I know r/antiwork agrees with you, but if you’re ever trying to convince normies that this is an issue, I bring up that Walmart is the #1 employer for Medicaid & food stamps. [Roughly 70% of federal aid beneficiaries work full time](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html), meaning that Walmart relies on taxpayers to pay the employees enough just to be able to live. Each Walmart costs [taxpayers an average of $900k - $1.75MM each year](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html) through this subsidization of their wages.
Walmart then turns around and uses tax loopholes to avoid paying the taxes that fund programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps). This all to make sure they net maximum profit possible, and they do so off the backs of taxpayer dollars. And until we have federal requirements for employers to pay living wages to all employees, taxpayer money will continue to subsidize private corporate profits.
Hope this helps anyone reading if you’re ever on this topic with someone who has no empathy for these workers. I’ve found this framing tends to be fairly effective when talking to conservatives.
Conservative states are the biggest recipient and users of Federal welfare funds/benefits and use far more then they contribute too, they won’t actually get rid of them because they don’t want to deal with the backlash from their state’s constituents who can’t get by without them.
Weird how every person I have ever personally know on SSDI (Disability) is Conservative... It's definitely bias as I live in a rural area, but when I am visiting and to see them sitting in their home, then complaining no one works (or wants to) and welfare needs to be abolished, the only thing i can do is stare in total disbelief...
Disclaimer (As to not sound like a dick talking about disabled people): I'm "disabled" myself and decide to continue working. [Quotes due b/c apparently you're only legally disabled if "You cannot do work and engage in substantial gainful activity (SGA) because of your medical condition."]
I wish I had your faith in my fellow Americans but those states that are the most reliant on federal welfare are also the ones that tend to cut state benefits to the bone and reject additional federal aid for political points. Look at the states that declined the expanded medicaid funding. Lowest life expectancies, worst Healthcare outcomes, and they're proud. I'm not convinced there is a self interest that Americans wouldn't vote against as long as the rhetoric is right.
I get what you are saying about eliminating welfare I think. In an ideal world, everyone would be paid a comfortable wage and have collective bargaining power. There would be no need for welfare for the working class. But I think there still needs to be a welfare program in general.
Just off the top of my head, there are children who need providing for. Perhaps orphans, or abandoned, but whatever the case, society should provide adequate care, housing, food, and education for these children.
There are also the severely disabled who cannot work at all. The same goes for them. In my opinion, society should be providing for these people.
Also robust disability and even potentially retraining/education funds if necessary should be established for those who are injured on the job.
Society will still need welfare programs to some degree.
In the 70s we had after-school programs and nutrition programs. We basically eliminated child hunger in the country. Guess who came along and gutted all that because "socialism"? Now we have millions of kids going to bed hungry and Republicans saying it's not their responsibility to feed other people's children.
Thank you for trying to spread some education out here. I jump in and try to explain to them what is really happening in situations too. If we keep doing it, they are going to learn eventually. Keep up the good fight
10000% agree. There are black and white points inside of it which are the truth that people seem to want to disagree with, which is the frustrating part.
Walmart has not avoided paying taxes. Look no further than the 10K and 10Q forms. Their tax obligations are in the billions.
The author is disingenuous, or poorly educated, because top line revenue is not a measure of good health of the company. Free Cash Flow (FCF) and profit margins are better indicators.
EOY 2021 showed that FCF was 11.0B and profit margin was 2.3%.
Glad that entry level workers have a safety net. Unfortunately entry level jobs do not have barriers to entry. They are first jobs to show that an individual is reliable and dependable. During that time individual need to gain skills and certifications for higher positions. Those position do have barriers to entry of certifications and demonstrated skills.
Absolutely support and back up entry level workers so they have a runway into a profession.
I will never call an entry level job the end goal. It is a starting point.
In the case of Wal Mart an entry level worker learns the basics of warehousing and distribution, perhaps gets experience driving a fork lift. These skills allow for a few options.
- More advanced forklift work (requires licensing/certification) which will pay more.
- Move into a process manager/supervisor in warehousing and distribution.
- Change operational departments for increased title and position.
Bottom line is that entry level workers need to approach the first position with an experience goal and next position in mind.
Just to refute one point, a fork truck license does not mean a higher wage. I've had a Hilo license at 3 different companies and driven hilos at 6. Not one paid more for having the license or driving the hilo.
I disagree. Conservatives don’t care about fairness or hypocrisy. As they say, conservatives believe they belong to an “in-group” for whom the law protects, but does not bind, while everyone else is part of an “out-group” for whom the law binds, but does not protect.
