70% of Food Stamps/Medicaid recipients work full time, new study GAO And more results

[Zan15]

The Midwest isn't particularly exceptional - cost of living is lower in most Southern states. Sure, New York City and Los Angeles are shit holes that are completely unliveable on working class wages, but that's not actually a federal problem.

lol NYC....try anywhere in NY. Its not a NYC problem.
Same with LA...

You have whole regions in the united states where 25k would not even cover housing and work expenses.
Its a huge federal problem when it allows for wages to be 7 dollars. It drives a low balling at the state level.



Besides 25k is 23k after employment taxes assuming no income tax after return because of low income. then tack on another 10% for standard taxes on everything you buy/pay for.. so 25k is close to 20k.

[SirBeef]

I mean honestly if someone doesn't fart progressively enough you lash out at them like they just murdered your parents. Glass houses and all that.

No shit with that guy. It's best to put him on ignore.

[Edge-]

Maybe but I'm not wrong. It might be an unpleasant truth but it's the truth. Your value in society is linked to what you can contribute to it.

What job exists today and could be done for 40 hours a week, should leave someone in poverty and reliant on taxpayers to subsidize their income?

[PACOX]

Maybe but I'm not wrong. It might be an unpleasant truth but it's the truth. Your value in society is linked to what you can contribute to it.

looks at the companies and the list

sees how much people rely on those companies

wonders how well those companies could function without its workers

wonders how much those employees contribute to society

Those people seem pretty important to me.

[Bodakane]

Where are these full time jobs for those companies on that list? They don't let most workers get full time so they can avoid paying benefits. And its not like those jobs have set schedules where you can get another part time job around the schedule, because the schedule changes week to week.

The important part is that people are working and still need welfare. And many of these companies are literally subsidizing their workforce with welfare money but they aren't demonized but the poor recipients are.

Its fucking wrong.

[smityx]

ThE wEaLtH wIlL tRicKlE dOwN.

It does. But why is it yellow?

[Saltysquidoon]

Maybe but I'm not wrong. It might be an unpleasant truth but it's the truth. Your value in society is linked to what you can contribute to it.

Literally, the first minute of the first day of a brand new social worker's career contributes more to society than every single junior VP of marketing northwest division on earth.

[Zan15]

Wisconsin. State-wide one bedroom rent average is ~$600, although it's higher locally here.

umm according to zillow its not 600

https://www.homesnacks.com/cities/av...-in-wisconsin/

$975
Studio
$895
1-Bedroom
$995
2-Bedroom
$1,245
3-Bedroom
$1,300
4-Bedroom

Or other sources



i am guessing that its just particular counties where the average would be closer to 600.00

[JohnBrown1917]

It does. Your seeing it play out as the topic of this thread. The outrage is over the fact it works this way...

Yeah, big companies would never exploit the fact that everybody needs a job to even survive.
We should also ignore how productivity has gone way up while wages have remained the same.

[SirBeef]

Isn't there a system in the USA that keeps track of the cost of this?

Where I live there is a persistent federal agency that tracks this in detail and yearly enforces wage and salary promotions on employers equal to how much the cost rose compared to previous year.

Yes. There is the MIT living wage calculator. https://livingwage.mit.edu/

[JohnBrown1917]

No shit with that guy. It's best to put him on ignore.

Man, you 3 really can't handle any sort of critism of Neo-liberalism.

[SirBeef]

looks at the companies and the list

sees how much people rely on those companies

wonders how well those companies could function without its workers

wonders how much those employees contribute to society

Those people seem pretty important to me.

Many of those companies in my state offer starting wages of $15/hr. Hell my 17 y/o first job was retail at Target started her at $15 part time.

I have long been a proponent of living wage. And have long been a proponent of a business should not be in business if they cannot provide a living wage. However, the MIT link shows by county and families with kids and dependents. I do not feel it is a businesses obligation to provide more if someone has kids. Living wage when applied to salary should be limited to a single individuals need for a living wage. which would be that first column. More often than not, outside of the obvious places like NY, SF, LA, and other big urban areas, $15 is typically more than enough.

[GreenJesus]

Walmart and Amazon are absolutely wealthy enough to where there is no fucking excuse for this. I'm not familiar enough with the other companies' finances, but I suspect it's a similar story.

If you qualify for food aid while working full time, something is dreadfully wrong.

Walmart and Amazon generate wealth by a result of their scale not by their operating margin %. You have to look at each individual location and their EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization) or in other words strictly operations. If a location isn't operating on a profit then the company will drop that location. If each location generates let's say $100,000 of profit a year(strictly a plug number), and the company has 10,000 locations then the company generates $100,000,000 in income. In general, Walmarts operate on razor thin margins where increasing wages by $1 would blow up their budget. Consider this: Let's say one location has 100 employees. 100 Employees * $1 * 2080 hours/year (40 hours/week) * 1.3 (30% payroll burden for healthcare, workers comp, etc) = $270,400 increase in labor costs which directly hits their operating margin. For a single location that adds up to a lot of money for only a single dollar raise. Multiply that across all their locations and we are talking about a lot of money.

