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> Thereby reducing the scope of jobs for which they can hire to ones that return sufficient value for that, sure. The fact that they are BILLIONAIRES seems to

> Thereby reducing the scope of jobs for which they can hire to ones that return sufficient value for that, sure. The fact that they are BILLIONAIRES seems to indicate there is a decent amount of headroom to their business model. > This argument is equivalent to: “No one whose full time labor returns less value to the employer than would merit pay above the poverty line should be employed at all; nor should anyone whose half-time pay would leave them eligible for food stamps.” No. My argument is: if your business model can't sustain people at a living wage, then YOUR BUSINESS SHOULD NOT EXIST. Remember that walmart put a lot of small shops out of businesses - many of those shops paid their employees enough to live without needing food stamps. They sucked up all the air, if they can't sustain their workers, they need to stop sucking up the air and make room for businesses that can. edit: for details. the article I linked suggested that walmart employees receive $6.2 billion in gov assistance (2014) - wikipedia suggests that walmart made $14.8 billion (2020). Seems like they DEFINITELY have the headroom to pay their employees that difference. Why are we even arguing about this? Walmart would have made $8.6 billion and government would have at least 6.2 billion more for schools, PPE, covid relief, etc. nobody needs to lose their job, NOBODY EVEN NEEDS TO STOP BEING A BILLIONAIRE to at LEAST get people off food stamps.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The fact that they are BILLIONAIRES seems to indicate there is a decent amount of headroom to their business model. Does it? If you multiply a small per-labor-hour surplus by 1000+ hours per worker per year and lots of workers, you can accumulate lots of money per year and become a billionaire, but that doesn't mean you have lots of headroom, just lots of scale. > No. My argument is: if your business model can't sustain people at a living wage, then YOUR BUSINESS SHOULD NOT EXIST. Sure, and when you kill all the businesses that can't pay every entry level employee enough for a comfortable independent life, who is going to pay the additional public benefit costs to give even minimum poverty support to the much wider pool of unemployed and unemployable? Your plan is lose (for the people who would be employed but now won't)-lose (for the people unemployed in either case for whom there is now less revenue to provide support)-lose (for the capital owners who are now prohibited from employing people whom they otherwise could, mutually profitably). Taxing capital gains fairly and using the proceeds to provide better universal support while reducing employment friction is win-win-mixed for the same groups. > the article I linked suggested that walmart employees receive $6.2 billion in gov assistance (2014) - wikipedia suggests that walmart made $14.8 billion (2020). Seems like they DEFINITELY have the headroom to pay their employees that difference. Their 2020 net income was more than double their 2019 net income, of $6.67 billion. Tax net capital income more, and you don't ever switch a profitable business into a losing one by your policy, increase employment costs and you make profitable decisions to employ people into unprofitable ones.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  You’ve cherry picked the one bad yearwalmart has had in recent memory: 2019. From 2006 to 2020 they have made over 10 billion per year except for 2018 (9ish billion) and 2019 (6ish). They CAN afford to pay their staff a living wage. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-in... Again, by describing the choice as bad job (walmart) or no job, you are ignoring the fact that walmart did not CREATE jobs - they merely consolidated jobs from many small businesses. It’s not a choice between walmart or nothing. It’s a choice between an exploitive business model, or non-exploitive business models.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Again, by describing the choice as bad job (walmart) or no job, you are ignoring the fact that walmart did not CREATE jobs - they merely consolidated jobs from many small businesses. Driving up the minimum cost of labor isn’t going to bring back smaller, less-efficient businesses, it will make them less viable, too. Higher minimum wage actually reinforces the advantages of scale, since smaller acheivable average returns means the importance of being able to internally diversify (e.g., against regional problems) becomes more important to survival. > It’s a choice between an exploitive business model, or non-exploitive business models. It's a choice between a government model that chooses to actively harm the employed, the unemployed, and employers irrespective of business model to express moral outrage at certain business models and one that wants to use the power of taxation and spending to reduce the power of business models to be oppressive.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The fact that they are BILLIONAIRES seems to indicate there is a decent amount of headroom to their business model. Does it? If you multiply a small per-labor-hour surplus by 1000+ hours per worker per year and lots of workers, you can accumulate lots of money per year and become a billionaire, but that doesn't mean you have lots of headroom, just lots of scale. > No. My argument is: if your business model can't sustain people at a living wage, then YOUR BUSINESS SHOULD NOT EXIST. Sure, and when you kill all the businesses that can't pay every entry level employee enough for a comfortable independent life, who is going to pay the additional public benefit costs to give even minimum poverty support to the much wider pool of unemployed and unemployable? Your plan is lose (for the people who would be employed but now won't)-lose (for the people unemployed in either case for whom there is now less revenue to provide support)-lose (for the capital owners who are now prohibited from employing people whom they otherwise could, mutually profitably). Taxing capital gains fairly and using the proceeds to provide better universal support while reducing employment friction is win-win-mixed for the same groups. > the article I linked suggested that walmart employees receive $6.2 billion in gov assistance (2014) - wikipedia suggests that walmart made $14.8 billion (2020). Seems like they DEFINITELY have the headroom to pay their employees that difference. Their 2020 net income was more than double their 2019 net income, of $6.67 billion. Tax net capital income more, and you don't ever switch a profitable business into a losing one by your policy, increase employment costs and you make profitable decisions to employ people into unprofitable ones.

kennywinker 6y ago
You’ve cherry picked the one bad yearwalmart has had in recent memory: 2019. From 2006 to 2020 they have made over 10 billion per year except for 2018 (9ish billion) and 2019 (6ish). They CAN afford to pay their staff a living wage. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-in... Again, by describing the choice as bad job (walmart) or no job, you are ignoring the fact that walmart did not CREATE jobs - they merely consolidated jobs from many small businesses. It’s not a choice between walmart or nothing. It’s a choice between an exploitive business model, or non-exploitive business models.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Again, by describing the choice as bad job (walmart) or no job, you are ignoring the fact that walmart did not CREATE jobs - they merely consolidated jobs from many small businesses. Driving up the minimum cost of labor isn’t going to bring back smaller, less-efficient businesses, it will make them less viable, too. Higher minimum wage actually reinforces the advantages of scale, since smaller acheivable average returns means the importance of being able to internally diversify (e.g., against regional problems) becomes more important to survival. > It’s a choice between an exploitive business model, or non-exploitive business models. It's a choice between a government model that chooses to actively harm the employed, the unemployed, and employers irrespective of business model to express moral outrage at certain business models and one that wants to use the power of taxation and spending to reduce the power of business models to be oppressive.