Walmart raising minimum wage, citing tax reform

[Synobun]

A solid portion of those employees only have Walmart as a choice to do their shopping at. No doubt a sizable percentage of this wage increase will end up flowing back into Walmart's coffers anyways.

 

[rah]

Do walmart employees get a discount?

 

[Synobun]

Do walmart employees get a discount?

They don't where I'm at, but I do know some stores give gift cards as incentives and bonuses.

I was mostly referring to the common retail giant conundrum where Walmart replaces all the smaller stores in a rural area. Whether you want groceries, electronics, or furniture, chances are you'll be going to Walmart instead of anywhere else. Amazon challenged that with their online dominance but Walmart is beginning to cut into that as well.

Which spins back around to my point about their profits. Reporting on their profits separates between their physical retail profit and their online profit. It's very clever. Walmart can tell people that their profits are dropping and as a result they can't give their employees better wages. They had a small drop in profit last year in physical retail but a huge increase (>60%) in online sales.

 

[rah]

I knew what you were referring to, especially in rural areas.
I have a relative that works at Target and they get a decent employee discount so I was just wondering since in more urban areas you'll find them in direct competition in location.

 

[Lexicus]

it safe to say we were wrong?

No. This is a stupid PR stunt. It has nothing to do with "tax reform". Additionally i saw in the news today that walmart is also closing many Sam's club locations and laying off workers. So yeah, if yoi believe walmart on this I've got a bridge to sell you.

 

[fishjie]

Walmart, Comcast, AND AT&T are all doing stealth layoffs

http://www.newsweek.com/comcast-fir...r-pledging-give-employees-1000-bonuses-771789
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4690197
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...e-announces-layoffs-on-same-day-idUSKBN1F01N8

Bbbbbb...bb.b.b.b.but AT&T and comcast said net neutrality was hurting business and praise god emperor dump for lowering taxes and hiring ajit pai!!!

gullible much dump supporters? look i hate communism as much as the next guy, and i enjoy ben shapiro triggering snowflakes, but FFS, trickle down economics doesn't work. this tax plan will make rich useless empty suit executives even richer, even though they provide no value, and in the case of comcast are a cancer

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was mostly referring to the common retail giant conundrum where Walmart replaces all the smaller stores in a rural area. Whether you want groceries, electronics, or furniture, chances are you'll be going to Walmart instead of anywhere else. Amazon challenged that with their online dominance but Walmart is beginning to cut into that as well.

I buy some groceries online from Walmart - cat milk and a few things that are considerably cheaper there than from my local grocery store I use for other stuff. I've bought furniture from Walmart (would never buy furniture from Amazon due to the hassles of returning it if necessary).

The actual process of searching for the stuff on these two companies' websites is night and day. With Amazon I can put in the search keywords and usually expect to find what I want.

Whoever programmed Walmart's search algorithms is stark raving nuts. I've looked for things in the grocery department and ended up with a page of hardware items. I've looked for kitchen towels and ended up with a page of Barbie stuff. I looked up mirrors and was informed on the page that their mirrors of the sort that most people have on their bathroom walls are 2" x 8" x 3.5". I ended up contacting them and told them that I know they sell a lot of assemble-it-yourself items, but did they extend that to smashing mirrors and making the customer glue them back together? It wasn't just a typo that should have been feet instead of inches, because I don't want a mirror that's 8 feet tall - and can't imagine any bathroom mirror that large.

So Walmart is a frustrating experience for shopping online, shipping is not free unless you buy $50 worth of stuff, and my last two experiences with delivery were sub-par. It beats me how a delivery driver can phone me and say, "How do I get there?" and it turns out he's in the parking lot but just doesn't know how to buzz my suite. Of course what they're hoping is to be told, "I'll come and get it myself," but I won't do that. I pay to have stuff delivered to my home, and my home is neither in the lobby nor the parking lot.

 

[Synobun]

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.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

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 think they are counting on making up their handicap with 'store pick up' orders. In a lot of major urban areas there doesn't seem to be any real progress towards a solution to 'front porch shopping.' The craze of believing that "I'm talking to you from miles away through my ring doorbell" will actually secure packages left on the doorstep is losing steam fast. So, order from Amazon hit or miss who gets the package isn't really more convenient for a lot of people than whipping through their local WalMart is.

 

[Berzerker]

hmm...maybe the pr stunt has a reason - 63 Sam's Clubs are closing

 

[Timsup2nothin]

hmm...maybe the pr stunt has a reason - 63 Sam's Clubs are closing

That's how they are paying for the raises in the PR stunt.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Walmart has historically been either:
1. A job for people who work part-time
2. A transitional job
3. A student or sometimes an retiree job.

