Well, I could say that you should provide it because you’re the one who wants them to have it.
But assuming you believe that universal healthcare insurance is a worthwhile public good, that it is good social policy, then it makes more sense to pay for that with public money. I think it makes no sense for you (or the state) to say: We forbid you to hire someone if you are unwilling or unable to pay for their healthcare insurance.
We don’t require employers to pay for their employees phone bills, gasoline, rent, car insurance, or any other consumer good. In fact, tying healthcare to a person’s place of employment is probably one of the stupidest things we do in the US.
Okay, I think I get you: you don’t take into account questions of other people’s wages and benefits when you think about saving money on prices. Fine.
Okay, then why did you initially suggest that low-wage workers would want to take into account other people’s saving money on prices when they think about their own wages and benefits?
My point was simply that it’s not reasonable to expect workers to take into account the Greater Good ™ of all those other poor people saving money on groceries when what matters most to them is the size of their own paycheck. (Even if there is a total Greater Good effect from WalMart of saving poor people money, which I haven’t yet seen solid evidence of.)
Forcing them? No, of course not. Their model is obviously successful. What I was trying to get across is…maybe its successful because they have been very careful in calculating what wages and benifits they can minimally meet (and stay within the law) while dropping prices as low as they can. And perhaps its not so easy after all, and that raising wages/benifits would in fact have a harmful effect on their model…forcing them to raise prices. After all, I don’t see any OTHER Walmart wanabe’s out there cutting in on their market…though as you pointed out there are other companies out there with DIFFERENT business models but who overlap (somewhat) with Walmart in their core business. like Costco and Sams Club (which I actually DO use sometimes…though again I hate the poor service and lines).
Well, for myself I was mainly making a joke…though one with a core of truth to it if you are of the opinion that ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’…greater good and all that noble stuff. Isn’t it better that entire communities of the poor can purchase goods at cheap prices (thus saving their limited funds) while having a few people ‘suffer’ (voluntarily) with the supposed poor wages and benifits of Walmart? Seems like a no brainer to me if you are of that philosophy…lots of poor folks are helped at the cost of a few Walmart workers.
Even if you look at it that ‘society’ has to make up to the Walmart workers in the fact that they have poor wages and benifits…because ‘the poor’ don’t really PAY for that kind of thing. It shifts the burden on the middle class (I’m just blowing through the fact that this is an entirely debatable subject here and playing devils advocate btw). So ‘the poor’ seem to generally make out of this at ever angle I can think of…they get goods at arguably the cheapest prices with no real cost to themselves, as they SAVE money.
Did I say that? If so its not what I meant (or perhaps I was trying to be funny). Lets see…
No, I seem to be saying here that workers take their own situation into account when they shop out their labor. i.e. they CHOOSE to work where they work. They could go work for Safeway or Sears instead of Walmart for instance if they thought they would get a better deal there (and if the wages and benifits would overcome, say, a longer commute or some other problem).
I think the confusing part is this: 'So…if me, a blue collar worker, can save $50/week on groceries (or other odds and ends) compared to going somewhere else, but if that (supposedly) costs the folks working at Walmart something in wages…well, thats THEIR choice. ’
Basically I’m saying that a non-Walmart blue collar worker is going to look at things from their own perspective. It is a rather confusing paragraph and I assume this is where things got hazy.
Well, my point is that workers DON’T take into account the Greater Good™…they shop out their labor based on their own needs and wants, not on some concept of The Greater Good™. My JOKE was that folks in this thread should be happy with Walmart because it DOES help out The Greater Good™…so why all the bitching. Though as I said in my last post (we are kind of talking past each other posting atm) its a joke with a core of truth to it…IF you happen to belong to that philosophy (which I’m not saying you do btw).
In other words, WalMart’s much-lauded business model consists of getting governments to subsidize it by paying for the basic needs that its employees can’t afford on their wages?
