That Washington D.C. city council is really something. It's passed a bill, now awaiting the mayor's signature, that would raise the minimum wage to $12.50 an hour for companies with sales over a certain level. Walmart, which had been planning a number of new stores in D.C., says if the mayor signs it, they're pulling out, leaving some 300 jobs at each location uncreated.
And those desperately in need of acquiring skills and experience will be denied the chance and will remain idle and dependent on the government. Demagogues and hustlers will use them as props for victimhood-perpetuating rants. Congresspeople will feel compelled to "do something."
We've seen this script before. Many, many, many times.
Even when they are not idle and working at the WalMart, employees are on the government dole which means you and I are subsidizing Wally and their great American stockholders.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/dec/06/alan-grayson/alan-grayson-says-more-walmart-employees-medicaid-/
Walmart employees are paid so little,Alan Grason argued, they often seek government programs for help. "In state after state, the largest group of Medicaid recipients is Walmart employees. I'm sure that the same thing is true of food stamp recipients, he added. Each Walmart ‘associate’ costs the taxpayers an average of more than $1,000 in public assistance," Grayson wrote in a Huffington Post column on Nov. 24, 2012. He doubled down in a subsequent interview with The Young Turks show on Current TV, saying Walmart employees represent "the largest group of food stamp recipients."
In nearly all 24 states in which a study was completed, Grayson’s point proved accurate, according to a list from Good Jobs First, a labor-funded group that has criticized government support for Wal-Mart.
They could work elsewhere, take second jobs, or start entrepreneurial projects. Walmart is under no obligation to pay them more.
ReplyDeleteI know, the geniuses and jolly good fellows of MacDonalds have released a primer on how to thrive alive slingin' bucks for burgers, what a life!
ReplyDeleteA citizen of our society is supposed to have the powers of observation and conclusion to realize that such jobs are not meant to be long-term solution to making a living .
ReplyDeleteOver the past two decades in the U.S., one category of employment has outgrown all the rest: personal-service jobs. The jobs that fall into this category include cutting hair, cleaning houses, assisting the elderly and serving burgers and fries in the fast-food world.
ReplyDeleteBesides the general idea that these jobs all involve helping others in some way or another, they have a few more things in common: they cannot easily be outsourced to overseas workers (or robots, for that matter), they tend to pay poorly (typically an hourly wage rather than a salary, and often $10 to $15 an hour or even less), and they tend to be the kinds of low-skill jobs that high school guidance counselors have traditionally suggested for students with barely passing grades. No wonder more and more people are questioning whether the American Dream still exists.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/07/06/steadiest-fastest-growing-jobs-service-gigs-that-pay-poorly/#ixzz2ZlyP1kQ2
Although it varies with the company and the job, on average 250 resumes are received for each corporate job opening. Finding a position opening late can’t help your chances because the first resume is received within 200 seconds after a position is posted. If you post your resume online on a major job site like Monster so that a recruiter can find it, you are facing stiff competition because 427,000 other resumes are posted on Monster alone each and every week (BeHiring).
ReplyDeleteRead more at http://www.ere.net/2013/05/20/why-you-cant-get-a-job-recruiting-explained-by-the-numbers/
Human existence has always been daunting. What's even more daunting, however, is resisting the temptation to see government as some kind of buffer against its vicissitudes. History shows where giving government that kind of power always leads.
ReplyDeleteOK, what does even our own country's history have to say about ceding power to the corporate monolith?
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is a corporate monolith?
ReplyDeleteCorporations may appear to be diverse, but they are really one big entity with awesome power over our lives. One corporation does it and it works, they all do it. The monolith at one time at least served its employees, but since Neutron Jack (Welch, of GE, not much of a success in his personal life, 3 marriages, 3 divorces), it's all for the stockholders. Worker pensions eventually went the way of the 401K for nearly all of the monolith. They want all of life to be run like a business. The bloggie bemoans the mindless sheep he claims gummit breeds, but it might beat becoming mutton in the corporate stew.
ReplyDeleteAlthough their massive productive capacities and innovative powers have contributed immeasurably to the high standard of living that many Americans enjoy, far too often corporations have abused the public trust, the people who use their products, their own employees and stockholders, the environment, and even the Third World that they profess to help. From illegally disposing of hazardous waste to defiance of health and safety standards to price-fixing, corporate violations cost hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lives. The magnitude of their offenses becomes clear when one considers that a single corporate offense may run into millions of dollars in losses, while the average cost of a burglary is $600 and the average larceny $400. In some cases, the cost of a single case of corporate misconduct may exceed a billion dollars.
Read more at http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Corruption-The-Abuse-Power/dp/0275934853
I contend there are only 10 companies in the US because they all sit on each others' boards. And I can attest to business wanting all of life to be run like a business--witness the 6 Sigma approach to running a nonprofit agency. I've worked in both--they are NOT alike. CD
ReplyDeleteJohn: The idea that hazardous waste dumping, price fixing and allowing unsafe conditions are commonplace practices is the stuff of alarmist fantasy and does not discredit the free market.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I am in complete agreement that very large corporations become unwieldy behemoths - not unlike the government - and that a bureaucratic mindset permeates them. You are exactly correct that the Six Sigma zealots have extended their influence into all kinds of areas well beyond the manufacturing industry. So has organizational acquiescence to a number of leftist causes, such as "diversity" and "protecting the environment." And, yes, there is a network of people who serve on the same boards, know each other from various trade associations and even schools. But "business" on that level is a whole different bag from the forty-person shops across this country that actually do operate on a lean basis and keep things on a very human level.
Ah, but this post was about Walmart, wasn't it, and so we get back to some basic economic principles. Whether a profit-making organization is big and bureaucratic or small and human, it has x number of dollars to spend on labor, and if government on some level attempts to tell it to spend more, its going to say, "We have another option. We can just decline to put up a facility in your jurisdiction."
ReplyDeleteIt's purely a free market principle.
The y number of dollars they don't spend on human capital goes to who? It appears the free market incentive is to pay lowly humans as little as possible, remember slavery. They don't make much in China, Mexico and wherever else the corporate monolith jumps on the bandwagon to the prosperity of the fewest. By the way, the brilliant Anonymous, CD is my lovely wife to whom I showed this thread since we were talking about the space between us all and the people who....
ReplyDeleteShe's always struck me as sharp.
ReplyDeleteYou have a point to this extent: Our iPhones would cost a hell of a lot more if they were manufactured in the US. We might buy them, but only until some astute droid maker went to China.