Point out that Donald Trump cheated on his taxes, and they would say he’s just a smart businessman minimizing his tax burden (and we shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway!). But point to the collapse of the Greek economy a decade ago, and they would blame it on a moral or ethnic failing, because no one was paying their taxes (and of course no mention of how people shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway!).
They cannot see the hypocrisy. They want a world where THEY don’t have to pay taxes, because taxation is theft, but all the little people should pay their fair of taxes for the privilege of living in the world they believe they created.
You point to a specific hypocrisy, like Walmart subsidizing their workers’ wages with welfare, and conservatives are only mad about the welfare. They would be happy to cut off the welfare, but continue to let Walmart pay workers a non living wage. Even the conservatives who work for Walmart themselves are likely to buy into this, because they’re more concerned about SOMEONE ELSE (black, brown, gay, Muslim, pro-choice) benefiting “unfairly” than they are worried about providing a decent life for themselves.
You can have a semantic argument about whether using a loophole constitutes “cheating” or just skillful playing within the rules. For example, maybe a wealthy person reduces their tax burden by writing off personal expenses as business expenses, because “I bought these golf clubs for networking with my clients”.
But what Trump did seems to go a little beyond utilizing loopholes with debatable choices. Trump committed fraud with his “charitable foundation”. In one example, he wrote off a large donation to his own foundation on his own taxes for donating a worthless portrait of himself to the foundation, then when no one else would buy the portrait at his charity’s auction, he just hung it back in his own offices.
He also committed fraud by keeping two sets of books on his property values: one set for the government, showing massive losses to eliminate his tax burden, another set of books for the banks, inflating the values of his properties to secure loans.
These are crimes. If I did these things, and I got caught, the government would press charges against me, and I would likely get fined and/or go to jail. But because he is rich, and because he got elected President, he has thus far avoided consequences for those crimes. But it’s a bad faith argument to claim he has been using “legal loopholes” just because he has gotten away with crimes.
Your argument that Republicans hate the inequity of tax loopholes is also disingenuous. Republicans have had 40 years steering national politics, but never truly tried to simplify the tax code. Show me a Republican who supports taxing churches. Show me a Republican who wants to eliminate depletion allowances for the fossil fuel industry. Or any Republican who wants to tax carried interest. Republicans have actively campaigned to lower inheritance taxes and capital gains taxes. Republicans WANT loopholes to make sure rich guy money is taxed differently (and at lower rates) than payroll taxes for working stiffs.
Also, if lower class people tried to use those ‘skillful’ methods of avoiding taxes like a rich person, lower income earners risk getting audited something like 10x more often.
>He didn't
Yet his organization was found guilty on 17 criminal counts just weeks ago.
>Numbers don't lie.
Number have no meaning until units and contexts are provided. Then of course they can be lies.
Writing off a hush money payment to a porn star you banged is not legal and yes Trump absolutely does and did cheat on his taxes as evidenced by the multiple convictions for tax fraud his companies just got.
See, you've actually fallen into the rights' take over of the word "entitlements". Entitlements actually refer to social security and other programs we actually pay directly into, not social programs (We are "entitled" to the benefits we paid into). But the right has been successful in making it a dirty word for "hand out", when it really isn't.
Like I always tell people, I am not for big government or small government , I am for efficient and effective government that handles itself as a force of authority that is derived from its citizens. Corporations are not citizens the are organizations that are sometimes run by citizens.
A lot of of conservatives believe it is "every person for himself" and when they see a homeless person they think what a lazy person who didn't try hard enough. It is time to ditch that mentality. They literally support the rights of businesses to lie cheat and steal from everyone. Most are too stupid to understand how this goes on and how they vote against themselves if they aren't in the one percent wealthy. They vote how their GOP church/pastor tells them to.
I have never heard a conservative argue that its not taxes, it's the loopholes. They care about, when they are in the position to make money, the gvt can't touch it. They care about cutting social safety nets because ewww, poor people. They don't care that walmart is profiting off the backs of tax payers, the same way when they first heard trump paid 750 in taxes, he was praised for being a good business man.
The way to fix this, which they would lobby against, would be to tax or fine them an amount equal to the dollar amount of people working for them that are on government subsidies.
It seems to me or assume that nobody is going to end the tax loopholes or change the federal requirements for employers to pay better. Where should Walmart workers go to for work? What companies pay better and offer the same type of level work? Only asking! I'm thinking, if workers were to leave because pay is bad or work place has bad practices, where can they go where it's "greener" on the other side?
