A Washington DC City Council bill will require Walmart and other giant non-union retailers moving into the city to pay a living wage: $12.50, instead of the capitol’s standard $8.25. Walmart, which feels targeted by the legislation, says it may scrap plans to open six stores in DC as a result, sparking media sympathy not for the workers but instead for the corporation.
Recently, on MSNBC‘s Morning Joe (7/22/13) the controversy was the subject of debate. Sort of. Three of the four panelists championed Walmart’s stance, with co-host Mika Brzezinski being the lone pro-workers voice.
Co-host Joe Scarborough called for the big business’ right to do what it wanted based on its “own economic realities.” Could Walmart afford a wage increase? “Maybe they can, maybe they can’t, but that’s their decision.”
Then CNBC reporter Brian Shachtman backed him up. When asked if Walmart could afford to pay employees $12.50, his answer was “yes and no.” He explained: “If they had to increase their wages like that at all their businesses, it would pretty much wipe out their profits.”
Since the law would only impact DC, his answer is irrelevant. But there’s plenty of research, as Salon.com‘s David Sirota noted (8/2/13), that shows how increasing wages would have a relatively small impact on consumer prices:
According to a study by researchers at the City University of New York and the University of California, raising the wages of all of the retailers’ employees to at least $12 an hour would cost the average customer just 46 cents more during their typical trip to the store. Over an entire year, that’s just $12.50.
The other panelist, former Democratic congressman (and current Morgan Stanley managing director) Harold Ford stressed the company line that Walmart could just leave DC altogether, and the stores’ low prices are good for everyone.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski was the only one making the argument that the mega-profitable retail giant could afford to pay workers a little more, incredulously asking: “So their entire business model is based on paying people a wage they cannot live on?”
Brzezinski ended the segment frustrated: “$8.25 an hour? I mean, come on. That’s a joke! Is there anyone here who doesn’t agree with that?”
Brzezinski’s call for a fair wage for DC workers reminds us of her own astonishing experiences with pay gaps: in 2008, she discovered her co-host, Scarborough, was making fourteen times as much as she was (5/12/11).
With a record like that, Morning Joe‘s unbalanced “debate” on wages makes a little more sense.
What sort of “living” can you do on $12.50 an hour, especially in DC, especially if you have to worry about more than just your own circumstances?
And why are we talking about a living wage
And not a life of dignity, one aspect of which is to be no one’s servant, beholden to them for your ability to survive?
Is that “impractical”, “unrealistic”?
If so, then let’s jettison all this lofty rhetoric about “justice” and “fairness”
And admit that we’re simply engaged in damage control.
Otherwise, let’s start walking the talk
And stepping toward a future we’ll feel no need to obscure.
Apparently, Wal-mart’s refusal to pay a living wage is “sparking media sympathy not for the workers but instead for the corporation.” Actually that kinda makes sense. Let me explain.
Corporations are now considered people. People have feelings. Therefore, it follows that corporations have feelings. (With me so far?)
If corporations have feelings and Wal-mart is a corporation, then Wal-mart must have feelings. (Just adding on…)
If Wal-mart has feelings, and you hurt its feelings by demanding they consider your feelings (the ability to buy groceries, pay rent, silly stuff like that), then you are behaving in a deplorable, inhumane fashion.
Don’t behave in an inhumane fashion. Support Wal-mart.
Attention rightwing, reactionary “journalists”: here is an article in a business magazine you should read before your next feeding frenzy:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-06/costco-ceo-craig-jelinek-leads-the-cheapest-happiest-company-in-the-world
Please don’t limit the debate to Wal-Mart and fast food restaurants Theater workers have all the same problems. Film stars are often very generous and likeable, but not to theater workers.
Stars consider adding theater workers to your list of causes. Do you know that we often work for minimum wage, seldom get full time work and because we don’t work 40 hours, we are denied most worker benefits. This is no better than the way fast food restaurants and Wal-mart treats their employees.
Stars I encourage you to support movie workers. Let our plight be your concern too. We are all in the movie business. Speak out. Your voice carries weight in this business.
Fair and Morning Joe hosts will never step inside a Walmart. Deny D.C.’s poorest residents access to affordable shopping and accessible jobs? Every study finds that Walmart is the only reason America’s working poor make ends meet. Blacks are being priced out of D.C. by gentrification: a city that was 75% black is now barely at 50%. Liberals and conservatives are clueless about declining intergeneration upward mobility.
1968=$1.60; 2013=$7.25
40 % loss in 45 years.
to keep up with inflation 2013=$16.50.
Why are we quibbling over $12.50?
We can’t fix stupid. The Waltons are mentally unstable and are afflicted with the “God Disease”, they honestly believe themselves to be our lords and masters and therefore can do no wrong. They have the money to buy anything and everything, including their own senators and judges. Until we remove these mentally ill people from society and the world in general and take their strangle hold off the throat of America, we can not have any real meaningful talks.
It’s like trying to reason with a one year old who already has the cookies in hand.
Yep, the “Walmart Debate” is very much like the “welfare debate” was. Those involved were simply censored out.