Obviously, that doesn't excuse Walmart/Amazon for paying workers so low they need food stamps. It just means that Walmart would need to increase prices in order to stay profitable/worth investing their time and capital at that location. Businesses should operate in the context of the laws of the place that they are operating in. If the business determines that the laws in that area make their business inoperable then maybe someone else will be able to fill in the need. If research shows that full time employees in a certain area need food stamps to survive then maybe the city/state should implement a minimum wage increase.

However, I don't think a one size fits all federal mandate of X dollars/year is the answer.

[Kathranis]

I mean, that's what happens when minimum wage doesn't come close to covering cost of living in most major cities.

Imagine how many more jobs there would be to go around if people didn't have to work two minimum wage jobs to make ends meet.

[Zan15]

Walmart and Amazon generate wealth by a result of their scale not by their operating margin %. You have to look at each individual location and their EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization) or in other words strictly operations. If a location isn't operating on a profit then the company will drop that location. If each location generates let's say $100,000 of profit a year(strictly a plug number), and the company has 10,000 locations then the company generates $100,000,000 in income. In general, Walmarts operate on razor thin margins where increasing wages by $1 would blow up their budget. Consider this: Let's say one location has 100 employees. 100 Employees * $1 * 2080 hours/year (40 hours/week) * 1.3 (30% payroll burden for healthcare, workers comp, etc) = $270,400 increase in labor costs which directly hits their operating margin. For a single location that adds up to a lot of money for only a single dollar raise. Multiply that across all their locations and we are talking about a lot of money.

Obviously, that doesn't excuse Walmart/Amazon for paying workers so low they need food stamps. It just means that Walmart would need to increase prices in order to stay profitable/worth investing their time and capital at that location. Businesses should operate in the context of the laws of the place that they are operating in. If the business determines that the laws in that area make their business inoperable then maybe someone else will be able to fill in the need. If research shows that full time employees in a certain area need food stamps to survive then maybe the city/state should implement a minimum wage increase.

However, I don't think a one size fits all federal mandate of X dollars/year is the answer.

bullshit, there have already been studies on the impact to Walmart. Even at the local level the impact would be next to unnoticed and easy to absorb with minimal price increases.

$4.95 billion, that is how much it would cost them to raise to 15 dollars an hour. (UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research)

Walmart annual revenue for 2019-2020 Reported year was $523.964B.

So for each dollar they sold in goods it would require 9/10ths of a percent increase in prices.

So an item that cost $1.00 would have to be increased to $1.01 to cover the cost if you just raised prices to cover it.



Funny how they spent a decade saying they couldn't raise wages then spent the last 3 years raising it each year.
Their revenue growth is a combination of higher sales and price increases to cover those cost

exclude the one time write offs and expenses they earned 13-14 billion dollars a year for the last 5 years.
they could easily raise prices 1/2 a cent and eat the other 1/2 cent

Hell walmart corporate can reduce some of their fees to the local stores to cover the other 1/2 cent increase.

[GreenJesus]

bullshit, there have already been studies on the impact to Walmart. Even at the local level the impact would be next to unnoticed and easy to absorb with minimal price increases.

$4.95 billion, that is how much it would cost them to raise to 15 dollars an hour. (UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research)

Walmart annual revenue for 2019-2020 Reported year was $523.964B.

So for each dollar they sold in goods it would require 9/10ths of a percent increase in prices.

So an item that cost $1.00 would have to be increased to $1.01 to cover the cost if you just raised prices to cover it.



Funny how they spent a decade saying they couldn't raise wages then spent the last 3 years raising it each year.
Their revenue growth is a combination of higher sales and price increases to cover those cost

exclude the one time write offs and expenses they earned 13-14 billion dollars a year for the last 5 years.
they could easily raise prices 1/2 a cent and eat the other 1/2 cent

Hell walmart corporate can reduce some of their fees to the local stores to cover the other 1/2 cent increase.

Walmart's net operating income was $20 billion. So nearly 5 billion increased costs would be about a 25% hit to their operating income which is actually pretty big. Again, their margins are very small. They had $520B in revenue, but only $20 billion in operating income (before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. That is a margin of about 3.8% which is very small. Add 5 billion in expenses and the margin shrinks to 2.8%.

Then, after paying interest and taxes etc they only made $14.8B which is still a large number, but it would have a signficant effect on their business.

https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NY...come-Statement

Edit:

Forgot about you saying to increase revenue by 1%. $520B * 1.01 *3.8% margin (the margin they are currently earning) ~= $20B which is about what they are currently earning.