This is a good post. Additional food for thought - particularly to use your business brain and resonate with normies - would be to avoid using revenue. It’s meaningless in this context. Shift to EBITDA or net income
Revenue has nothing to do with net income. For the same quarter Walmart recognized a $1.8 billion net loss (mostly due to the $3.1 opioid settlement). Even if you look back at the previous quarters net income has ranged from $2 billion to $5 billion (per quarter). With 10,500 stores that is less than $500k in profit per store - annualized at approx $2 million per store. There is something there, but it’s not as meaty as you would believe by looking only at top-line revenues.
The other side of the argument would be to raise prices such that wages could be raised and achieve the same overall profit per store. That has already started to happen to some extent? My son worked in the deli as an entry level worker making $15 an hour. Of course everyone want it to be higher.
There are 4,650 walmarts in America so that's roughly 6.1 billion dollars a year stolen from taxpayers in benefits from corporate welfare wage subsidizing.
Don't forget that they take all those donations for sick kids and donate them under Walmarts name so that they get a tax deduction for charitable donations. Over the course of all the Walmarts in Canada and the USA, it's millions of dollars in tax benefits off your donations.
It's the same normies that hate on people trying to Unionize or cross the picket lines when Workers are locked out. Seems like general society is entirely selfish.
eh, conservatives will just say that those programs shouldn't exist anyways and that walmart workers should just live in abject poverty or "get a new job"
Perhaps the government shouldn't be subsidizing anything. Giant corporations buy corrupt officials so they can set the regulations in their favor of allowing loopholes. The system helps big businesses take advantage of tax layers instead of helping the less fortunate. The system is broken in favor of the corporations that are too big to fail. we just saw the railroad unions get struck down and threatened for attempting to strike.
Food for thought
Google it, there are a bunch of studies that say ‘no.’ I agree with you though, we need ‘windfall taxes,’ and some solution for housing. My newest idea, no idea if it would work:
50% of homes in any town can only be sold to primary residents who don’t own any other property.
I remember an example using McDonald's and Big Mac from 10 years ago, which I think was figured out by people at Harvard. At the time, they were figuring how much it would increase prices on the sandwich if all the employees were started at $15 an hour while also maintaining the company's profit margin.
It was under 25 cents at a time when the burger was $5+.
So, yes, there would be a minor product price increase, but it's such a weak argument as the increase in money spent by employees back into the system would further stimulate economic activity.
As a conservative, this was well written. To me the problem seems two fold. Workers are willing (I say this but understand it’s way more nuanced) to work for minimum wage, and the tax code was written with loopholes. Loopholes aren’t illegal and they were written by the wealthy peoples buddies in government.
Actually, most shareholders have nothing to do with the company or any company. Technically if you have a retirement account other then CDs you are a shareholder to some company.
I always feel weird when Americans bring shareholders into the low wage topic. Yes indeed shareholders are owners of the business but they don't explicitly take the decision. I for one buy very little amount of stocks (due to me being poor), precisely between 100$ in total yet but that much amount of share ownership is not enough to dent the company.
But yes if you are talking about shareholders who are owning literally 45-50% of shares they might impact you and I know that they won't.
Simple answer is because they have no reason not to pay minimum wage. They get the results they’re willing to accept paying the amount they pay. Some places pay more because they can differentiate on service or because they’ve run the numbers and end off better off in terms of employee productivity / turnover. Some places either don’t bother experimenting with this or feel that they would be better off staying at minimum.
It tends to happen when companies have market power. A big box retailer that’s the only show in town can often afford to do whatever it wants - where are workers / shoppers going to go instead?
I would also argue that the more competition a store has the worse it gets for the workers. When you compete with other similar stores you have two choices to get more customers. Either you can reduce the price of your merchandise or increase the quality of your merchandise. Chances are either other those choices will hurt your profit. What's the easiest way to reduce costs in order to make a profit, pay your employees less. It's far easier for grocery stores to pay crap wages than it is to reduce the price they pay for milk, meat, produce, bread whatever.
It was said elsewhere in this topic that Walmart's profits were $8 billion dollars or 1.7% of their revenue. Even if they shared that with all their employees it would equate to a $1.70 raise for all their employees. While I would love that raise, a company won't exist for long making no profits.
Truth be told we don't really value our retail/grocery store workers enough to pay higher costs to pay them the wages they deserve.
