Walmart raising minimum wage, citing tax reform

[Cassius Critzer]

The basis for an hourly wage is paying the minimum that will maintain a low enough labor cost, such that with materials and costs of production and shipping and marketing, then the company can still make a profit. We cannot tell Walmart how much they should pay. That is up to Walmart. Insistance will just cause relocation.

Companies raise wages by market forces causing attrition in their labor supply as workers leave for better pickings.

Increasing the minimum wage will have a cascade inflationary effect.

No, the best solution is not to try to make Walmart work to replace an industrial job paradigm that worked we'll to have a robust middle class.

We do the debt forgiveness and stimulate the economy. We do that in stages.

If that is not inflationary, we try a sincere infrastructure plan to rebuild bridges, highways, crackingninfrastructure, sewer and city plumbing, electrical updates to the grid, replace the CRAZY ancient technology on our nuclear missile program, etc.

Then we created jobs and a thousand ancillary jobs that are stimulated by these and that provide services to the workers and businesses.

Then radically forgive the debt created and NOT issue municipal bonds. So taxes do not increase because liabilities did not increase.

Currency is DEBT and if you do not understand this conundrum, and how currency is created in the US economy by loans, then you will never understand what I am saying.

The banks create money every time they make a loan with money they never had. This is hugely inflationary. The government creates debt everytime it spends more than the revenue it takes in. So it creates more debt instruments (TBills, Notes, 30 year bonds) and then it exacerabtes inflation more.

Money is NOT equal to Currency. Money is based upon a standard and without a standard, then currency is just paper and truly a promissory note ie an I owe you.

And we have not even begun to talk about the crooked shell game of how debt instruments have insufficient buyers so the Federal Reserve buys these debt instruments with money it does not have. That is called monitizing the debt and it is super super shady. If others did it, it would be illegal.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

<---clipped away wall of random factoids, some of dubious truthfulness, all presented in a disjointed mash--->
you will never understand what I am saying.
<---clipped away more of the wall--->

How many of us would have to pretend to concede to your vast superiority in order for you to believe that we are all just too stupid to ever understand your vastly superior intellect and go away?

 

[Lexicus]

He's actually right that currency is debt and all spending is inflationary
But man does he get the significance of those facts wrong

 

[Timsup2nothin]

He's actually right that currency is debt and all spending is inflationary
But man does he get the significance of those facts wrong

There are a couple other correct statements scattered through his wall of text as well, but is there any point in confronting the falsehoods? I don't see any. So far every attempt is met with another random jumble of factoids. I suppose we could run some sort of analysis and see if the percentage of truth in the mash is rising over time...

 

[Cassius Critzer]

I think it's obvious what I am saying is actualy true and if so then it really is an illusion.

Which means completely changing paradigms about income and debt.

Why would anyone assume superiority? The objections you raise are meaningless. Can anyone be superior in a forum? In what way? If you toss a retort you presume stings, does it actually?

It's an illusion of oneupmanship that doesn't matter.

Likes and post counts are not currency. They are massaging the ego and meaningless. The only power is lent to you by choice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think it's obvious what I am saying is actualy true and if so then it really is an illusion.

Which means completely changing paradigms about income and debt.

Why would anyone assume superiority? The objections you raise are meaninglessm can anyone be superior in a forum? In what way? If you toss a retort you presume stings, does it actually?

It's an illusion.of oneupmanship that doesn't matter.

Wow. Deep. Or maybe it's just that this is the first list of disjointed statements that was short enough that I bothered to read it in quite a while.

I recommend paragraphs. They provide an illusion of structure that we lesser intellects find comforting.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

If I said you were right and I was wrong...would it be so? Would it matter? Does it make it make you feel better if I say something which acknowledges I am inferior? This is basis of bigotry. It also means I am lending you power. Too funny.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If I said you were right and I was wrong...would it be so? Would it matter? Does it make it make you feel better if I say something which acknowledges I am inferior? This is basis of bigotry. It also means I am lending you power. Too funny.

