Friday, February 28, 2014

Wal-Mart and Minimum Wage a Libertarian View


7 comments:

  1. This is called a Slippery Slope fallacy.

    " A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom."

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  2. Fuzzy math. For one thing Walmart employs about 1.4 million people. Two, all these employees do not make $8.81 an hour.

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  3. 3. People may want 15/hr but that isn't reasonable. I think they are asking that much in order to HOPE to get ten, eleven, or twelve dollars and hour. It's over negotiating in order to get to the number you really want.

    4. Walmart wouldn't be out of business but prices would reflect the change.

    Now imagine if we bought our stuff from american made factories. You know, supporting the USA. Oh, wait... people don't want to do that. Or do they? We live in an era of cheap crap.

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  4. This is beyond fuzzy math, this is lying math. Even if Wal-Mart had 2 million employees only a small fraction of them work at any one time, so the "calculations" provided are obviously just fantasy to try to prove a point.

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  5. The maths is so bad (data and assumptions), that rather than correct it I have just redone it.

    Based on the numbers from the University of Berkeley Study (see link, and passing ALL costs on to consumers):

    1) As per study (increasing wages to ($12/Hr)
    a) Wages bill increase = $3.2Bn
    b) Average Cost of raise per customer per trip = $0.46
    c) Average annual cost per customer = $12.46
    d) Average annual increase per customer = 1.05%

    If we do the numbers as per the meme,
    2) Based on increasing wages to ($15/Hr)
    a) Wages bill increase = $7.5Bn
    b) Average Cost of raise per customer per trip = $1.09
    c) Average annual cost per customer = $29.30
    d) Average annual increase per customer = 2.47%

    So THERE you have it - the customer would be impacted by 2.47% and WalMart would retain its CURRENT profits !!!

    http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2011/bigbox_livingwage_policies11.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  6. OK so I have done the maths. Based on the numbers from the University of Berkeley Study (passing ALL costs on to consumers):

    1) As per study (increasing wages to ($12/Hr)
    a) Wages bill increase = $3.2Bn
    b) Average Cost of raise per customer per trip = $0.46
    c) Average annual cost per customer = $12.46
    d) Average annual increase per customer = 1.05%

    2) Based on increasing wages to ($15/Hr)
    a) Wages bill increase = $7.5Bn
    b) Average Cost of raise per customer per trip = $1.09
    c) Average annual cost per customer = $29.30
    d) Average annual increase per customer = 2.47%

    So THERE you have it - the customer would be impacted by 2.47% and WalMart would retain its CURRENT profits !!!

    http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2011/bigbox_livingwage_policies11.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  7. CriticalThinker:
    Thanks for your comments!

    ReplyDelete

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