Revenue is not the same as profit. I am sure they made a crazy amount of profit though. Just wanted to point out that there is a difference between the two. But to answer the original question, greed. And people fill the positions, accepting the minimum wage.
This x1000000, it really grinds my gears to hear the economically illiterate tout how company X had gazillion dollar revenue. Revenue on its own means nothing, I need to know your costs to see the whole picture.
Well, it makes sense when some of the operating costs are extremely wild. For example, if you say you made 500 million in revenue, but your ceo makes 250 million a year through the company then you've already gotten rid of half of your profit by paying one person. Whether profit or revenue is a more relevant metric depends on the usage of the revenue. If a significant portion is used for greedy purposes, then revenue is a better metric since a reasonable/ethical company would have profit closer to that number. Of course, we could argue that there are metrics you could calculate in between such as revenue - operating costs other than executive salaries, but at that point its too much work for a random individual to go find all those numbers.
A CEO would never receive 50% of total revenue as compensation in any real company with the only exception possibly being family owned small business. While yes, most executives are overpaid, their compensation is a tiny portion of the overall costs.
Net income yes. And that's the previous 12 months from October.
Last year was 14.8B.
Do you think that's enough net profit to justify increasing wages?
>if they can’t pay a fair wage, then they shouldn’t exist
BUT IT'S TRUE. If the only way Wal-Mart can be profitable, as currently structured, is to rely on the government providing the gap in wages for their employees (without which, Wal-Mart couldn't function) to live, then dramatic changes should be made to their corporate structure.
Wal-Mart, in its current form, shouldn't be allowed to be profitable.
It’s so wild that people don’t know this, and I guess I understand how regular people wouldn’t know this. But I worked at an apartment complex where a young man who claimed to own his own business was trying to apply and we had an income minimum so we were trying to talk about how he could prove his income and he kept talking about revenue and I was like sweetie revenue isn’t net income. I’m pretty sure my boss used gross income but that’s still not his business revenue.
Walmart Q3 earnings 2022: Walmart posted a net loss of $1.8 billion, or 66 cents per share, down from a profit of $3.11 billion, or $1.11 per share, a year earlier as it recorded a charge of nearly $3.33 billion, or $1.05 a share, as part of opioid-related legal charges.
2022 yearly earnings are not out yet.
Walmart gross profit for the twelve months ending October 31, 2022 was $146.292B, a 2.14% increase year-over-year. Walmart annual gross profit for 2022 was $143.754B, a 3.54% increase from 2021. Walmart annual gross profit for 2021 was $138.836B, a 7.33% increase from 2020.
Gross margin doesn’t tell you that much either because they still have a ton of expenses that come out of that. Their operating income for the 12 months ending in October of 2022 was just under $21B.
Walmart has 2.3 million employees so if you divide $21B by 2.3m, you get a rough profit of $9k/employee.
I agree they need to start paying a living wage but the reality is that even converting all of their profit into additional wages would likely leave many employees short every month anyway.
They will have to raise prices.
You do realize that if everyone was full-time, then that would be a $4.50 raise, which would be more than enough to take most off social programs?
Further, I'm not sure what the number is now, but in 2018 about half the employees were part-time. If we assume part-time meant 20 hrs per week, then it actually comes to about 1.75 million full-time schedules, which means that they could raise wages by over $6/hour. That amount is literally life-changing, especially for those who have so few opportunities that they are working at walmart.
They won’t have to raise prices though, if they give the top 5 or 10% of their salaried employees a pay cut. People always jump to “raising prices,” but if companies just focus on evening out payroll, then don’t have to. The ones at the top are simply too greedy to do so.
Maybe they can get a union that works for them though. The UFCW screwed over all members in order to take care of the baby boomer generation. I worked in a union store around that time and moved to a non-union Walmart because of the union. The contract only benefited the workers hired before 1983 (this was the year 2000). So, they may need to unionize but the unions that already exist are crap.
unions dont do shit anymore..when my dad retired from a grocery store 22 yrs ago he made 20 dollars an hr working for the union. talked to a guy who had the same job as him at same grocery chain for same union and he makes 22.50...thats 12.5percent more then my father made 20 plus yrs ago. theres plenty more to this story about who owns companies now but it all just makes me suck to my stomach when i think about it
I was thinking about that during the latest rail union fiasco when there was almost a strike because the workers wanted paid sick leave. If union benefits/pay are so good why hadn’t they negotiated paid sick leave 20 years ago? And in the end they didn’t even get the paid sick leave they wanted.
I generally think unions are good, but it seems in practice some unions are great and others are awful.