That is not what it is postNAFTA. People are trying to make ends meet by working at Walmart which is impossible. It was not designed to be a full time job to support a family.

Let's go back to the year NAFTA became law.
In 1993, a factory worker might make $23,132 or at 2080 hours per year worked that is $11.12 per hour.

Accounting for inflation the equivalent is $19.24 today.

Walmart workers could never earn so much per hour. Walmart is unable to replace a standard industrial job and the great benefits in 1993.

How much does Walmart pay?
The low end cashier's job is $9.09. It is absolute poverty...a fraction of what a high school grad might have made in 1993.

This is why people are poor today. Inflation is killing the American worker. We are paying people less money than people made nearly 25 years later because there are no good jobs like there used to be. In purchasing power, it is equivalent to making $5.25 back in 1993. And if you are old like me, that is absymal.

If a young person cannot find some job paying more, you are creating a generation of people on poverty and it will become a cause for revolution.

The only rational solution is national debt forgiveness.

The government raising the minimum wage will create inflation in a drastic way as others demand that if minimum wage is going up, my wages should proportionally go up too. That will tank the US economy.

But we can forgive liabilities easily. We do this for big business all the time. Say we forgive the student loans some young Walmart worker has who has yet found a full time with benefits job.in her area of expertise. Well suddenly she has more money in effect since she no longer has a payment and a liability ( and she is paying the minimum). So her income didn't increase...so it is not inflationary. No minimum wage increased. It didn't stall the economy. No one demanded a proportional increase. And most likely it stimulates the economy.

 

[rah]

I saw today that software developers average 100K a year and does not always require a degree. Now I know this doesn't help the average walmart worker but many people can adapt to where the opportunities are. I've hired minimum waged phone center workers and gave them the opportunity. Not all worked out, but most of them did. While working in health care is more expensive to train, pay is good and there are lots of openings. Some people are just making bad decisions. If people want to only do stuff they love, they'd better love it enough to know if may not compensate them greatly. I can respect them though. It's all about the choice.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

People are trying to make ends meet by working at Walmart which is impossible. It was not designed to be a full time job to support a family.

Well, that's a pretty poor plan since the jobs destroyed by WalMart weren't 'designed' that way.

I'm not actually agreeing about this "design" being an actual thing, BTW.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

The best solution is finding better real jobs for Americans and not trying to penalize Walmart nor insist that it is anything more than a transitional job.

Which means we have to make things in America again.

We can't just make up new service jobs. What would they do???

We change our trade policy to benefit American workers. Other nations should likewise do what best benefits their citizens.

Free Trade has NOT always been our policy. It is a disasterous policy but that is water under the bridge. We don't start a trade war. We stop buying imported goods and wish other nations well. We cannot afford cheap goods that result in no jobs for young people.

It is immoral and unethical to have a Trade policy that benefits only the extremely wealthy.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Walmart is the largest employer in the US and often the largest employer in a given town. To expect it to be a stepping stone type job is ridiculous. And to expect "stepping stone" jobs to still not pay enough to live on is beyond that.

Which means we have to make things in America again.

Avg goods producing job: $26.11
Avg manufacturing job: $25.60
Avg service job: $25.11

That's not the problem.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

We don't start a trade war. We stop buying imported goods and wish other nations well.

Mechanism? Massive import taxes to unfairly tilt the marketplace to domestically produced goods is basically the definition of "trade war." Pleas to Americans to "think of the consequences" and volunteer to pay more for domestically produced goods have gotten us as far as they are likely to get us...which is, not far.

What else ya got?

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Walmart is the largest employer in the US and often the largest employer in a given town. To expect it to be a stepping stone type job is ridiculous. And to expect "stepping stone" jobs to still not pay enough to live on is beyond that.



Avg goods producing job: $26.11
Avg manufacturing job: $25.60
Avg service job: $25.11

That's not the problem.

How many people work in those sectors? These jobs have been decimated as a percentage of American workers. Walmart should never be the largest employer. That is a terrible sign and should be self-evident.

Any government pressure to increase wages will have an inflationary effect. That is basic economics and human nature to get more too.

What businesses typically do in the face of higher wages is invest in automation and cut jobs. So raising the minimum wage destroys jobs that the poor desperately need.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I'd say the same about mining or factory work which is often severely physically compromising.

If everyone at Walmart earned enough to live it wouldn't be as bad.

 

[Lexicus]

A solid portion of those employees only have Walmart as a choice to do their shopping at. No doubt a sizable percentage of this wage increase will end up flowing back into Walmart's coffers anyways.

Tfw the economy is a circular flow of money