Walmart Giving All Employees a Raise to $10/Hour

[DC Al Fine]

Why is it that people feel that the practical cold-hearted reason Walmart gave in their press release isn't cold-hearted enough to be the real reason?  If Walmart is having problems with employee churn, then raising wages to reduce that churn will end up saving them money in the long term.

It's not cartnoonishly evil enough?

[DC Al Fine]

Ugh.  Not enough.  The min. wage should be $15 at the least but all we are going to hear is "praise Money-Jesus the invisible hand has saved us all again!"

Hey man, glass is half full here. For your purposes, the left can use this as proof the economy and businesses are willing to expand it and demand 15.

But be happy to see this happen.

The real hurdle is food service workers. I can't see any fast food company willing to make a move like Wal-Mart to shake up the industry. The only ones that would like Chipotle and Starbucks don't really hire bottom of the barrel food employees to begin with; it would have to come from McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts or the like.

Why not though? If Wal-Mart and McD's are hiring from the same pool, anyone who can will go to Wal-Mart for the extra $1-2/hr.

[DC Al Fine]

If a business owner cannot afford that they really need to look at how they are spending their other  money or rethink their purpose for being into business ownership (let's not act like people who can go into business ownership are starving here folks).

That line about small business is the wrong way to go about a very good point for the right. Business is not required to use a fixed amount of domestic labour. They can use foreign labour (outsourcing) or capital (automation).

There's a big disconnect here. Leftists have seen low-skill wages and worker rights erode for a generation, yet totally ignore the causes of those problems when assessing government policy. The grocery store won't go bankrupt if the minimum wage goes to $15, but it will put in more self-serve checkouts.

Now, a $10/minimum wage won't affect much, but if the left wants to raise the poor's income much beyond that, they should do it through minimum income programs, not minimum wages.

[DC Al Fine]

I think that the main takeaway from Mechaman's comment is the need for regional variation of minimum wages based on the local economy and cost of living. I'm hardly Mr. States' Rights, but I think the idea that it takes quite a bit more money to live in a big coastal city than it does to live in West Virginia or South Dakota is hardly controversial, and I don't see why minimum wage laws shouldn't take cost of living into account.

Yes mostly this.

Obviously, I don't support anything lower than $10/hr.  I mean I am a pretty left wing poster, but I do have an Accounting degree and I took several Economics courses.  There are some realities that we have to take into account on issues like this.

Really, we need to do more to combat the Cost of Living.  A $15/hr minimum wage won't mean much if the average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1500/month (along with the observations of how cheaper it is to live in the South, I do not believe a $15/hr job is enough to live in some areas.  Hell, Seattle probably shoudl've gone with $17/hr).  I would support what was suggested in DC Al Fine's post about instituting a "Guaranteed Wage" by the government if necessary.  However, I do believe that there are things we can do to combat rising rent costs and the insane high cost of living in more urban areas.

I do not subscribe to ficon ideology, but that is one of the observations they have on society that I agree with.  There is something to be said about battling against runaway costs, the big debate is how we will do it.

-Mecha

Out of curiosity Mecha, what sort of standard of living do you think the minimum wage/guaranteed income should provide?