• Sanders to introduce bill to force Walmart to pay $15 minimum wage
    61 replies, posted
Then introduce more legislation to guarantee benefits for people working a certain number of hours. This attitude is so ridiculous. Walmart is going to throw all their toys out of the pram because their multi-billion dollar profits are going to take a slight dent, and somehow it's the fault of the people who are trying to get better working conditions for the employees? They can fuck right off.
It's basic economics here. It's going to happen anyways as things get cheaper, it's going to happen faster if outside forces (like a government) force things onto them like a cudgel. Will we get a blanket legalization on narcotics and guns while we're at it? Because I'd love to live in such a society
There are already plenty of third world shitholes that fit that description, you're welcome to join them instead of bringing down the US with your delusion.
I'm not seeing you offering a solution here though. Sure it might speed some things up by a year or two but is your preferred alternative people just earn less and less to remain competitive?
Nope. My solution is that the government should cut subsidiaries and no-bid contracts to these no-good-evil corporations. Which also isn't going to happen.
A day late and a dollar short with this.
In addition, Americans hate them because there are no people on the other side. We had to install self checkouts because our store can't retain workers forv the front because we pay like shit and customers will still flood the cashiers instead.
Bernie needs to buzz his hair. I think itll be a better look
Literally no one can earn so much money, it's impossible, as evidenced by Bernie's 600k hours statistic.
Don't go talkin' smack about the Bern-ing Horizon. >:c
This. Walmart is using the government to subsidize paychecks, essentially
And they're not alone.
Actually that's exactly what I was saying here. This too. And you wonder why we have such a large wage gap.
The US is facing a number of crises due to wealth and greed, problems that without the human factor, are very easy to solve. Not enough houses? Build more. People can't afford luxury condos? Build low-income apartments. People can't survive on their wage? Increase it. But all these problems are caused by people who do not want them fixed because it benefits them, or rather the problem doesn't benefit them, it's just a side-effect of things that do benefit them. You don't built more houses because then the value of your property goes down. You don't build low-income apartments because luxury apartment will make more money. You don't raise wages because then you and your investors make less money. It's all about either making as much money as possible or maintaining what you have, at the expense of everyone else. Employees of a multi-billion dollar company are living on food stamps. We've reached the point where the private sector is profiting so much that the public has to step in just to ensure that company's employees don't starve. We raise the minimum wage, they retaliate by dropping employees or cutting their hours. What do we do then? All out war? Do we regulate how many hours they must give? How many employees are needed? Or do we start piling on taxes in order to make up the burden that their greed is leaving society with. Tax for employees using Government benefits, machine tax to make up for lost payroll tax? The waters start getting really muddy as companies not doing anything wrong get wrapped up in these laws and the companies that are targeted find another escape or loophole to get out of it. Meanwhile the middle-class continues to slip into poverty and the culprits post record profits for another year.
They'd rather conflate the taxes and this into a corporate superbubble that opposing would only allow their own wealth to grow through lobbying
Right, so we should just let corporations do whatever the fuck they want. Which would mean automating as much as possible and paying employees as little as they feel they can get away with whether that makes shit unlivable for their employees or not. Totally sounds like a well-thought out view. Working at Wal-mart is unlivable. If you're lucky enough to work their full time, which the vast majority of employees aren't in most locations, it will still easily fall well below the cost of living. Minimum wage in Multnomah country, Oregon, where I live, is $12/hour at the moment. If you worked 40 hours weeks that'd be about $1920/month before taxes. Overall taxes are about 26% which would drop it down to ~$1420.80 per month after taxes. A modest apartment in my area right now goes for $1200/month. That means if you're lucky enough to work fulltime at Wal-Mart in my area (which nobody but the salaried employees are, and they're salaried specifically because they consistently work well over 40 hours/week) you will have about $200 left per month after JUST paying rent. This doesn't address any other bills, only rent. No phone, no internet, no car insurance, no gas, no food, no water, no electric, no waste management, let alone buying anything else or daring to save money. Like what in the utter fuck do you think would solve this issue?
I mean, you're kindof advocating for more automation when you think increasing the minimum wage will magically solve things. I'll tell you a secret: Corperations want to cut costs as much as possible. If it means firing a bunch of people because some old guy is pushing a bill forcing them to pay their workers more and replacing check out lines with self service kiosks? Yeah, that's going to happen. A minicharist society would actually solve the issue. Now I know what you're typing. You think that such a society would only benefit those evil fat cats who just want to make profit while screwing over everyone else. Not quite. Amazon, Walmart, Google, all big companys which are cemented into their position of near-megacorp status by way of cronyism. Cutting them off like leeches is the only way. Otherwise, we'll be back to the discussion of 15/hr being unlivable in another few years. (also we may as well get rid of the minimum wage and go back to the gold standard while we are at it because none of this shit is happening. Well maybe the minimum wage increase. That's actually pretty likely)
Or we could just get rid of shitty loopholes and regulate corporations, forcing them to adhere to livable standards. They'll still make shit loads of money and people will be able to make livable wages. Even incentivize them to treat their workers even better by giving them tax breaks and shit for going above and beyond.
Oh boy here we go, when they start to break out the "cronyism" excuse you know things are getting good. Nevermind that the times when the government was least involved in the market were also the ones when companies committed the most horrific atrocities against their employees in the history of the country. I'll tell you a secret: Corporations are going to cut costs and fuck over their employees no matter how hard you guzzle their cocks and beg them not to. Capitulating them and letting them just do whatever they feel like doesn't actually do anything to stop them. Who cares if they cut some jobs that pay almost literally nothing and that are just going to be replaced in the end regardless in response to being regulated. You're right in pointing out that we're just going to end up back in the same place a few years from now. Almost makes you think that this whole economic model might just actually be a broken piece of shit that is only held together by a never-ending stream of bandaid fixes and the ruthless exploitation of the vast majority of the population.
So your answer to stop crony capitalism is... more crony capitalism. Yeah sure. Lets go with that.
"Crony" capitalism is just capitalism.
Uh... What the fuck are you smoking? Crony capitalism is letting corporations get away with dodging taxes and regulations and screwing their own employees over at every opportunity they get. Which if you bothered reading what I wrote is kinda the exact opposite of what I was saying.
They get away with it because of all their ties to government holdings. Come on now. Hey you know Sweden? They actually got all the wealth they are currently (and sadly) using for socialized programs by way of being a minicharist state for the longest time. They still don't even have a minimum wage.
This is misleading, they don't have a minimum wage primarily because the strength of unions in their country essentially provides a replacement.
A private company not paying their workers a livable wage, and then having the government pick up the shortfall, and all the while the private execs get all the bonuses, is undeniably ridiculous.
See its the latter part that supports the former part.
After giants like Wal-Mart have pushed out small and local business, maybe we should just take these exploitative heights of the market and nationalize them. If capitalism is going to centralize, we might as well take the extra half-step and socialize it.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132451/712151fd-574c-45c2-875f-9775f1370a7d/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132451/e07a18c7-793b-4363-8dd9-76dc0da9292c/image.png
If automation saves money then they're going to do that regardless of what the minimum wage is. I personally believe the minimum wage should be tied to the standard of living in each state, but we're doing baby steps here because we're not going to pass sweeping labor reforms under the Trump administration.
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