Oops. I read that as, “revenue generated from products produced in this region”. But it hardly changes things. Nike’s total revenue was 13.7 billion, from a total of 650,000 employees, or a revenue of $21,076 per employee.
Gross revenue: 13.7 Billion
Net Income: 1.2 Billion
So its net income is about 1,846 per employee. That’s before dividends are paid out, long term debt is paid, etc.
And note that this is an unprecedented year for Nike. In 2002, its net revenue was only 663 million, or about $1,000 per employee.
Tell me where the money is going to come from to pay all those workers a ‘living wage’. Bear in mind that Nike is answerable to its shareholders, and that it faces competition from numerous other apparel companies.
A pure model of something for sure. To sumerize, you got a degree in something (most people dont have that oppertunity) and even though it is not in your current field you have a degree. You got a temp job with one of the few companies that values their temp workers that do a good job, and you were able to live cheap with no family to support. I’m happy for you man, but thats not the rest of the world.
Socialism is using public assets to benifit the poor. All the things I listed fit that definition, and further all the things i listed actually can be aquired for money from private industry.
I’ve never heard of it described as capitalist either. I dont really desire to live in 1950’s america in any case.
That correlation is a fantasy
Pure socialism doesnt work, neither does pure capitalism. It takes a healthy mix for inovation to to flourish. People who dont even learn how to read have little chance of makeing their contribution to society. If it wasnt for public schools much of our people would never get any education.
If it wasnt for the improvements that unions made in wages and working conditions people would not have the time and money to start companies in their basement and inovate. There would be no consumer base for companies to sell high tech wares to so there would be no inovation there either. In short, we would be stuck in the 1920’s…if that.
It wasn’t refuted - it just turns out that they fell off the list. I imagine that they’re still close to the top 100, and as I pointed out, no other big-box retailers made the list.
As for the attacks on Wal-Mart, I don’t find it surprising at all. Big Labor HATES Wal-Mart. The labor unions at the other big retailers hate Wal-Mart because they are being asked to roll back their wages so their stores can compete. And of course, the entire left wing ‘base’ hates Wal-Mart and organizes protests against them all the time.
Again, my astonishment grows. You are using profits for Nike only but including all of their contracted out employees. This ignores the profits that the contracted factories are earning by making Nike stuff. I apologize for my bluntness but you suck at this economic stuff, why should I believe anything you say?
I still note that you are continuing to ignore that your WalMart top 100 employer has been refuted.
I would imagine they’re not still up there. And I do agree, at one point WalMart was a good company and treated their workers ok. Now they don’t and they are rightfully getting reamed for it. Get with the times.
Gee, could any of this have to do with the many lawsuits, news articles and publicity about WalMart’s poor treatment of workers?
If they can’t pay their workers a living wage, then they should go out of business in favor of a company that can. Not that I believe for a moment they can’t; when I hear stories about the CEO being forced to live in a roach infested apartment, then I might believe they can’t. Somehow I doubt it; in the real, non-free-market-fantasy world the higher ups get most of the money, no matter how hard they work, the commoners work, and no matter how much or little profit the company makes.
Nike has 26,000 employees, but all of its overseas manufacturing is contracted out, and there are 650,000 employees working in those factories actually making the garments.
Oh for God’s sake. I thought we were talking about NIKE, and what NIKE should do to fix the sweatshop situation. So now it’s not Nike’s fault, but the fault of the factories they contract out to? Is that correct? Is it your contention that those factories make such hideous profits that they could afford to grossly improve the wages of their employees?
Look, why don’t you put something up for debate? If you believe Nike is in the wrong and that the workers are exploited by huge profits and could be paid much more, YOU PROVE IT. I’m tired of doing all the legwork so t hat you can come along and chip away at it and call me names.
The left is always going on about how the workers in these sweatshops are exploited, and how things should be changed. If you’'re making that claim, BACK IT UP. Show me where all the profits are going that could be diverted to the workers and elevate them to 1st world living conditions or even within shouting distance of it.
Is this what passes for being in the ‘reality based community’? Do you have ANY hard data to back up your claims? Is it your contention that if the CEOs of these companies simply made what their workers made that the worker’s standard of living could be seriously raised?
BACK IT UP. Show me the numbers. Put a plan on the table. If you can’t do that, then I’m going to assume you’re just another class warrior without a freaking clue. Maybe if we all just held hands and sang Kunbayah, all those poor people would suddenly find themselves ten times more productive.
Won’t the natural mechanisms of market forces ensure that? If the employees aren’t paid a living wage, they’ll quckly leave and the company will cease operation.