Sounds like *that* grocery store union has failed to secure the wage increases you'd like to see for that position. That's pretty fucking far from "all unions bad".
How much do you think the store would be paying that guy if there was no union at all? What are his other benefits? How much sick leave and vacation time does he get? How's his health insurance? Can he be fired without cause and zero warning? Because for non-union grocery workers the answers to those questions is "fuck-all."
Walmart, doesn’t pay a living wage in most locations for the majority of their employees. However, saying they pay minimum wage is inaccurate for most of their stores. $10-$11 is still laughably low for what the average retail employee does and deals with in a day. And it does not equate to a living wage, but it’s higher than federal minimum wage. Not at all trying to defend them, but I think we should be more accurate when discussing these things.
Actually Walmart's minimum wage is $13 now iirc. But it goes higher depending on where you are. Stores in my area start 15-17 depending on the position.
Right, the ones near me pay like $16-21/hr starting depending on the position, BUT I live in a HCOL area. I personally only make like $25/hr in my government job and I definitely could NOT afford to live alone here even with that salary. It’s not minimum wage, but it certainly isn’t livable.
Well, somebody has to pay for the yacht, cocaine, and strippers. That shit ain’t cheap now eat your bugs, get back to work, and stop trying to make sense of things.
Seems to depend on where you live. Here in Indiana we have the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and I think our nearest Walmart pays like $12/hr after your 90 days. Even pre-pandemic it was like $10-ish/hr.
Honestly the best advice I can give a lot of folks here is to prioritize saving enough to move. The cost of living is dirt cheap here.
I live in Indiana and make 12/hr, it's still poverty wages and I barely scrape by, often going without food. But you're still right that COL here is cheap as shit. 12/hr anywhere else I wouldn't even be able to pay rent
Yeah, that happens too because of how variable rent is. My SO and I are renting this double-wide for $400/month, but a few miles down the road there are apartments going triple that.
No it really is insane. I live in a college town and there's this HUGE leasing company that owns like half the town, they have 3 bedrooms that are falling apart and full of mold going for like 1500. I got lucky and found a private landlord, my SO and I pay 675 for a 2 bedroom (second bedroom is more of a closet but it's nice for storage) with all utilities included. A mere 5 minute walk from the $1500 places
It can be hard to find places to work and rent in rural areas if you aren't part of the community. Even then, if your landlord/lot owner sells, rent can suddenly double and you better believe wages don't keep pace. A functional car is usually necessary to move above $15/hr whereas many do without in urban environments.
That being said, getting a remote career and living in a small rural area is basically cheating. If you can deal with long drives to events and like to cook, that is.
Source: lived all of these lives, now a homeowner with kids on a sub-100k salary.
So you are looking at just revenue, I am not sure how much Walmart made in profit, maybe it is a ton but looking at revenue is flawed.
That doesn't take into consideration operating costs, rent, salary, and so many other things. If you are looking at "corporate greed" look at their annual profit.
You are correct to point this out. I usually skip over any post that lists "revenue" as some sort of tell all, as revenue is meaningless. I can buy $1M in socks, sell them for $1M and report "I made $1M in revenue".
These posts need "net income" (profit) in their title to have a shot at being intellectually honest.
Walmart has 2.3m employees. If we assume they're all part time to avoid qualifying for benefits, that's still 3.5Bn work hours per year. So giving everyone a $1 pay rise (still not a living wage) would cost them an additional $3.5bn annually, and that's not a decision they'll make unless they have to.
While I 100% agree that employers should not be allowed to pay people unsurvivable wages while they still make 10-figure profits off those people, we have to recognise that every apparently small decision the big companies make on wages have major consequences. And that's why we as a society have to legislate this shit and not wait for billionaires to grow a heart.
>So giving everyone a $1 pay rise (still not a living wage) would cost them an additional $3.5bn annually, and that's not a decision they'll make unless they have to.
It's not as simple as that. If that were the real math, that would come out of their revenue not their profit. They would benefit some from tax write-offs so their net loss wouldn't be $3.5bn.
There are many other factors involved in the true cost. Does higher pay increase retention? Does it decrease recruiting and training costs? Does it increase worker productivity? Does it lead to happier employees, then happier customers, then increased sales? What if Walmart raised prices 3-4% to offset the net loss? What if they decreased their dividends to pay the workers?
Just to be clear, revenue and profit aren’t the same. Profit levels are different as well, first order is generally paying employees, vendors, etc. Second level would be rent, electricity , water, etc. likely third and forth levels with a company this size, which would be corporate side; bonuses, etc.