As a people, we need to figure out what “poverty” means, and who deserves to live or die. This is the generation that decided some $4,000 welfare per year enabled people to live in such comfort that they had no incentive to find jobs.
Well you can force a company to pay their employees 40$ an hour I suppose.Problem is you cant force them to stay in business….or expand…..or hire anybody.And you cant stop them from firing thousands.As always the government acts like they understand better how to run a company like Walmart.Yet everything the government touches goes ,or is going broke.Their track record is 100% bad.And here they come fixing Walmart.Old saying……Know why “Texas” isnt broke?Because the libs have not been given the chance to fix it.Same thing here.
Mr Soskin,
Please tell these studies that support you fantasy that Walmart provides these great econimic benefits.
As one of the most profitable corporations in the WORLD, Walmart can EASILY pay their workers more. They’re being greedy; nothing more. MSM’s blatant anti-worker nonsense is out of control and has to stop.
Teejay…….What experience do you have running a company like Walmart that allows you to make such off the cuff finance calls?Obama himself has never had a job for even a day where he looks at pay role or anything else.All his work has been taxpayer subsidized.And a disaster by the way….But you are probably right.Walmart could do better.They could also expand less and in fact close hundreds of stores.Remember an old saying.The road to hell is paved with liberal good intentions.Walmart is what it is.You are not forced to work there.i think a lot of what they give to their workers sucks.But that is me personally.I would say pass.but it is not up to me(or you),or some union to tell everyone it sucks for them.Quite a few zillionairs started behind a cash register in a place like walmart.Tell them that the road they walked was useless.
@ Michael E – and you of course know everything about anything when it comes to a business right? Oh Of course, because you listen to and parrot Fux Snooze and their useless debate..
If you had half a clue of what reality is you would be one of the first to jump up and scream ‘unfair’. Wal-Mart pay less then minimum wage and then forces the workers to live on Welfare and Food stamps. Is that the ‘correct business model for sustainability??” Wal-Mart has and still often Hires “illegals” (you know those people you hate so much, even though you wouldn’t know an illegal if you fell over one) at less than minimum wage, no benefits, and then shorts them pay. When they have to audacity to ask for the paychecks they worked for, they get deported, Great Business model huh?
Now they are cutting back hours so that their workers will still be unable to have medical, which means every time you shop at Wal-Mart you’re asking for some disease because the workers can’t even call in sick or they are terminated on the spot, unless of course they are the “upper management”; And since they have to go on welfare, that means they are also a burden on the Medicaid system. Great Business model, make all your customers sick.
Further they do not buy anything from anyone in the U.S., they buy only the cheapest, crappiest trash and products that fall apart in less an couple of months so they can keep making ‘More and more, faster and faster’. I used to shop there, until even the T-shirts I bought from them lasted only two weeks before all the threads come off of the seams. Meanwhile they are putting any business making products out of business unless they also force their workers on sub-subsistence wages and no benefits; at least until Wal-Mart can force someone else to do it cheaper. Wonder Business Model, I am sure it is total Sustainable, about the same as the ‘Glide path’ of Brick.
Last but not least, While Sam Walton started out with the right idea, the Progeny have no Freaking clue about Business, and will open two Wal-Mart with walking distance of each other, putting not only the mom and pop stores out of Business, but also any other store in the area, and ultimately themselves because they can’t get the market shares. How that is for a sustainable business model? With those standards Jesse James and Al Capone were just ‘good business men’.
So until you actually get some real education in “Business Management” other the Fux Snooze “we are so stupid we make rocks look intelligent” I wouldn’t be so fast at throwing stones at folks around about “Business” in particular a sustainable on, because the Glass house you bought at Wal-Mart isn’t made with Tempered Glass, it is another trash product from Wal-Mart. Wouldn’t want you to cut yourself severely from broken cheap glass. You can’t have a sustainable business model based on ‘Steal everything’. Hay even your Hero’s Limburger, Beckerhead and Insannity are getting thier butts kicked, so I guess the Fux snooze “Business model” isn’t so great either, is it.
Padre,
Great point how the govenrment has to subsidize the pay of poor workers. They go around the country extracting promises of sales and/or property tax exemptions on the alleged basis that they improve local economies. You forgot to add that Walmart actually reduces employment- despite the job creation fantasy- bc they can sell more units per person employed. And it’s cheaper now, but when they put the competition out of business, they will have a monopoly and then…..
The idea that anyone “chooses” to work at Walmart is quite vacuous if you think about it. Do workers choose to work at Walmart in lieu of a stock broker job? People are forced to do what they have to do to survive, then get exploited because the loss of the job would be a disaster to them personally. Like those “illegals” “Michael E” wouldn’t condescend to spit, who “choose” to come here in technical violation of a minsterial law. They could feed their families, or they could starve. That’s supposedly a “choice.”
Defending Walmart is pathological.
