Walmart raising minimum wage, citing tax reform

[Zkribbler]

That's cool. What's the point of trying to show you? It will continue to be so clear as young people riot that they have no hope and not become of Trump, but have been suffering for eight brutal years before he took office!​

Actually, hope began fading in 1973. However, the gas crisis took the blame. The Reagan instituted "supply side economics" with the promise that, if we redirected them monies to the rich, it would trickle down to the rest of us. It didn't. The middle class saw no raise in income until a small bump at the end of Clinton's second term. Then W doubled down on Reagan's policies, and crashed the economy. Then Kansas and Louisiana tried again, and crashed their economies, Now Trump has stepped up to the plate with the theory: If at first you don't succeed: fail, fail again.

 

[Zkribbler]

Raising the minimum wage is not the problem. The problem is better jobs and alternative housing.

Those are two different problems:
Working poor who cannot do not make enough to provide for their families.
Middle class who are priced out of the housing market.

 

[Hygro]

I don’t understand why inflation, which has been low since the end of the Volcker Shock and the deregulation of natural gas(!), is somehow the culprit of stagnant wages. When real wages doubled between the end of WW2 and ~1970, inflation was twice per annum what it has been in the past 30 years, a time of stagnant wages.

 

[Bamspeedy]

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.

Not so much "Economy is so good it's raise and bonus time" and more like "The taxes we expected to pay was suddenly cut by 1/3, we can give a bit back" (and yes, I can agree they are using tax plan for their own PR campaign, at least they aren't keeping ALL the savings in their own pocket). And not so much "Economy is losing momentum" and more like "With Amazon breathing down our neck we don't have the luxury of keeping around those money-draining locations anymore."

Amazon has done more to close Walmart stores than Trump, Obama and Bush have ever done.

Never liked the idea of Sam's Club anyway (the target of this years layoffs, last couple of years it was Wal-mart stores), I mean, buying in bulk is sometimes nice, but I wouldn't buy in bulk often enough to make the membership worth it.

My previous post wasn't just referring to this year and to Wal-mart, but over the years across many different industries, on this forum (and elsewhere) it seems like to some people it's just incomprehensible that a business can actually make a profit and have layoffs at the same time.

My bonus was $750. Needed 20 years seniority to get the $1000. Thing is, this tax plan will still be in effect next year, but I'm betting next year we won't get a bonus again.

Will find out cost of living increase in the next 2-3 weeks, but that's facility-specific (I may get more than others, or I may get less, or no increase at all.)

 

[civvver]

I don't know if we can ever make low skill jobs capable of supporting families on minimum wage. Raising minimum wage can have some bad side effects as well. A lot of america's heyday was from an era when we were the only manufacturing super power because all the others were recovering from war, and our labor force was organized and couldn't be exported. Now were in the global information age. It's just not possible without literally starting trade wars and forcing companies to keep high paying jobs here.

What we can do is simply provide the vehicle for people to move out of those jobs. We need to fix the education system, I don't mean the quality (though some k-12 districts are lacking) but the price. College is way too expensive, and also many parts of it not necessary to procure a high paying job in a tech or other field. Government should be taxing these mega corps like walmart more and using it to pay for college. If you look at college pricing charts there's a clear relation to the price vs the amount of government funding they receive.

Oh another thing, build more colleges. Colleges can also charge way more because they still turn away students at the end of the day. Most state universities are filled to capacity, thus demand is way above the supply and tuition will always rise in that case.

This is all going to come to even more of a head in the next 20-30 years as autonomous jobs replace a lot of these mundane ones. Walmart jobs won't even exist. There are already self checkouts at many locations, but just wait until some smart robot is checking out your items and smart forlifts man all the warehouses. I see the trucking industry coming to a crisis a lot sooner than walmart though. Autonomous vehicles are coming very soon and currently trucking is a fairly decent wage with a low barrier to entry. It's just kind of a crap job so they have to pay decent. But all those jobs will be easily automated soon. People will have to move into higher skill jobs and I think at some point we have to have a real discussion about basic income based on the productivity of society.

If computers and robots can replace all of our jobs, shouldn't we all reap the benefits of having the possibility of such a high standard of living? But right now our economy isn't set up that way. Instead all the increased productivity gains is converted to more profits which go to corporate owners and major shareholders only. Currently the rich have to pay the working class at least enough to buy the produced goods, but if the working class is replaced with robots who need to buy nothing and only produce, now you don't have to pay anything.

