House votes to raise minimum wage...

[Lemons]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Democracies are unsustainable if the imbalance of wealth is too severe. You can’t sustain a healthy economy if the top 5% of a corporation are being paid 8 figures a year while the bottom 50% are being paid $20,000 per year.

So many working class people think that the CEOs would love to pay $15 per hour but they just can’t. Yeah, right.

Nope, they simply can't afford to pay $15 per hour, that would mean giving up their $15.5 million per year.

There are decent small businesses and corporations that treat their employees well and share the profits. It’s the Walmart’s of the country that have to be forced to do the right thing.

[Deleted User 203]

Insert eventual cost of living increases on just about everything and that's a shame, too, because the current minimum wage is not a liveable wage. Yet supply/demand will ultimately kick in, and that wage increase will seem obsolete.

[Deleted User 1344]

Democracies are unsustainable if the imbalance of wealth is too severe. You can’t sustain a healthy economy if the top 5% of a corporation are being paid 8 figures a year while the bottom 50% are being paid $20,000 per year.

So many working class people think that the CEOs would love to pay $15 per hour but they just can’t. Yeah, right.

Nope, they simply can't afford to pay $15 per hour, that would mean giving up their $15.5 million per year.

There are decent small businesses and corporations that treat their employees well and share the profits. It’s the Walmart’s of the country that have to be forced to do the right thing.

Good points!

[DSamuels]

I thought the economy was booming and that massive tax cut was going to trickle down to increased wages? Why would stores be doing that in this economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world?

If the economy is that fantastic and currently there are no major issues with the economy, then there’s no reason not to pay livable wages. Hopefully they can work something out.

This is a large nationwide retail store. Shareholders want profits. Sales are great. But there is only so much payroll available. When you increase 300K workers to $12, then $13 and soon $15 an hour that is a massive amount of money. They are cutting hours of just about everyone to control operating costs. They basically have very few full time employees, most are part time. When you take the CEO pay and bonuses and divide it by the number of employees you get $26 per employee. So if you paid him nothing, every worker would get 2 hours. Whoopie!

As usual very vague. . Walmart got a huge tax cut from Trump’s tax cut plan and saved about 2 billion in 2017. If Walmart raised salaries to $15 hourly it would cost them about $5 billion dollars per year. In 2016 they had about $480 billion in revenue. Their net income was almost $15 billion.

So if they raised their employees salaries to $15 hour, their net income would drop to $10 billion dollars per year. The waltons own about half the shares of Walmart meaning their yearly net income would drop from about 7.5 billion to $5 billion per year.

It’s simple greed that keeps vile people like the Waltons from being good Christians and treating people decently. Without their employees they have nothing.

Yes, I am being purposely vague. I have retired from the company, but even if I still worked there I would be vague. I am not a company spokesperson, it is only my opinion. And I was not talking about Walmart.

I am just relating what has happened to employee hours since the latest raise. I have heard this from employees at my former store and it’s a huge topic in the group of current and former employees on Facebook.

[DSamuels]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

[Deleted User 1018]

Well, I see more stores going to self checkouts, so they dont have pay more employees. One employee for 6-8 self check out stations. It is already being implemented in Walmart and grocery stores.

And to be able to afford to pay the employees the new wage, businesses will raise the prices of their product, cut hours, and leave positions unfilled.

Again, they just received a massive tax break. They should be paying employees livable wages. And if Walmart isn’t, maybe people should stop shopping there. Those stores are filthy anyway.

I have been through several minimum wage hikes. Each time, the prices of goods went up, to cover costs. It will be no different this time. And it wont just be Walmart phasing out hiring, it will be everybody. Or they cut hours. I have seen it go both ways. There was a time one could live off minimum wage. I did for years. But those days are long gone. If minimum wage had been raised to match the COL, I can see the possibility, but not now. I would never work for minimum wage now.

[Lemons]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

That would be ok if it was a starting wage. Ask Walmart employees what they are making ten years later. I wrote in my other post that corporations like Walmart can afford to pay living wages. The Waltons would take a pay cut and make $5 billion a year instead of $7.5 billion per year.

[Lemons]

This is a large nationwide retail store. Shareholders want profits. Sales are great. But there is only so much payroll available. When you increase 300K workers to $12, then $13 and soon $15 an hour that is a massive amount of money. They are cutting hours of just about everyone to control operating costs. They basically have very few full time employees, most are part time. When you take the CEO pay and bonuses and divide it by the number of employees you get $26 per employee. So if you paid him nothing, every worker would get 2 hours. Whoopie!

As usual very vague. . Walmart got a huge tax cut from Trump’s tax cut plan and saved about 2 billion in 2017. If Walmart raised salaries to $15 hourly it would cost them about $5 billion dollars per year. In 2016 they had about $480 billion in revenue. Their net income was almost $15 billion.

So if they raised their employees salaries to $15 hour, their net income would drop to $10 billion dollars per year. The waltons own about half the shares of Walmart meaning their yearly net income would drop from about 7.5 billion to $5 billion per year.

It’s simple greed that keeps vile people like the Waltons from being good Christians and treating people decently. Without their employees they have nothing.

Yes, I am being purposely vague. I have retired from the company, but even if I still worked there I would be vague. I am not a company spokesperson, it is only my opinion. And I was not talking about Walmart.

I am just relating what has happened to employee hours since the latest raise. I have heard this from employees at my former store and it’s a huge topic in the group of current and former employees on Facebook.

All you have to do is know what the store made in net income for the year. The CEO salary is not as important unless it’s grossly inflated. If shareholders don’t like the store paying decent salaries they can sell their shares.

I used Walmart as a typical example of a huge American corporation whose numbers are public and obvious their decisions are made by pure greed. How people shop there is beyond me.

[AllofFive19]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

That's not accurate, because in his 1933 address following the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

“By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living,” he stated.

At its high point, the federal minimum wage could support a family of three above the poverty line, but by the 1980’s it could not even support a family of two. From January of 1981 to April of 1990, the federal minimum wage was not increased at all. In fact, in these nine years, the real value of the minimum wage, adjusted to 2012 dollars, decreased from $8.29 to $6.66.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, prices in 1990 were 58.62% higher than average prices throughout 1980. The dollar experienced an average inflation rate of 4.72% per year during this period, meaning the real value of a dollar decreased.

[Della]

They will always find a way not to pay a decent living wage. That's why minimum wage was established in the 1st place is because stores refused to pay their employees a livable wage. Corporations become too greedy, that is something that has been a thing since the beginning of time and is a bigger thing now.

Minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was meant to be starting pay for new employees and for part time employees.

Source?