Hey, if people in general want to use WalMart as a kind of semi-competitive, supply-chain-managed pseudo-capitalist version of the old Soviet “People’s Commissariats” or whatever they called them, I guess that’s cool. Getting cheap food and clothes to the struggling masses is certainly a worthy cause, and worth shelling out some taxpayer dollars for. I just don’t understand why anybody would consider it a shining example of capitalist market-driven success.
No prob, I think we eventually achieved communication.
You can’t be serious. Do you honestly think that is the only key to its success? Not the inventory management system that they created, not the marketing studies they do, not the supplier management methods… just paying rock bottom wages? Please tell me you’re being facetious.
Maybe not. While WalMart may earn more per dollar of sales than Costco, I did a little digger deeping.
Over the past 5 years, WalMart has seen a decline in the value of its stock. Over the same time period, Costco is up around 60%. Most of Costco’s appreciation vis-a-vis WalMart has occurred in the last two years.
I will admit I’m surprised by the investment return numbers. I think that WalMart’s continual bad press is hurting it, but I will confess that I haven’t done a deeper dive into their books and records (nor am I going to). WalMart’s has lower P/E and a greater dividend yield, but Costco’s balance sheet is stronger (however, not enough in my own* amateur analytical opinion to warrant a 70% difference in return over the past 60 months).
*My own experience has been with post-trade portfolio analytics, not specific company, economic, or sector analytics. I’ve worked closely with them, as we share a lot of the same data and concepts (and I usually had the quickest access to reams of historical data). Of course, that was all before I became a consultant and now help people implement departments on post-trade portfolio analytics, among other areas of expertise
Of course I’m not being entirely serious, John, since of course WalMart’s business model is much more complicated than that. However, paying rock-bottom wages (and letting governments and taxpayers pick up the slack on the basic needs of their impoverished employees) is clearly a key feature of this model. Because apparently none of its other geewhizzier features like integrated supply chains and so forth is capable of making enough money for WalMart that they can afford to pay better than rock-bottom wages.
Why should they pay better than rock-bottom, but legal, wages (conveniently ignoring the labor issues certain stores and the firm has had)? What is in it for WalMart?
People still flock to the store. Many, many people only care about low price. WalMart provides low price. And why shouldn’t WalMart legally maximize its profit? If WalMart couldn’t find employees to work for minimum wage, it would have to pay a higher wage. It’s not like the businesses being displaced are paying their fewer employees higher wages.
Personally, I feel this is very shortsighted - not from WalMart’s view, but from the people who shop WalMart’s view. (Did I butcher the grammar there? I don’t, however, fault WalMart. I fault WalMart shoppers. Let the crickets chirp in the stores, and let stockroom overflow for lack of employees to move the merchandise, and WalMart would change.
That’s for them to decide. My point was simply that if their low wages end up costing taxpayers extra money in subsidized benefits, then their low prices aren’t necessarily such a bargain.
And as you pointed out (and thanks for the research, btw!), their rock-bottom wages and consequent image problems may actually be hurting their stock value.
I don’t know if WalMart can or cannot afford to pay higher wages, and I don’t really care. There may be a few companies out there that purposely pay employees more than the going rate, but not many. WalMart complie with minimum wage laws (in fact most employees make more than MW), and is under no obligation to provide benefits simply because you think they should.
Your argument rests on the assumptiont that if those employees were not working at WalMart, they would be employed somewhere else making either better pay or getting more benefits. That’s something we simply cannot know. And it’s unclear exactly which WalMart shoppers are “subsidizing” the healthcare benefits of WalMart employees. In fact, the poor the shopper is, the less likely he or she is paying much state or federal income tax in the first place.
WalMart, as stated in my cite, brings jobs - low-paying, but jobs nonetheless - into an area. WalMart will employ unskilled labor - there are many jobs for those who’ve only gotten HS diplomas.