 

[Berzerker]

There's a couple problems with blaming Amazon for closing down brick and mortar stores - btw, brick and mortar stores are where Amazon usually gets its stuff - for a while Amazon was exempt from sales taxes but the big problem I have with eg Walmart is they typically carry crap. I wouldn't mind paying a couple extra bucks for an item locally if it was what I wanted.

edit typo

 

[Lexicus]

I don’t understand why inflation, which has been low since the end of the Volcker Shock and the deregulation of natural gas(!), is somehow the culprit of stagnant wages. When real wages doubled between the end of WW2 and ~1970, inflation was twice per annum what it has been in the past 30 years, a time of stagnant wages.

I think it's because the reactionary politics of the petit-bourgeois, whose relatively tiny savings are threatened by inflation, dominate the discourse around inflation.

 

[Hygro]

I think it's because the reactionary politics of the petit-bourgeois, whose relatively tiny savings are threatened by inflation, dominate the discourse around inflation.

hmm that would fit the demo and the motive but what mechanism makes them inflation vulnerable? Most of their savings is in the inflation proof house and maybe a 401k...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

hmm that would fit the demo and the motive but what mechanism makes them inflation vulnerable? Most of their savings is in the inflation proof house and maybe a 401k...

They don't have to actually be inflation vulnerable for them to be used to drive the conversation. Just tell them they are inflation vulnerable.

 

[civvver]

hmm that would fit the demo and the motive but what mechanism makes them inflation vulnerable? Most of their savings is in the inflation proof house and maybe a 401k...

Cus very few jobs pay cost of living increases. It's all "performance" based raises which are very hard to get after you've been established for a while at a company without switching jobs. Every if your performance is amazing they won't pay to retain you until you get competing offers and even then many companies can't do it cus of policy. It's ridiculous but many companies have hard caps on raises and softer ones on new hires.

Meanwhile your health insurance and car insurance premiums jump 20% every year, the cost of ground beef doubles, utilities go up, life just gets more expensive. And people will blame that on inflation.

 

[warpus]

My employer gives us 1.3% cost of living wage increases once a year, and every 2 years a performance based increase. My wage has been increasing way faster than inflation over the last 10 years, and I've been working in the same dept.

From what I've heard from others cost of living wage increases seem to be common unless you work at a minimum wage job or at some small mom n pop type company. Maybe it's a Canadian thing?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

COLA adjustments are standard practice for reputable salaried firms, as are performance-based increases on top of that.

I don't agree with civver on this at all unless we are only talking about minimum wage jobs.

 

[rah]

Yeah, we get 2-3% raises every year. More if you're actually promoted.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah the 2-3% is typical and is meant to cover both COLA and performance.

 

[rah]

Maybe civvver should find a different employer.

And maybe a different car insurance company too. Unless his increases are due to accidents.
Mine hasn't increased 20% a year ever. Very rarely increases at all.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah mine went down with age.

 

[warpus]

Hmm maybe we get performance increases every year too. It's tough to say because our director is really slow with doing our evaluations. I think they are *supposed to* happen every year, but he does them every 2 years. I should take a closer look at my pay stub.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

You should also look closer at what the written policy on pay increases is, if there is one at all. Most companies don't write that stuff down because it provokes liability issues but government entities like state/provincial universities are often different. If the policy is that there are reviews yearly and you don't get one, your employer done goofed really bad and you should hold them to that if you can.

 

[warpus]

What he does is he uses our performance review from last year to determine how much of a pay bump we should get. So every other year we get a review, and each review gets us two pay bumps. I *think*. But yeah, I should doublecheck

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I really hate how secretive companies are about reviews and pay. I had one employer promise me a 'massive' raise but wouldn't tell me how much it was before they offiicially gave it to me as a matter of policy. I walked because they were too afraid to have an honest five minute conversation with me.

I also work with a lot of people who think they can be fired for talking about how much they make. They can technically be fired for it in as much as anyone can do anything, but it's highly illegal to fire someone for talking about their pay. It's one of the few protections the US affords workers that the government takes seriously. If you get fired for it then you just won a small jackpot in fines the government can and will collect on your behalf if you file a claim.

Sure, it's not always wise to share that information, specifically because some people are immature or inexperienced with negotiating salaries and will basically try and complain, "Well Warpus makes this much so I should too!". That's just terrible negotiation. And it can breed resentment, again because people are immature.

But I think as a society we'd actually be a lot more mature if we all stopped acting like salary information is taboo. Talking and sharing information is a tide that raises everyone's boats, unlike tax cuts for the rich.