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Walmart has less than 3% profit margin. It'd go bankrupt if it paid its employees $15/hour.

• ransom1538 9y ago
  If walmart can't support a decent wage - then they should go bankrupt and let middle class persons own and run small businesses: hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, ice cream stores, etc. Owning a business near a walmart means competing with floods of cheap off loaded goods from china -- operated by persons using government subsidies.
  • Houshalter 9y ago
    It's more like the other way around. Small businesses are much more sensitive to increases in wages than big efficient companies like walmart. That's why Walmart has supported increases in the minimum wage in the past, because they know it hurts their competitors more than them. They just increase their prices and put the increased costs onto consumers and keep the same profit. But even if it wasn't this way, so what? Walmart isn't making their employees worse off. They are giving them low skill jobs that the economy is desperately short on. Companies like Apple hire orders of magnitude less low skill employees relative to their profit than Walmart. No one is protesting Apple over that. If we just taxed companies like that bit more, and distributed the money amongst the poor, it would be vastly more effective than making walmart pay a few percent more. In a few years Walmart will automate most of their jobs anyways. As many industries already have. Increasing the minimum wage doesn't solve that.
• greglindahl 9y ago
  If you compare Costco to Sam's Club, you'll notice that it's not that simple.
  • qmarchi 9y ago
    Costco doesn't have customer service. I can walk around and never see a single person. At Sam's, I'm constantly bombarded with questions of if I need help.
• smileysteve 9y ago
  Another post indicates that they already pay hourly employees $13.85 average.