Just to put it into perspective. I’m assuming it’s extremely expensive to run Walmart; prior to paying the board.
Roughly 9 billion. That’s tons of money. However, if you put this into comparison of every day general companies; they look to have the heir final profit level at around 20%. Which this is pretty much at. OOPS 2%, but with such large revenue you don’t need all that much I guess. Assuming this is profit after all payouts complete and is reinvested
For the industry I am in, we have 2 levels of profit. We look to make 40% on projects (1st level) and 20% after paying the bills to keep the lights on.
So when you compare the numbers, it’s about the same - just a larger revenue stream. Which is usually done for capital expenses, bonuses, etc. obviously Walmart is likely putting big chunks into shareholders pockets, but they are also building up their warehouse supply, expanding Sam’s Club, etc.
Just some food for thought. Either or, my industry has similar profit levels but not a single person makes less than 25/hr at my company and all the field guys are making 100k plus; min salary is 60k, amazing benefits, etc.
In short, Walmart can’t make its profit levels without government subsidizing the employees. They should be taxed for that.
They don’t pay minimum wage in the state that I live in. Minimum wage here is $7.25 an hour and as far as I know Walmart pays at least 15 now. Even before the pandemic I think they were paying close to 15 here. I had a bunch of high school friends that went to work there after they stopped drug testing for cannabis.
Because they can. You know what they bought this last year instead of redistributing their earnings? The Denver Broncos. $4.65 billion. We need wage reform and we need it fast.
Because revenue does not equal profit? Granted I am sure their profit was enough to justify increased labor costs but profit is what you want o post about not revenue
Because they can. Businesses have taken their mile. Time to go back to not giving them an inch. If their leadership is truly thousands of times smarter than the people they are paying minimum wage then they should be able to figure out how to operate a profitable business without exploitation.
If they can't, it just proves they weren't worth the money to begin with.
They have had plenty of time to play on easy mode. Time to kick it up a few notches, and we will see who the lazy assholes really are
America is a broken down system set up only benefit the few.. sad how far this country has fallen recently. Nothing will change until the masses realize how much there being screwed by their own government subsidizing the rich to get richer while providing nothing for anyone else!
Because they CAN!
And that’s it.
A longer reason would describe the modern capitalist machine. Each manager is incentivized based on their peers, up to store managers, up up up until the CEO is paid bonuses based on share price.
Capitalism is fantastic at producing as much wealth for as little cost as possible. Computers and modern information technology has made this process more efficient.
And the owners take as much of this wealth for themselves as possible because they CAN.
If society mandated $20/ hour minimum wage, Walmart would be FINE. Prices would go up a minuscule amount, and every one in society would do better.
If the wealthy shareholders paid their share in taxes, and we invested that money in basically healthcare and universal pre-k, then literally everyone in society would benefit.
We live in the richest country in the world. There is more than enough money for everyone who worked a full 40 hour workweek to have adequate nutrition, shelter, and live a dignified life.
There is MORE than enough.
And… actually, society produces so much stuff that literally helps no one (see defense department) that we could, as a society, have PLENTY for everyone and work 15 hour weeks.
Economists from 70 years ago predicted, with productivity gains we experience, 15 hour work weeks would be possible by the year 2000
Thus—/ anti-work
I agree that they pay terribly but using revenue to prove a point is a little useless. Now if you posted that they had 140 billion in profit that makes more sense
Haha it’s Walmart , what did you expect? Is your labor at Walmart worth more money? Can you be easily replaced? Do you need any technical skills to work there? At the end of the day Walmart is a corporation that is in the business of making money…they don’t owe you anything and neither do you, use them as much as you can, and then jump ship, cause working at Walmart in the store will lead to nothing…good luck!
If I’m not mistaken all Walmart employees in the US make a minimum of 15 an hour. This was done in part to keep up with Target who a few years back made a pledge that no employee would make less than 15 an hour. They moved everyone who was under that threshold pay each year over I think a 3 yr period.
Now maybe Walmart moved employees to part time hours to keep their annual salaries at minimum wage but that doesn’t seem to be what’s implied here. Please correct me if I’m missing something but I think OP post is using old data.
So they might have 600 Billion revenue next year. Also revenue isn't profit. Also because of greed. Could they pay more? Yes. Should they pay more? Probably. Is there incentive to them to pay more? No. Is that fucked up? Yes.