Putting all the disjointed statements together in a single line saves scrolling. Big improvement. Keep up the good work.

 

[Arwon]

I think I've said this before but having minimum wages rise sporadically and unpredictably based on the winds of electoral politics is pretty much a way to guarantee they have maximum dislocative effect on employment and business operation.

Predictable annual rises that relate to the cost of living make things far smoother, as businesses can plan them into forward year budgeting more easily than if they're guessing who's going to win the next state or federal election. Likewise knowing you're keeping pace with the cost of living is far more secure for workers.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

A cost of living adjustment is not a raise. It's pacification that does nothing as typically the inflation figure is underestimated.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have similarly poor experiences with Walmart's shipping provider. They outsource all of it to Loomis in my area, and they don't have any functional mechanism in place for delivery except "ringing the front door". They also demand a signature and ID for everything, no matter how innocuous the item. It's a shame because my supplements are almost half price from Walmart compared to the grocery store. There's pretty much no way for me to reliably receive the shipment unless I camp outside and intercept the delivery person.

I wouldn't be surprised if their shipping network is the biggest hurdle for them to overcome in order to properly compete with Amazon. No doubt they'll say it's the high costs of paying employees that's preventing them from competing.

I'm lucky here as far as Canada Post deliveries go. We finally got a parcel locker in the lobby, so it doesn't matter if I'm not home when the driver comes. He just puts the stuff in the locker and leaves a key in my mailbox. I'm impressed by how much he crammed into the locker the last time I checked - an Amazon order, Penguin Place order, and a clothing item.

The manager has said that if a delivery comes for me, I'm not home, and they can't put it in the locker, she's willing to hold on to it for me until I do get home.

The worst delivery experience had to be the UPS drivers on a couple of the routes in areas where I used to live. Holy crap, it seemed like the company gave the prospective employees an IQ and literacy test and deliberately hired the ones that proved both illiterate and stupid. One of them buzzed my apartment, but then instead of identifying himself so I could let him in, he just stood there and breathed into the intercom. Of course I thought it was a crank call and hung up (the intercom went through the phone in that place). Another time I was expecting a delivery of 6 shelves, and instead of buzzing my suite the driver left a note for me to pick them up across town. Then I started getting 6 different phone calls from their office claiming I wasn't home when they attempted delivery.

So I called them back, told them the driver was a liar, and he hadn't made any attempt at all to tell me he was here, and that I expected them to deliver the items properly.

Canada Post used to try that trick - claiming I wasn't home, when the fact was that I was looking out my front window at the van, wondering if they had my parcel that day, and finding the slip in my mailbox later. Of course that necessitated a phone call to the postal outlet to get the number for the supervisor, explaining that the driver hadn't buzzed my suite, knocked on the door, or even hollered at me from the parking lot. The reactions of various drivers when this happened ranged from "sorry" to literally yelling at me, threatening to throw my parcels down the stairs, swearing, and threatening that if I reported them, they would always just leave a card and not deliver anything.

Of course I reported that. It takes a lot to get a Canada Post driver reprimanded, let alone fired, but whatever was said to them must have worked. I haven't had a problem since one of the subs left a card instead of putting the items in the locker. When I complained about that, they said, "Well, maybe he didn't see the locker." I told them the locker is larger than a pop machine, prominently situated in the lobby, and it's impossible not to see it.

But the one that takes the cake is the driver who had to deliver the next day after leaving a card, and he said, "I didn't know I was supposed to deliver it." I managed to stop myself from asking, "You drive around all day with a van full of parcels. What did you THINK you were supposed to do with them?"

 

[Bamspeedy]

Do walmart employees get a discount?

I certainly thought this was nation-wide and would be surprised it isn't. I have a discount card that I got mailed to me from company headquarters so I know it's not a location-specific thing (limited to only my facility). 10% discount, but it doesn't apply to produce (supposedly the profit-margin is too small on it), cigarettes and alcohol. Around christmas time this discount is doubled.

Working in a warehouse I'm not sure I'll see a raise, as I earn double what the store workers earn, but even we have problems with staffing.

