D.C. Council approves ‘living wage’ bill over Wal-Mart ultimatum
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732439940457858...
As a system admin, it's taken me 6 years after college to get back to the wage I made as a grocery store checker.
I'm not economist but how would this work...? It seems like an awful idea
If not, my response to that there should never be a 'comfortable wage'. Everyone needs that crappy job they hate - dishwasher, ditch digger - that pays nothing in order to motivate them to get out of said situation.
We all (most of us) worked that crappy job when we were younger, and hated it, and one of many reasons I stay motivated to provide value now is, well, because I don't want to be a dishwasher.
That's the beauty of The Market.
I think there is a reason for not having a mandatory comfortable wage; some people would simply not find jobs if we raised the minimum wage to a point were it becomes unprofitable to pay it. But that's the only reason for paying less. Not some BS sanctity of hard work thing.
Working at a crappy job causes suffering. Not having ANY job causes MORE suffering.
The solution you put forward (making crappy jobs illegal) is not somehow going to magically make poor people suffer less.
Oh, and how do you figure out which jobs are better? Hmm... maybe through some kind of market mechanism...
I have no particular love for walmart besides their knack for being good at delivering things efficiently (their aggressive use of eminent domain makes me angry). But laws should be fair and applied equitably. What this law is - is nothing but political posturing, demagoguery masked in the language of helping the less well off. I wonder, do the DC council members actually lift a hand to help out the people they say they care about, when a camera's not rolling?
Congratulations on a job well done, DC Council!
If one of the most successful businesses in history can't find a way to turn a profit in one of the most populous, affluent areas in the country while paying employees enough to live in the same area, then maybe they shouldn't be in business after all. Like the article says, Wal-Mart needs DC. DC doesn't need Wal-Mart.
CostCo has no problems here and they pay around $15/hour.
Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-can-t-w...
Poor people do not need more Country Clubs.
What will most likely happen is that SOME of those people will be able to get a job at a "responsible employer" but large numbers will become more destitute because of this decision.
Guess what: CostCo et al employ FEWER people per dollar people spend in the store, which is why they can afford the higher salaries. They do not somehow magically generate money out of thin air and hand it to their employees out of the goodness of their heart.
The cost of living in DC is extremely high. If most of the jobs created by Wal-Mart leave the employees still requiring food stamps, subsidized housing, and free clinics. What's the point to DC in allowing them here? They may as well have kept on paying those people the food stamps anyway, without the added harm of destroying the small business Wal-Mart is no doubt going to steamroll over, and contributing to the homogenization of the US into one long blur of identical national chain stores.
DC is not interested in subsidizing Wal-Mart's labor costs. If Wal-Mart can't afford to pay an actual wage that a person can live on without government assistance, then they aren't actually running a profitable enterprise. They're just leeching off the taxpayers.
This is the core flaw in your argument. First of all, it is obviously wrong on the surface (i.e. Wal-Mart reports profits every quarter) and even the argument you actually MEANT to make is wrong (No, it is not intrinsically better for society to have CostCo come in and hiring fewer employees and have more people needing full assistance, vs. WalMart come in and hiring more people needing partial assistance.)
If a portion of your costs are paid not by revenue, but by taxpayer subsidy, and if the loss of that subsidy makes your costs exceed your revenue, then you are not technically profitable. Especially in instances like this, when the taxpayers decide they don't want to pay for your costs anymore
"Intrinsically better" - whatever that is supposed to mean - has nothing to do with it, I'm talking about whether it's better for the DC government as that's what's driving the DC government's decision.
If you reduce a portion of the people on public aid to partial aid, you still have the administrative cost of distributing that aid, so you're only saving the amount you're actually paying out. If you can move even a smaller portion off of the aid completely, you may be able to reduce the infrastructure you need to distribute the aid and save even more money. It's not like I have the numbers in front of me, but it isn't exactly perfectly clear which is better necessarily. Obviously lots of people on the DC council think the latter is going to be preferable. More likely, they're trying to use what leverage they have as gatekeepers to a large market to extract as much benefit for the city as they can. That's as it should be.
That's an optimistic view of the government. I think it's more likely the government think that saying "Wal-Mart Bad!" will help them get elected.
I don't see any clear evidence from anyone here that preventing poor people from getting employment at WalMart in DC is going to improve their lives.
I think the council is hurting DC. Luckily, I recently moved out of DC, so I guess if they want to go out of their way to hurt their economy and give their lost opportunities to other districts/cities instead I'm fine with that.
We have just this problem in the UK (minimum adult wage around £6.20/h and 'liveable' wage put at £8.55/h by a pressure group with wide support [1].
The difference is funded through the benefit system (we have no truck with food stamps).
It's a strange idea that labor costs are the only costs that don't affect the decision making process of business owners in any way.
I'd rather see them go on full government assistance, so they can spend full time looking for a job that DOES pay enough to live on. That costs more up front, but should cost less in the long run, and since I expect to be paying taxes for a long time I care more about the long run.
Minimum of course, is $7.25.
footoverhand: I want as many people to be able to work as possible. If you think it is too hard for people to live on the salaries that are available at their skill level, then by all means we can talk about improving the social safety net... but forcing companies to lay off people to maintain their salary budgets through salary controls is NOT a good way to help poor people.
No, I don't have a PhD in Economics and am willing to accept I could be wrong in this assessment.
EDIT: Oh, no one here likes this idea? Imagine that!
Also, I agree it's where the government is heading. People need to learn that life is what they make it, not what is handed to them.
The fact that people in her time disagreed with these obvious things does not mean Ayn Rand was particularly prescient, it just means lots of people believe obviously wrong things.
I do however enjoy her non-fiction. Her arguments are much more concise (12 page explain her entirely philosophy as opposed to 1025 or w.e Atlas Shrugged was).