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> Walmart is perhaps the most egregious example of this. Walmart doesn’t pay its workers very well. And because it pays its workers so poorly, they have to rely on food stamps and food banks to make ends meet. So then, Walmart goes ahead and uses its charitable donations to pay food banks, to pay anti-hunger groups to support SNAP—which enables [Walmart] to pay its workers low wages. And then it also redeems about 1 in 6 SNAP dollars around the country.

Yet another argument for raising the minimum wage in the short term and moving to basic income in the medium-to-long term. The current system boils down to company scrip with added obfuscation.

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What if the premise is wrong or misguided? In other words, Walmart doesn't pay well because retail doesn't pay well. Nobody is forcing people to work at Walmart, and if they could, wouldn't they find better paying jobs? What keeps people working at walmart? Is it possible the rest of the retail sector isn't able to pay much more so they're all in the same boat?

If your company makes so little money that your employees literally can't eat and make rent, then your business has failed and it's not up to the government to prop it up.

I get it, but most of retail is Hemorrhaging money. Don't get me wrong, I want to see everyone being paid what they're worth and then some but most people I see argue about retail wages, they single out Walmart but don't have any data to explain why.

I applied for a Walmart job years ago, when they told me the rate of pay (below what I was making back then) I declined and they asked a few demographic questions and printed out a sheet with all the "benefits they can offer me". It was a list of all the welfare programs in my state. It's part of the sales pitch for the job, they will also keep you part time just below the threshold of where you lose benefits at your request. As a capitalist I'm tired of subsidizing Walmart and businesses like it they simply aren't acting in good faith.

I used to say this too, but then I realized I didn't actually believe it. In order for that to be true I'd have to believe that we could remove SNAP and Walmart workers would be unaffected because they'd just be able to demand higher wages. Since I don't believe Walmart workers would be able to demand higher wages, then SNAP must not be subsidizing Walmart's payroll.

I do agree with the last sentence of your first paragraph though. Walmart benefits MUCH more from non-employee SNAP beneficiaries than it could ever save in employee wages. And it's not just the SNAP dollars it redeems. Every earned dollar not spent on food (because of SNAP) is a dollar that same person could spend on clothing or other goods sold at Walmart.

>Yet another argument for raising the minimum wage

Raising the minimum wage harms the lowest skilled and most poorly educated workers. If your productivity warrants $10/hr but the minimum wage is $15/hr, you're simply unemployed. First we provide poor people with abhorrent schooling in our failing public school system, denying them the skills they need to get a decent job, and then we require employers prejudice against these same vulnerable workers. Sure, the workers on the margins of being worth $15/hr get a boost, but everyone under them on the economic ladder is harmed until inflation catches up and washes out the raise.

>Raising the minimum wage harms the lowest skilled and most poorly educated workers...

Actually economists are uncertain about that. It's not as simple as you make it seem.

"If your productivity warrants $10/hr but the minimum wage is $15/hr, you're simply unemployed"

That assumes that your productivity is absolute and not relative. And productivity is always relative. In other words, what makes a company viable is the cost structure of its competitors. If competitors are local than a minimum wage rise has little effect on employment. If competitors are international than a local minimum wage rise has a major effect.

The vast majority of minimum wage jobs in the States are in service industries with local competitors.

Automation is also a local competitor. Disability (leaving the workforce altogether) is also a local competitor. The labor participation rate today matches the rate in the 1970s, when we largely weren't allowing women to get jobs.

Yeah, Walmart uses welfare to subsidize their business. From a capitalistic standpoint, it's a genius strategy. From a moral standpoint it's deplorable IMO.

Anyone who hires low wage workers domestically does this really, if I was supreme leader I'd abolish the tax write off for firms that pay a wage below the cost of living and consider additional taxes directed at that group (also resolve the welfare cliff but that is a separate issue keeping wages low) to level the playing field. Our tax code incentives behavior that we want to discourage.

raising the minimum wage in the short term

Why should it be the responsibility of businesses that require low skill workers to pay above market wages as a form of social welfare instead of having the government handle it using taxes collected from everyone?

Because minimum wage is a form of direct payment that is not antithetical to certain political persuasions and direct payment subsidies tend to be more efficient than other forms of governmental social welfare?

(Note: I don't feel qualified to argue this point but its the common response and there is lots of evidence of improved social welfare in places with higher minimum wages)

I guess I can agree that it is a more politically viable solution even if it's ultimately less beneficial for society as a whole.

Except the article basically argues for the opposite of guaranteed minimum income. For example, it argues against the food choice provisions of the SNAP program.

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