Exclusively, of course not. But I don’t see anything wrong with a social contract that ensures employers share that responsibility.
(Sorry for the aside, but would you use that same argument against the existence of any minimum wage laws?)
Wal-Mart paid $7.1 billion in corporate income tax (in 2010).
Further, Wal-Mart doesn’t set the minimum wage, nor the income level at which people are eligible for things like SNAP and Medicaid. If those numbers don’t add up to your liking, wherein a person can be employed but still considered poor and needy, that’s an avenue for the government to intervene.
Maybe it would help if they fired anyone who was caught taking public assistance. Then none of their employees would be on assistance and all would be rosy! Perhaps even make it a company policy to only hire young single people with no dependents. That would decrease the chances of any of their employees being on assistance and so limit the number of people they need to fire.
No, I’m suggesting we shouldn’t allow employers to pay people wages which leave them eligible for food stamps under current income guidelines. If that means raising the minimum wage to better cover current cost of living, then that’s what we should do.
I do see a reason to hand off that responsibility to the subset of Americans called “employers”. History and cultural values, for one. (In our culture, you work so you can support yourself. If you work more, you can support a family.) Unfair competitive advantage driving down wages across the marketplace, for another. Undue strain on the “safety net” systems for a third - these things aren’t designed for unlimited use, because we’ve worked very hard to make them temporary out of fear of abuse of the system by beneficiaries. When their benefits run out, what then? You can’t keep getting food stamps forever, even if you meet the income guidelines.
This is akin to the Harlem ‘habit’ of “rent parties” - back in the depression when many families had financial troubles, the practice of holding a party and charging a nominal amount for the people to attend was to both defray the cost of the food and drink, and provide a bit of money to help pay the rent. A sort of similar behavior used to also occur in college with frat or house parties charging $5 or so for the people coming in for the beer and whatever munchies were available, and to give the frat or sorority a bit of cash flow for paying for stuff that the greek organizations funds wouldn’t pay for.
You might not want to put $20 in to the whip around, but adding an extra few cans of diced tomatoes, or a few cans of soup or boxes of convenience meals added to the grocery list and dropped into the collection box even though it might add up to the same $20 is seen differently than kicking in actual cash money. Same goes for donating used stuff to a rummage/boot sale to make some money to pay a hospital bill. Goods are seen as minor, cash is seen as major.
Which illustrates that the tax rate for corporations is too low, if their employees must be on public assistance. Wal-Mart is accepting welfare from the government, paid for by the People.
Then let the government intervene by raising revenue.
If you know what that number is, you should advocate for raising the minimum wage to that amount. Is that what you’re doing or is your ire specifically directed at Walmart?
People who have a problem with Walmart’s practices shouldn’t shop there. Fortunately for Walmart enough people have voted with their wallet and they happen to be a Fortune ONE company. Is the problem that they are exclusively profit driven, or the fact that they seem to be so damn good at it?
Walmart pays poorly and its customer service is poor. That seems to mean that the pay is commensurate with the value of the labor.
If you’ve read other wage-related posts I’ve made over the years, then you will see that yes; I am advocating a living wage.
It was 32.4%.
Are you proposing that the corporate tax rate vary based on wages paid? That’s probably riddled with unintended consequences, but I don’t reject the idea out of hand if that’s a serious proposal you wish to expand upon.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Then let the government intervene by raising revenue.
[/QUOTE]
Just increasing the tax rate won’t raise wages (unless you mean in conjunction with a variable rate tied to wages), though it could increase benefits paid. It wouldn’t address the criticism of wages being insufficient to make one too well-off for things like SNAP and Medicaid.
Are you suggesting people are just jealous of Walmart’s success?
The former creates the latter. It’s why they are so “good at it” that I take some issue with.
I’m saying that corporate profits should not be subsidised by the government. If the government is providing assistance to the employees, then the company is increasing their profits by the amount the government is paying.
Raising taxes would not increase wages; but more revenue would fund the social programs that are needed because so much tax money goes to corporate profits.
Or the other way around.
How so, in this case? If SNAP and Medicaid and such didn’t exist, it doesn’t follow that Wal-Mart would be offering higher wages. What’s the mechanism by which Wal-Mart’s profits increase due to government assistance? That’d only be true if, left to its own devices, Wal-Mart would provide similar benefits.
That it would, yes.
How much tax money goes to corporate profits? It’s not zero, but it’s not that much, relative to the size of the budget.
In the 1950s, my dad worked at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California. That was owned, of courtse, by the billionaire Howard Hughes.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas the company gave free turkeys to each of their employees, irrespective of income. One year the turkey we got was so big we didn’t need anything else for our dinner!
What a difference. Walmart seems to want to squeeze the money and break it.
I would love to tell them what they can do with their donation program. And I wonder how long it will be before the IRS catches up with them. :mad:
SNAP and Medicaid do exist. So we have a minimum wage that is not a living wage. Corporations know this, and they pay the minimum wage instead of a living one, because they can point to the federal programs and say that their workers are being provided for. Thus their profits are higher than if they paid a living wage.
Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, 25 December, 1783:
Unless, but for the government benefits, they would pay a living wage, or match federal programs with their own (such as health insurance) then it doesn’t represent a subsidy for the corporations.
So, do you contend that:
a) the federal programs provide political cover that keeps the minimum wage lower than it would be if such programs didn’t exist
b) corporations would be compelled by market forces to offer higher wages if the programs didn’t exist
c) something else?
I think you can argue (b). SNAP and Medicare are basically subsidies. Traditional economic theory would argue that those subsidies push the labor supply curve outward: some people are willing and able to work for minimum wage + subsidies, but would not be willing to work for just minimum wage: at that point, they’d stay home with their kids or move back in with their mom or get married to someone they don’t like or whatever. At that point, there’d be less labor supplied, and wages would have to go up to purchase the quantity of labor demanded (which would still be lower than before, because some of those employees would not be worth hiring at a higher wage).
So yeah, you can make the argument that government programs broaden the labor pool for employers and effectively subsidize the wages they pay.
If you don’t allow employers to pay people less what you think is optimal than they will hire fewer people. Upthread someone mentioned Costco as a company who pays it employees better wages. In order to pay these better wages Costco employs one half the number of employees per square foot and one third the number of employees based on revenue. In order to have the same amount of revenue per employee Walmart would have to lay off 980,000 employees. According to Costco nearly a million poor people should go off somewhere and die.
The only reason to hand off the responsibility to employers is the liberal’s most cherished belief that someone should help the poor and that someone should be named “not me”. It is the responsibility of every adult to support themselves and their children. It is not the employers responsibility or the government’s. When a person is struggling the support themselves it is laudatory for people to try to help out regardless of whether that person is an employer or a stranger on the street.
Obama’s chairman of economic advisors, Jason Furman, has published a paper on the economic impact of Walmart on the poor. pdf He found that:
Walmart pays employees wages that are as good as most other stores that are in retail in the same areas as walmart stores.
Every year Walmarts low prices save its shoppers, who are mostly lower income, 240 billion dollars a year. Which is ten times the amount of food stamps per year.
The percent of Walmart workers with employer provided healthcare is comparable to the retail sector as a whole.
The entry of a Walmart store in a county increases the number of retail jobs in that county by 50 over the next five years.
Walmart’s low wages do not cause the federal government money.