions, or ask for more money than they are willing to part with.
So skip asking for a raise.
Skip collective bargaining, since they’ll put your ass out on the street.
The only way to get it done, is to NOT vote for Tim Worstall, who is the worst of them all, or any other candidate from the UKIP party, or any other conservative party bent on supply-side economics which have resulted in NOTHING trickling down.
It’s a myth that government can pay for itself by lowering taxes, and watching the economic benefits reap even more government funds for a lower percentage. That only holds true if the tax rate were many times what it is now and the economy had literally ground to a halt.
It’s a myth that making the rich wealthier and busting up unions will cause greater economic prosperity.
Do you know why I can say that, as a lay person, with no research institute? No billions in funding to “fact find?”
Because I can look inside my wallet and find all the money that isn’t there after 30 years of union-busting and supply-side economic theory, and the recessions that have occurred.
You can look inside your wallet, too. Not a minimum wage earner? What happened to the middle class? Where did it go?
Hey, millennials, working hard to get that ever more expensive education, how about them jobs?
Where are all the jobs from tax cuts for the wealthy, and trickle-down economics? Why didn’t those principles stop the global recession after 8 years of George W. Bush?
WHERE IS THE PROSPERITY THE SUPPLY SIDERS PROMISED???
It doesn’t fucking exist. Oh, except, for them. For them it does. Just not for you.
You bought what they were selling. It was an empty suitcase full of hopes and dreams and promises of future prosperity trickling down. If the owner of the company got wealthy, you and your boss would get wealthy too. You’d all move up in the world.
Except all the wealth stayed at the top, and Owner’s Son got into Harvard, and you got nothing. Just stagnant wages.
Enjoy the empty promises you bought. Enjoy your stagnant wages.
Keep buying their lies. You can’t do the math and reason it out for yourself that you’re getting screwed, you’re just a lay person, not an economist (wink) like Tim Worstall, Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and UKIP party press officer, or Michael Saltsman, “Research Director of the Employment Policies Institute.”
God damn, those are some fancy ass titles. I bet it means they know more about economics and labor and employment policy than *you *do!
He sure does. He knows how to screw you sideways and make sure you stay poor, and ensure the people like him have kids who get into Harvard and then work for Berkshire Hathaway, and you can’t even fucking afford to have any kids.
I have to admit, these guys are the experts. They are the masters of the economy. You can tell, because they keep winning the game they’re playing against you that you have no idea how to play.
It’s not gonna get done by working harder, or longer hours, or by politely asking for a raise. These people do not give a single solid shit about you.
It’s not gonna get done by unionizing. That’s all done with now. You fucked up. Now companies can tear you a new asshole if you try, and your state laws often make it legal for them to lay you off for no reason at all, wink wink. It’s a “right to work” state.
So, the only way you’re gonna fix this is to raise the minimum wage by force. Vote all supply siders out of congress. En Masse. Tell them you’ll do this regardless of political party, until they support an increased minimum wage.
Oh, who am I kidding. You’re not going to do a damned thing. You’re too exhausted from working 55 hours this week for $8 an hour, making sure that it’s just barely not the minimum wage, so they can claim most of their workers earn more t…[/SIZE]
