Source: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/11/news/economy/tax-law-raises-...
There have been a few announcements of actual wage increases that corporate PR departments have tried to attribute to the tax cuts, but in every one I've looked at, it was clear the wage increase was just the result of normal market forces and dressed up to pretend it was the result of tax cuts. For example, a few banks (including Wells Fargo) announced a minimum wage increase to $15/hour, but Bank of America announced that same change at the end of 2016, before any tax cuts.
They’re certainly good for PR, and perhaps that’s the primary intention, but employees are benefitting from it.
Now, if Walmart gave everyone who worked there a $1 raise. With about 1.5 million full-time employees working around 1700 hours per year (US average 2016) that would mean about $2,550,000,000. So that bonus is almost equivalent to a temporary raise in terms of benefits.
That is just for full-time employees. A blanket $1 raise would probably come out to about $4,000,000,000 each year that Walmart may not have if the tax cuts are removed by the next administration, which they very well could be.
It's sad that it's one time. It was probably the quickest way to reward people around the holidays. For many it's a few car payments and maybe a month worth of rent. Yeah it is peanuts for anyone living in on the coasts or writing software or both.
> Only workers with 20+ years of service are getting $1,000.
Walmart wasn't the only company which did it. Sure it was a PR stunt just as much, and it would be nicer to have other things like universal healthcare, but at this point that's a nice fantasy and this is something that made people's live better.
If that's what this big hoopla ultimately amounts to then it will be highly disappointing. The fact that we are celebrating $1000 bonuses from corporations that have been enjoying record profits (for the most part) recently is disheartening. Something is better than nothing I guess.
This is a bit of a reductio ad absurdum, but the point here is, what cost are we willing to pay as a society in exchange for the $1,000 one-time bonuses? This hypothetical law would be a terrible precedent for businesses, but would it be worse for the people receiving these bonuses than the actual tax plan?
And in order to answer whether it would or wouldn't, we need to look at the merits of the actual tax plan's substance, not the fact that it has (supposedly) caused people to get $1,000 bonuses.
The criticism of these companies then is that they have just received massive financial windfalls via the GOP's tax cut programs and have portrayed normal corporate activities as signs of corporate largesse due to the tax-cut they've received. Should we tie the layoffs announced by these firms to their tax-cuts as well?
Walmart, for example, has struggled for years to attract employees due to the low wages they offer, wages so low that a good percentage of their labor pool is subsidized by taxpayers. When you combine that situation with the massive lay-offs and closures of Sam's Clubs the raising of wages seems to be less a generous overture driven by the tax-cut than perhaps a recognition that they must offer higher wages or continue to stagnate and fail.
I've also read that the bonus offered by AT&T is on the low-end of the bonuses offered every holiday to their employees. That's anecdotal though.
Any source for that assertion?
Please don't; it breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments. Your comment would be fine without the first, and perhaps also the last, sentence.
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