 

[rah]

Thanks. 10% isn't bad.

 

[Lexicus]

A cost of living adjustment is not a raise. It's pacification that does nothing as typically the inflation figure is underestimated.

Any evidence for this?

 

[cardgame]

It's all marketing because they, like AT*T, closed a bunch of stores and laid off tons of employees at the same time or immediately beforehand.

 

[Bamspeedy]

If workers make them money, why would they lay them off? Layoffs and store closings only happen because business at that location has slowed down to where those workers are not needed, or that location is no longer profitable, for several possible different reasons. I don't understand this argument of businesses laying off workers and closing stores to 'save' money if that location was making the company money.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Any evidence for this?

Here is a discussion of the phenomena in America.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp

In America, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) tries to underreport inflation as it supports the current administration. While consumer advocates and investment firms point out the numbers are massaged to be pallatable.

There are similar discussions about underestimating inflation in Germany. There, the government has strigently worked to artificially keep wages low, and working with businesses, but in by doing so, then trying maintain the labor force and not eliminate jobs.

Why do you think food packaging has resulted in smaller and smaller amounts of food? There is terrible inflation, but business have limits on increasing prices, and there is governance on packaging safety, so all that is left is using cheaper ingredients as substitutes and greatly reduced contents. This masks inflation.

For real estate, this is a real quandry for the USA. We are not a small country, but vast. Which means the estimates in some parts of California have little in common with rural Mississippi. So averaging these makes little sense. Doing this a lot results in squirrely housing inflation reports that then get jumbled into the CPI.

Calculating based upon cherry picking which goods and services will skew the result.

Ultimately you end up with high real estate prices and low wages, and thus reduce the size of the middle class as home ownership is simultaneously the most common and largest investment to preserve wealth, but also adds stability in case of life changes like job loss. It is typically semi-liquid to get your money out.

As a side note, the norm used to be Americans switched homes every seven years. Those homeowners who did this risky phenomena could lose money. Why? While inflation generally translates into a faster gain in real estate prices, the outstanding principal on home mortgage debt is whittled down so slowly in the first seven years (it is largerly interest only) and coupled with realtor commissions, then you could lose money.

http://time.com/money/4192512/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/
Super Walmarts have really damaged rural America. In some cases, they came in and the pricing was so low that local businesses could not compete. Then people changed jobs and worked for Walmart, but the damage was done and the local economy collapsed, then like a vampire, the Walmart closed...and on to the victim.

Consider the fact that Walmart has become such an unnaturally large employer and their past history as above, and the potential for economic abuse is huge and pervasive. Trying to force Walmart to pay more is highly likely to come back with a vengeance on consumers and employees.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If workers make them money, why would they lay them off? Layoffs and store closings only happen because business at that location has slowed down to where those workers are not needed, or that location is no longer profitable, for several possible different reasons. I don't understand this argument of businesses laying off workers and closing stores to 'save' money if that location was making the company money.

They wouldn't keep stores that aren't profitable, unless they had reason to expect them to pick up...like say strong economic growth. The reason this is coming up is that WalMart is chanting "Thanks be to the GOP, economy so good it's raise and bonus time" out one side of their mouth, but at the same time acknowledging that all the economic indicators actually say that the economy is losing momentum and locations that are marginal are not going to get better so its time for closures.

 

[Arwon]

Here is a discussion of the phenomena in America.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp

In America, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) tries to underreport inflation as it supports the current administration. While consumer advocates and investment firms point out the numbers are massaged to be pallatable.

There are similar discussions about underestimating inflation in Germany. There, the government has strigently worked to artificially keep wages low, and working with businesses, but in by doing so, then trying maintain the labor force and not eliminate jobs.

Why do you think food packaging has resulted in smaller and smaller amounts of food? There is terrible inflation, but business have limits on increasing prices, and there is governance on packaging safety, so all that is left is using cheaper ingredients as substitutes and greatly reduced contents. This masks inflation.