I have no idea what the factories make but its besides the point. You have made two attempts at proving your cases and thus far have two misses. You keep making these sweeping generalizations about the economy yet you can’t even read a simple earnings statement. Why should I believe anything you say about economics? For that matter, how can you be so steadfast in your opinions when your shortcomings in economics are so glaring?
Becuase I have no idea whether or not Nike could increase their wages and remain competative. I strongly suspect that if they cut upper management wages and reduced the amount of profits sent to the shareholders they could. Perhaps instead of spending more money on transportation from China they could have used that money for a modern factory. I simply don’t know and you don’t either. Regardless, thus far your legwork has been to post two erronous numbers that even if accurate would show very little. All that has occured here is you wasting time on coming up with incorrect numbers to support your preconcieved notions and me wasting even more time showing them to be false.
The only claim I have made thus far is that you aren’t very good at this economic stuff and I have backed it up.
Only if the other companies pay a living wage. If one company pays slave wages, then the other companys have to do so to compete. Eventually everyone makes slave wages and there is no where else to go.
Then the workers will all starve to death and the economy will collapse. If you’re going to use rhetoric like “living wage”, don’t be surprised when it is examined and found flawed. Is there any indication that Wal-Mart employees in America or Nike employees in Asia are starving? The bigger causes of starvation have been war, forced collectivization, governmental corruption and good old natural disaster, not some factory paying the local minimum wage.
I was trying to prove a simple point, which is that if you took all of Nike’s profit and distributed it to everyone who makes products for them, you could not raise their living standards to that of a 1st world country. Do you see anything in my analysis that is so wrong that that conclusion doesn’t hold?
Your claims about my lack of economic knowledge are just bullshit. I was trying to prove a point using gross numbers as a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation. I see nothing that makes it invalid. Why don’t you try actually engaging in the debate instead of playing ‘gotcha’ and in general being an obnoxious pain in the ass? Try to debate honestly rather than sniping from the sidelines.
Of course, you probably don’t want to do that because you know I’m right, and you’d rather play games than admit it.
Walmart workers are able to survive because the government picks up the slack. A huge percentage of people who work there get food stamps so they will not starve.
So no the workers in our example wont starve, but only because of intervention of the goverment.
And, as I said before you used profits only for Nike and not their contracted factories but included the factory workers. If you use Nike profits and only Nike workers you get $46,000 per worker. In addition, as I said before, I don’t know how much money these factories make. I do doubt they can raise them to first world standards but I would wager they could do a lot better than they are doing now.
See thats the problem. You are using numbers that are largely irrelevent to each other to get a number that in itsself isn’t very relevent but you don’t realize it.
Listen, all I have done so far is pointed out that every calculation you have made in this thread is simply wrong. If you want to call that playing ‘gotcha’ and being a pain in the ass then by all means do so. But the fact is that you have thus far demonstrated no ability to interpet any data. Since I do have the ability to accurately interpet data I have used this fact to discern that your opinions in this matter are merely cheap rhetoric.
Oh please, you can’t even manage to calculate profit per employee and you have the audacity to claim victory.
No, the economy collapses when working people as a class don’t make enough money to purchase the goods that they produce, resulting in snowballing layoffs and commercial failure.
This is not a “what if” scenario, it’s a “remember when” scenario.
A working economy requires the labour pool to receive more compensation than the bare minimum, because the set of the working class also contains the bulk of the consumer class.
Without a strong mechanism to ensure that workers receive adequate compensation, there is a very strong tendency for the short-term interests of business to prevail. There will always be someone more desperate than the next guy to take the job. So working on the docks doesn’t pay enough to support a family – there’s always the pool of single guys to go to. So what if you don’t pay enough to cover a mortgage? There are plenty of workers that rent a room somewhere. Eventually, everyone’s working their ass off just to keep their bellybutton away from their backbone – if they’re lucky enough to be employed.
Without a counterbalance, wages will naturally gravitate towards a subsistence level. Only economists worry about the economy – a business doesn’t look past the bottom line – and there’s no reason to expect that they should. It’s natural and right to want to reduce expenses wherever you can.
But labour has value (you can’t make a dollar without it) and people need a reliable way to negotiate a fair price for their labour. Otherwise, the job will go to the lowest bidder – and the lower wages go, the more desperate people there are willing to take even less – and then business gets worse, so there’s further incentive to reduce expenses, and the easiest way to reduce expenses is to pay lower wages. It’s a feedback loop.