The question isn’t that government has to subsidize WalMart workers, then. The question should be “What is the delta in government subsidies after a WalMart opens?” Is WalMart responsible for increasing the subsidies arising from displaced businesses, or does it lower the subsidies by expanding the local/regional work force and moving people to lessened subsidies. Is WalMart preventing these people from getting jobs that would provide greater benefits? If it is, why aren’t these people already in those jobs and the WalMart job pool dry?
Which laws are Walmart breaking? Or to put it another way, why exactly should Walmart do more than the law requires?
Ridiculous. Of course they are. Walmart works within the system as its been layed out. Its as ‘free’ a market as the government has permitted it to be…and Walmart excels in that arena.
:rolleyes: This is the well-known “Bricker Diversion”, where a debate about ethics, practicality, or some other issue is pointlessly diverted to a trivial question of legality. Yes John, I already know that WalMart is currently under no legal obligation to provide particular employee benefits (although some states may change that with new laws about mandating employer health care contributions). There’s no debate there.
The non-trivial points that we’ve actually been debating about include the following:
Should WalMart provide better employee benefits and/or higher wages?
Could WalMart afford to provide better employee benefits and/or higher wages and still stay in business?
If WalMart employees are dependent on taxpayer-funded services to supply basic needs that they can’t afford on their low wages, how does that affect WalMart’s claim to be a free-market success story or to save consumers money overall?
Well, like I said, if people want to use low-wage retail business as a form of government-subsidized income redistribution, where the “merchant” charges poor customers low prices for goods, pays poor employees low wages, and makes up the difference with public services funded by higher-income taxpayers—sort of a semi-capitalist version of the old Soviet government shops—it’s okay by me. I just don’t see the point of calling it a free-market success story.
Well, your cite is one study on one area. Other studies have indicated that sometimes the jobs it brings are offset or exceeded by jobs lost elsewhere (see below).
AFAICT, the answer appears to be some of each. In economically depressed areas where WalMart causes a net gain in jobs, it replaces some subsidies with employment. In areas where WalMart successfully competes with higher-wage businesses, though, it depresses wages and puts more strain on taxpayer-funded services. A sample study on California (pdf) finds that:
Another “Bricker Diversion”. (That is, assuming you don’t really want to get into the question of whether WalMart actually is violating labor laws as part of its company policy, as alleged in more than forty lawsuits.) Nobody is alleging that paying low wages is illegal.
It’s called a lead-in to the discussion. But thanks for playing anyway.
And that’s called an ad hominem. People are saying that WalMart should pay higher wages. I called them on that. Hence this debate has ensued.
No. That’s the debate you want to have. I’m still waiting to hear why WalMart should pay higher wages.
And that’s an argument contrary to fact. There is nothing in the definition of the free market that includes providing social benefits to workers, and there is nothing “Soviet” about paying for those benefits thru taxation.
How you figure? An ad hominem fallacy is the use of a personal attack or criticism rather than responding to the substance of an argument. I criticized the substance of your (trivial) argument that WalMart has no legal obligation to pay higher wages. I did not offer any insults or criticism of you personally, nor have I ever done so AFAIR.
Because when it doesn’t, it undermines the claims of market advocates that market systems make poor people prosperous. If hardworking WalMart employees earn so little that they need government-subsidized Medicaid and food stamps just to make ends meet, then WalMart can hardly claim to be a free-market success story.
Well, it resembles Soviet practice in the sense that it is socialist. It is certainly not part of what is generally considered “the free market”.
Which market advocates make that claim? I don’t. The market system may allow more people to become prosperous than a socialist system, but it doesn’t make anyone prosperous all its own.
I think you’re setting up a false dichotomy. I can’t think of anyone other than the strictest Libertarian who would say taxes = socialism. The Soviet system was characterized more by a cap on wages than a floor, and by government ownership and control of all industry. You are cherry picking one feature, and an unimportant feature at that, and using that as if it were some key, defining feature.