So yes actually. If they increase the price of goods by 1%, then the increased labor cost quoted by your study would effectively cancel out.

[Hinastorm]

Walmart and Amazon generate wealth by a result of their scale not by their operating margin %. You have to look at each individual location and their EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization) or in other words strictly operations. If a location isn't operating on a profit then the company will drop that location. If each location generates let's say $100,000 of profit a year(strictly a plug number), and the company has 10,000 locations then the company generates $100,000,000 in income. In general, Walmarts operate on razor thin margins where increasing wages by $1 would blow up their budget. Consider this: Let's say one location has 100 employees. 100 Employees * $1 * 2080 hours/year (40 hours/week) * 1.3 (30% payroll burden for healthcare, workers comp, etc) = $270,400 increase in labor costs which directly hits their operating margin. For a single location that adds up to a lot of money for only a single dollar raise. Multiply that across all their locations and we are talking about a lot of money.

Obviously, that doesn't excuse Walmart/Amazon for paying workers so low they need food stamps. It just means that Walmart would need to increase prices in order to stay profitable/worth investing their time and capital at that location. Businesses should operate in the context of the laws of the place that they are operating in. If the business determines that the laws in that area make their business inoperable then maybe someone else will be able to fill in the need. If research shows that full time employees in a certain area need food stamps to survive then maybe the city/state should implement a minimum wage increase.

However, I don't think a one size fits all federal mandate of X dollars/year is the answer.

Walmart made 129 billion in profit in 2019. They claim to have 2.2 million employees.

Dividing the profit by the employees is $58,600 per.

Obviously i'm not asking them to raise each employees salary by 58,600, what I AM saying is my point stands that they can afford to raise salaries enough to be a living wage, while still making tons of profit. They certainly can afford a $15 minimum wage.

Yes i'm aware that they have no incentive to. That is the problem.

Also, i'm not so sure 129 billion profit on 514 billion in revenue is what I would call "razor thin margins". Seems pretty comfortable to me.

I also think a one size fits all $15 minimum wage is problematic in a few ways, but frankly at this point I would take it with all it's downsides over nothing else. And those seem to be the 2 options.

[Saltysquidoon]

Obviously, that doesn't excuse Walmart/Amazon for paying workers so low they need food stamps. It just means that Walmart would need to increase prices in order to stay profitable/worth investing their time and capital at that location. Businesses should operate in the context of the laws of the place that they are operating in. If the business determines that the laws in that area make their business inoperable then maybe someone else will be able to fill in the need. If research shows that full time employees in a certain area need food stamps to survive then maybe the city/state should implement a minimum wage increase.

Walmart is operating at a $6b net revenue at the end of last quarter based on a gross of $137b less sales costs of 102b and operating costs of $28b. Despite operating costs increasing (of which wages are a part) increasing by 8b over last year's costs, Walmart is still seeing an increase in profit of 8.5%.

Despite this walmart only invested $400m in raising the salary of its lowest-paid workers in September of this year which is especially egregious since trump gave them a predicted $2.2b tax cut. It's predicted that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost walmart $3b (i.e less than half of a single quarter's earnings)

I think the Waltons are doing just fine actually.

[Hinastorm]

Walmart is operating at a $6b net revenue at the end of last quarter based on a gross of $137b less sales costs of 102b and operating costs of $28b. Despite operating costs increasing (of which wages are a part) increasing by 8b over last year's costs, Walmart is still seeing an increase in profit of 8.5%.

Despite this walmart only invested $400m in raising the salary of its lowest-paid workers in September of this year which is especially egregious since trump gave them a predicted $2.2b tax cut. It's predicted that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost walmart $3b (i.e less than half of a single quarter's earnings)

I think the Waltons are doing just fine actually.

I really despise these people still blindly defending the practices of places like Walmart and Amazon. I'm trying to engage with him in good faith, but his type makes me angry.

[GreenJesus]

Walmart made 129 billion in profit in 2019. They claim to have 2.2 million employees.

Dividing the profit by the employees is $58,600 per.

Obviously i'm not asking them to raise each employees salary by 58,600, what I AM saying is my point stands that they can afford to raise salaries enough to be a living wage, while still making tons of profit.

Yes i'm aware that they have no incentive to. That is the problem.

Also, i'm not so sure 129 billion profit on 514 billion in revenue is what I would call "razor thin margins". Seems pretty comfortable to me.

I also think a one size fits all $15 minimum wage is problematic in a few ways, but frankly at this point I would take it with all it's downsides over nothing else. And those seem to be the 2 options.

Walmart did not make 129 billion in profit. Did you completely skip the operating expenses line item? Cost of goods sold is only the cost of buying the television they sell to you. That does not include rent, salaries, etc. maybe before you complain you should actually learn how to read financials?