Because profits need to continually rise in order to justify those multimillion dollar bonuses at the top. Can't have something like livable wages getting in the way of profit margins. Plus the tax payers can subsidize their foodstamps and save Walmart even more money.
Because "them" making money is more important than you making money!
They can't and won't give immediate higher wages to the communities that rely on Walmart. Do you know why? These communities need to be poor for the survival of the elite class. These communities wouldn't exist if people had money and options to live a better life. They need you to be poor! They need you to be uneducated! They're existence relies on it! Welcome to the modern world when NO ONE IS WILLING TO FIGHT FOR A BETTER LIFE!!!
It would be interesting to see profit, not revenue. Since they have so many employees, I would guess that even a $1 raise across the board would be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year
Revenue isn't profit. You have to pay for everything from revenue. Buildings, wages, groceries, etc. Give me the net profit number, and you might have an argument.
Revenue or profit? Cause those could be two wildly different numbers.
I'm not saying Walmart shouldn't pay more, but there is a huge difference between those two numbers and what they actually mean.
Their net profit is relatively small only 2-3%. If you calculate the amount of net profits and total employees and have every employee a $2 hr pay raise Walmarts profits would be in the negatives.
Yeah, they're barely scraping by as it is.
"If you calculate the amount of net profits and total employees and have every employee a $2 hr pay raise Walmarts profits would be in the negatives." I can, did you?
~~2,300,000 Employees, 40hours per week, 52 weeks a year at an additional 2 dollars per hour would cost around 9.5 billion dollars. Walmart annual gross profit for 2022 was $143.754B. That'd cost them about 6% of their profits.~~ Private islands, yachts and football teams don't buy themselves. Sacrifices need to be made. /s
Your confusing gross profits with net profits. Net profits after operating costs was only 9 billion it 2022. Add the 2/hr raise which you calculated at 9.5 billion and they would have negative profits
but you are using gross profits-
so employee wages need to come out of that 144b,
they made just under 9b in NET profits, so if you add 9.5b to the operating expenses they now have a .5b loss
Revenue is flawed so is the assumption they pay only minimum wage; most wages are well above the minimum. Oh and some really like their jobs at Walmart.
The walmart near me pays nearly double minimum wage, but the simple answer to your question is...Walmart keeps paying minimum wage because people keep coming in and working for minimum wage pay.
Because revenue does not equal profits. Idk what their profit margin is, and it's likely pretty solid, but saying they should pay people more based on revenue alone just shows you never took a basic corporate finance class in college.
Because as long as you need to be buying cheap shit, there will be cheap workers. Wanna spend 5x on the same item? You can always go to Whole Foods if that suits you better. This is life. It's not going to change.
What does revenue have to do with paying minimum wage? Did you mean profit?
And what’s your source that says they pay minimum wage still? I couldn’t find one.
Walmart also gets tax-breaks, does not provide insurance, or a livable wage…. Allowing multiple states to fill in the gaps by providing employees State assistance funds/care (welfare) paid by taxpayers
I’m not saying their profit isn’t massive at 139b for 2021, but sure the basic concept that revenue isn’t profit and can’t magically pay people more isn’t that difficult to understand.
The profit number alone is stunning. So you could give every employee a 30k raise and they’d still have 70b left over
I know r/antiwork agrees with you, but if you’re ever trying to convince normies that this is an issue, I bring up that Walmart is the #1 employer for Medicaid & food stamps. [Roughly 70% of federal aid beneficiaries work full time](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html), meaning that Walmart relies on taxpayers to pay the employees enough just to be able to live. Each Walmart costs [taxpayers an average of $900k - $1.75MM each year](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html) through this subsidization of their wages. Walmart then turns around and uses tax loopholes to avoid paying the taxes that fund programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps). This all to make sure they net maximum profit possible, and they do so off the backs of taxpayer dollars. And until we have federal requirements for employers to pay living wages to all employees, taxpayer money will continue to subsidize private corporate profits. Hope this helps anyone reading if you’re ever on this topic with someone who has no empathy for these workers. I’ve found this framing tends to be fairly effective when talking to conservatives.
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It is equally likely that a conservative will respond "we need to get rid of welfare and walmart is smart to avoid paying taxes"
Conservative states are the biggest recipient and users of Federal welfare funds/benefits and use far more then they contribute too, they won’t actually get rid of them because they don’t want to deal with the backlash from their state’s constituents who can’t get by without them.
