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Some firms are very profitable and still pay many workers very low, eg: Amazon and Walmart. They have money to pay more but they just don't.

pembrook 2y ago
Actually they don’t have the money. Retail is notoriously a cutthroat, thin margin business. Walmart is a public company, so you can just look at their profit margins. They’re sub-3%. Amazons margins are only higher because of AWS.
- djbusby 2y ago
  Walmart had a recent profit of like $5B. How is that not having money? https://stock.walmart.com/financials/quarterly-results/default.aspx https://stock.walmart.com/financials/quarterly-results/defau...
  - reaperman 2y ago
    $5B (quarterly profit) is $2,400 per employee, and a 3.2% profit margin on $611B of annual revenue. Yes, an extra $9,600 annual pay for each employee would make a huge difference to many, but how low of a profit will shareholders tolerate below 3.2%? Maybe a better argument would be to find a larger bucket (much larger than $5B/quarter) where Walmart could perhaps reduce spending and redirect that to rank-and-file employees?
    - pembrook 2y ago
      They made $11.292B total profit for all of 2023. Also, what's more likely; One of the most efficient supply chain coordination companies in history with razor thin margins is leaving tons of cost savings on the table...or...random internet commenters like us don't actually know that much about Walmart's business nor the basic economics of labor markets?
  - callalex 2y ago
    If they distributed that evenly to every single employee it would only work out to $2k/person. Not nothing, but not life changing.
    - gbear605 2y ago
      It was $2k/person per quarter, when most of those employees are making around $30k per year (average of $31k per one source I found). That’s a 30% raise on near-poverty salaries - that’s definitely life changing!
      - pembrook 2y ago
        You're basing that off of one of their highest profit quarters ever. 3X the average profit last year. Also, once you remove the profit incentive and kill the dividend (which goes into the world's pension funds via the public market), investors will no longer invest in the company. Being a capital starved business with insanely high COGS is a recipe for collapse the minute you have a downturn. And you'll probably say, "good! then the mom-and-pop stores will come back!" But the mom-and-pop stores, while aesthetically more pleasing to the elite, are in fact a far less efficient way to distribute food product so that would actually dramatically raise prices for consumers and decrease salaries & quality of life in many rural areas. Turns out things are the way they are for a reason, and there's no grand conspiracy keeping people down.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Not only would it be life changing for most of their employees, but consider how much the executives are making (https://www1.salary.com/WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html) How much do you think Suresh Kumar's life would change if he made 10 million next year instead of 14.5 million? Do you think he would have to stop buying the groceries he usually does, or that he would have to cancel a vacation? It wouldn't change his life at all. Same for the rest of the people in that list. Every one of them could take just a little less and increase pay for the people who actually do the majority of the work necessary for the company to function and be profitable and it would make no impact on the day to day lives of those executives. Absolutely nothing life changing.

pembrook 2y ago

Actually they don’t have the money. Retail is notoriously a cutthroat, thin margin business. Walmart is a public company, so you can just look at their profit margins. They’re sub-3%. Amazons margins are only higher because of AWS.

djbusby 2y ago
Walmart had a recent profit of like $5B. How is that not having money? https://stock.walmart.com/financials/quarterly-results/default.aspx https://stock.walmart.com/financials/quarterly-results/defau...
- reaperman 2y ago
  $5B (quarterly profit) is $2,400 per employee, and a 3.2% profit margin on $611B of annual revenue. Yes, an extra $9,600 annual pay for each employee would make a huge difference to many, but how low of a profit will shareholders tolerate below 3.2%? Maybe a better argument would be to find a larger bucket (much larger than $5B/quarter) where Walmart could perhaps reduce spending and redirect that to rank-and-file employees?
  - pembrook 2y ago
    They made $11.292B total profit for all of 2023. Also, what's more likely; One of the most efficient supply chain coordination companies in history with razor thin margins is leaving tons of cost savings on the table...or...random internet commenters like us don't actually know that much about Walmart's business nor the basic economics of labor markets?
- callalex 2y ago
  If they distributed that evenly to every single employee it would only work out to $2k/person. Not nothing, but not life changing.
  - gbear605 2y ago
    It was $2k/person per quarter, when most of those employees are making around $30k per year (average of $31k per one source I found). That’s a 30% raise on near-poverty salaries - that’s definitely life changing!
    - pembrook 2y ago
      You're basing that off of one of their highest profit quarters ever. 3X the average profit last year. Also, once you remove the profit incentive and kill the dividend (which goes into the world's pension funds via the public market), investors will no longer invest in the company. Being a capital starved business with insanely high COGS is a recipe for collapse the minute you have a downturn. And you'll probably say, "good! then the mom-and-pop stores will come back!" But the mom-and-pop stores, while aesthetically more pleasing to the elite, are in fact a far less efficient way to distribute food product so that would actually dramatically raise prices for consumers and decrease salaries & quality of life in many rural areas. Turns out things are the way they are for a reason, and there's no grand conspiracy keeping people down.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Not only would it be life changing for most of their employees, but consider how much the executives are making (https://www1.salary.com/WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html) How much do you think Suresh Kumar's life would change if he made 10 million next year instead of 14.5 million? Do you think he would have to stop buying the groceries he usually does, or that he would have to cancel a vacation? It wouldn't change his life at all. Same for the rest of the people in that list. Every one of them could take just a little less and increase pay for the people who actually do the majority of the work necessary for the company to function and be profitable and it would make no impact on the day to day lives of those executives. Absolutely nothing life changing.