Walmart will not go bankrupt by paying their workers a living wage. If it reduces the number of stores, I am all for it. You and I are paying Walmart employees ourselves when they have to access taxpayer-subsidized food stamps and Medicaid to make their ends meet. Then, with the profits it gathers by shirking these responsibilities, Walmart buys politicians and lobbyists to keep its bed well-feathered. As for the poor being robbed of the most effective way to spend their limited incomes – why are incomes so limited in the first place if corporations in this country had not gotten on the race-to-the-bottom bandwagon? It used to be that as worker productivity went up, so did their wages. But since the 70’s that increase in wages started getting funneled to the top managers, and the CEO, in those corporations, instead. I am not against a company making profits, but I object to OBSCENE profits. And the argument that all those people don’t HAVE to work at Walmart doesn’t wash, either. The first thing a Walmart does when it comes into a town is undercut all the local businesses and run them out of business. It doesn’t leave people with a lot of “choice” among employers.
I agree with Padremellyrn, the Waltons and a lot of the other filthy rich owners of huge corporations have a mental illness. They are hoarders. Instead of newspapers, pop cans, and other such junk, they hoard money. They don’t feel secure without it and they can’t get enough. JM Keynes said that in an economic crisis, people tend to HOARD (his word) money when the cure is to spend it and keep it circulating and creating demand. Now that corporations are also “people” they can also be described as “hoarders.”
It is worse than the fact that Waltons and other capitalists have a mental illness. That mental illness is a direct result of a system that permits them to evade work, or in other words, gaining the benefits of labor without actually performing a share commensurate with what their employees do.
The capitalist system encourages laziness by encouraging the wealthy to continually feed at the public trough, which comes in the form of taxpayer-paid subsidies and other entitlements. As Suze O. points out — as do and have many others here and on other forums inhabited by the intelligent — supercorporations like Walmart receive subsidies from towns and cities to build their stores in those jurisdictions. This is as if Walmart /needed/ any incentives to build profit-generation units in every place possible. Of course, they don’t, but these large companies can pay the ante by supporting the election campaigns of the local public officials and their wealthy friends in exchange for these favors.
I’ve actually watched this process in person. At one Mesa AZ, city hall meeting where Walmart was getting approval for their newest shopping center, the public seating was packed with suits, lawyers and corporate people who were there to ensure that the council vote went their way. Once the vote was taken, all of them stood up and left the chamber!
But, the real process of approval takes place well ahead of the council meeting where the puppets for these companies show up as sort of a dog-and-pony show. They are there only to deflect the objections raised by the public who were not aware of these plans until this final council meeting where the vote takes place. Yes, you CAN in fact attend the planning board meetings, but even by then, the vote is sealed already. The real decision-making process, which takes place within the planning departments, is NOT open to the public.
I called the planning department and was informed that their decisions are final. I requested that any new submittals of development plans be posted transparently on the city internet site so that the public could be aware of these plans well before the axe comes down. They said there were no plans to do this, no. Of course, idiots. I was asking if this COULD be done; obviously they have a different agenda.
Now, how can the RWers claim that government is run by progressives, liberals, leftists and others? The entire system is controlled very closely by the zealots and defenders of centralized capitalist economy, not by anyone on the left. If there are any Leftists in government with any real power, they are very much isolated and their voice counts for nothing while surrounded by the guardians of the elite.
This is what is so aggravating about the RW. They spread all this nonsense about the threat from Socialism, Communism, Liberalism, and every other sort of Leftist tendency. But my own experiences, one of which I related here but there are more, have clearly and undeniably demonstrated that our government — especially LOCAL government — is controlled by them not us.
Padre your diatribe against Walmart and me is a waste of breath.You and I ,and this president -don’t know how to run a company of this size.They obviously do.If they go out of business then they don’t.Dems the breaks.If people don’t want to work there because of all those things you spoke of….no one is holding a gun to their head.If the minimum wage is not high enough by half….change it in the legislature.If you don’t want to shop there….DONT!I feel a lot of the things you mentioned are real reasons NOT to work for walmart.But that is me and you.Why must the left FORCE everyone to believe and do as you see fit?oh by the way lets talk healthcare……The president yesterday gave a bi to Congress and Senate and all their staffs on Obama care.see they did not want it for themselves.Ha ha ha ha.Unions dont want it iether.See what they really don’t want is libs like you telling them how to liveSo go one I interrupted you.Tell me again how Walmart should live according to you.As far as Rush Hannity and the rest on the right…….You see their market as shrinking???????What pole is saying that?I see them all as exploding
Just like the State and Federal Government subsidizing the low pay of these corporations with food stamps and medical care for their employees is making it bankrupt. Bankrupt the government for the profit of corporations no thank you. Get big business off the dole.
“$12.50, instead of the capitol’s standard $8.25.”
Does Congress pay its employees so little? That’s a scandal.
But it seems odd that Walmart is planning six stores to serve Congress (well known as a money waster, but …)
Or perhaps you mean the stores will be in Washington, D.C., which is the capital city (of which the capitol is a small part).
Wikipedia on capitol: “Not to be confused with Capital.
A capitol is a building in which a legislature meets.”