For real estate, this is a real quandry for the USA. We are not a small country, but vast. Which means the estimates in some parts of California have little in common with rural Mississippi. So averaging these makes little sense. Doing this a lot results in squirrely housing inflation reports that then get jumbled into the CPI.

Calculating based upon cherry picking which goods and services will skew the result.

Ultimately you end up with high real estate prices and low wages, and thus reduce the size of the middle class as home ownership is simultaneously the most common and largest investment to preserve wealth, but also adds stability in case of life changes like job loss. It is typically semi-liquid to get your money out.

As a side note, the norm used to be Americans switched homes every seven years. Those homeowners who did this risky phenomena could lose money. Why? While inflation generally translates into a faster gain in real estate prices, the outstanding principal on home mortgage debt is whittled down so slowly in the first seven years (it is largerly interest only) and coupled with realtor commissions, then you could lose money.

http://time.com/money/4192512/walmart-stores-closing-small-towns/
Super Walmarts have really damaged rural America. In some cases, they came in and the pricing was so low that local businesses could not compete. Then people changed jobs and worked for Walmart, but the damage was done and the local economy collapsed, then like a vampire, the Walmart closed...and on to the victim.

Consider the fact that Walmart has become such an unnaturally large employer and their past history as above, and the potential for economic abuse is huge and pervasive. Trying to force Walmart to pay more is highly likely to come back with a vengeance on consumers and employees.

It's unlikely that the downward bias caused by estimating substitution in the US CPI would cause such large differences as suggested in the two comparison Williams and Ransom estimates there (2-3% pa vs 5% pa and 8% pa is a massive gap, which would involve some pretty heroic substituting choices).

The Australian Bureau of Statistics CPI does not do substitution adjustments, and published research on their data to estimate how much this omission was upwardly biasing the CPI. The answer was about 0.25 percentage points a year which would take current CPI annual growth from about 1.8 to a bit over 2% a year. The two economies are broadly comparable which would seem to indicate that substitution in the US estimates couldn't be hiding a 3% or 5% higher annual CPI growth.

Edit: the BLS own estimates also suggest this level of impact from ditching the pure basket approach.

In any case, the use of geometric means (to estimate item level substitution) for most categories has had the effect of lowering the CPI by 0.2 or 0.3 percent per year.

I'd suggest there must be far deeper methodological differences behind those other inflation figures, perhaps a very different basket of goods that doesn't include the deflating cost of many durables.

(More generally, it's a pretty massive call to suggest lack of independence at statistical agencies. The decentralised US official statistical system is unusual, but stats agencies do still try to guard their independence pretty jealously. And the US agencies still do generally follow international standards for producing economic and labour statistics. From what I've seen I don't think it's fair to assume the BLS, Census Bureau et al are producing fake or politically biased data, they just do what other countries' agencies do too. I'll wait and see if Trump ruins the next census of course.)

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Australia is a great country but any comparisons are unlikely due to size difference, ethos,diverse religious belief, huge ethnic populations, and on and on. I think it isn't possible to compare the economies. Bureaucrats fiddle with workers to spin for the administration in shameful ways for political sound bites. Do it and you have job security. Resist and you harm the department's new budget requests.

Have you been to America? Visitors who spend more than a month who meet diverse people are surprised we are a nation at all because we are all so different.

More pay at Walmart and even more Walmart jobs is not much of a solution.

The only weapon the US had was controlling who qualified for food assitance. Since a large percentage of Walmart workers are poor, they end up on food assitance. Where do they buy their food: Walmart. So it becomes a nasty business where the US is supporting an evil corporation that pays lows only by government subsidies.

Cut that even for a 6 months and it would cripple Walmart.

I say had as food assistance has dropped to lower levels. Only an analyst could look at the data and see how much that affected Walmart.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/food-banks-fight-congress-food-stamp-cuts-242268

A constant subsidy is really facilitating poverty. It isn't finding a creative solution to financial freedom in a decent job.

American churches pick up the slack by foodbanks which they run and sponsor. Likewise they donate money to nonprofits for housing amd utility assistance. but there is a limit to what they can do.