If Walmart Paid Its Employees a Living Wage, How Much Would Prices Go Up?

[dcmfox]

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. Any Questions? eom

[Moostache]

2. But, but ....socialism!

The one thing missing in that equation is that it is not even necessary for WalMart to PASS ON THAT COST!!!!
The goddamn heirs to the Walton fortune already have several multiple of $4B EACH....if they can't stop taking MORE money form their daddy's business, then that's just too goddamn bad. The idea of the "American Dream" is not to reach a state of financial independence for 15 generations of your family like some goddamn modern day royalty...it was to make ENOUGH to live beyond the yoke of the fucking aristocracy in the first place.

Fuck WalMart and everyone of the company's leeches in upper management through the heirs...I want my $300,000,000 back WITH INTEREST and WITHOUT ANY FUCKING WHINING.

[daybranch]

7. retribution is necessary

for justice. The rich but politicians, we get screwed but when taxes eventually go up, after much damage has been done to our economy, no one in Government mentions clawing back the tax savings the rich received. Without a system that looks over period of time to instill fairness to ther people we have injustice. We need a progressive tax system which bases taxes over amounts earned over a period of years, For example if someone got a huge tax break even though they made millions, then when tax rates went up , we should add a couple more percent for them. In this way the rich would not spend all their time trying to buy our politicians, because a system would be set in place to make that less profitable. What do you think- a truly progressive tax system with a mechanism to remedy past injustice?

[bossy22]

8. business always passes on the cost

[TBF]

10. True - just another reason

why capitalism has to go.

[cui bono]

3. They left out the part about CEOs/owners/shareholders making less money to offset the raises.

Raising prices means the people are still footing the bill.

[archielev]

5. the point is...

Walmart is the largest privately owned company (I think) in the world. There are no shareholders. Just owners...the Waltons who are among the richest people in the world. They make Scrooge (before his visitation by the ghosts) look like Santa Claus. I think they can spare a few pennies so that their employees don't have to rely on food stamps to make ends meet.

[cui bono]

6. That's what I'm saying. They can afford to offset the cost themselves.

Why should the consumer cover it? The video makes no mention of the owners taking less in, just that it wouldn't cost the consumer much at all for them to raise prices in order to pay their employees more.

[rexcat]

12. Just a slight correction...

Wal-Mart is a publicly-traded company under the symbol WMT "owned" by the shareholders. Unfortunately the controlling shares are held by the Walton family.

[IronLionZion]

13. I was a shareholder, they are certainly public.

The Waltons have a good chunk of the shares.

This video is nice and appeals to liberals like us who would gladly pay more for stuff if workers got paid a living wage. But Walmart operates in the conservative model of cutting costs and prices as much as possible. They have variable pricing models that they use to adjust their prices by location based on demand for certain items and competition. Its why they have nonsensical cent values on their prices instead of rounded numbers or even $0.99.

Even in their Bentonville corporate headquarters, workers have to buy their own office supplies (from the company walmart) and many executives have to share offices and hotel rooms when traveling. They are a truly shitty company to work for at even the higher paid levels.

[progressoid]

9. +1

[Sherman A1]

4. They might not even have to raise prices

if the Walton family cut the amount they skim off the top, by the same percentage as indicated in the video.

[Taitertots]

11. The assertion that they could just raise the price to offset the cost is based on ignorance...

of the market price setting mechanism.

Rise the price, sell less, make less. The vast majority of the cost will fall to shareholders before it ever reaches the consumer.

Basically, if Walmart was in a position to make more revenue by increasing mac and cheese to $0.69 they would have already done it.