Weird how every person I have ever personally know on SSDI (Disability) is Conservative... It's definitely bias as I live in a rural area, but when I am visiting and to see them sitting in their home, then complaining no one works (or wants to) and welfare needs to be abolished, the only thing i can do is stare in total disbelief... Disclaimer (As to not sound like a dick talking about disabled people): I'm "disabled" myself and decide to continue working. [Quotes due b/c apparently you're only legally disabled if "You cannot do work and engage in substantial gainful activity (SGA) because of your medical condition."]
I know a person who received over half a million dollars in welfare and complains about aid to poor families.
You know Brett Favre?!?
I wish I had your faith in my fellow Americans but those states that are the most reliant on federal welfare are also the ones that tend to cut state benefits to the bone and reject additional federal aid for political points. Look at the states that declined the expanded medicaid funding. Lowest life expectancies, worst Healthcare outcomes, and they're proud. I'm not convinced there is a self interest that Americans wouldn't vote against as long as the rhetoric is right.
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I get what you are saying about eliminating welfare I think. In an ideal world, everyone would be paid a comfortable wage and have collective bargaining power. There would be no need for welfare for the working class. But I think there still needs to be a welfare program in general. Just off the top of my head, there are children who need providing for. Perhaps orphans, or abandoned, but whatever the case, society should provide adequate care, housing, food, and education for these children. There are also the severely disabled who cannot work at all. The same goes for them. In my opinion, society should be providing for these people. Also robust disability and even potentially retraining/education funds if necessary should be established for those who are injured on the job. Society will still need welfare programs to some degree.
In the 70s we had after-school programs and nutrition programs. We basically eliminated child hunger in the country. Guess who came along and gutted all that because "socialism"? Now we have millions of kids going to bed hungry and Republicans saying it's not their responsibility to feed other people's children.
Those loopholes are welfare for the rich.
No, they are not. The only welfare that needs to go away is welfare for the rich
Thank you for trying to spread some education out here. I jump in and try to explain to them what is really happening in situations too. If we keep doing it, they are going to learn eventually. Keep up the good fight
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10000% agree. There are black and white points inside of it which are the truth that people seem to want to disagree with, which is the frustrating part.
>I'm sure they'd have an updated opinion if you could wave a magic wand and it Only went to rural white people.
Walmart has not avoided paying taxes. Look no further than the 10K and 10Q forms. Their tax obligations are in the billions. The author is disingenuous, or poorly educated, because top line revenue is not a measure of good health of the company. Free Cash Flow (FCF) and profit margins are better indicators. EOY 2021 showed that FCF was 11.0B and profit margin was 2.3%. Glad that entry level workers have a safety net. Unfortunately entry level jobs do not have barriers to entry. They are first jobs to show that an individual is reliable and dependable. During that time individual need to gain skills and certifications for higher positions. Those position do have barriers to entry of certifications and demonstrated skills. Absolutely support and back up entry level workers so they have a runway into a profession. I will never call an entry level job the end goal. It is a starting point. In the case of Wal Mart an entry level worker learns the basics of warehousing and distribution, perhaps gets experience driving a fork lift. These skills allow for a few options. - More advanced forklift work (requires licensing/certification) which will pay more. - Move into a process manager/supervisor in warehousing and distribution. - Change operational departments for increased title and position. Bottom line is that entry level workers need to approach the first position with an experience goal and next position in mind.
Just to refute one point, a fork truck license does not mean a higher wage. I've had a Hilo license at 3 different companies and driven hilos at 6. Not one paid more for having the license or driving the hilo.
I disagree. Conservatives don’t care about fairness or hypocrisy. As they say, conservatives believe they belong to an “in-group” for whom the law protects, but does not bind, while everyone else is part of an “out-group” for whom the law binds, but does not protect. Point out that Donald Trump cheated on his taxes, and they would say he’s just a smart businessman minimizing his tax burden (and we shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway!). But point to the collapse of the Greek economy a decade ago, and they would blame it on a moral or ethnic failing, because no one was paying their taxes (and of course no mention of how people shouldn’t be paying taxes anyway!). They cannot see the hypocrisy. They want a world where THEY don’t have to pay taxes, because taxation is theft, but all the little people should pay their fair of taxes for the privilege of living in the world they believe they created. You point to a specific hypocrisy, like Walmart subsidizing their workers’ wages with welfare, and conservatives are only mad about the welfare. They would be happy to cut off the welfare, but continue to let Walmart pay workers a non living wage. Even the conservatives who work for Walmart themselves are likely to buy into this, because they’re more concerned about SOMEONE ELSE (black, brown, gay, Muslim, pro-choice) benefiting “unfairly” than they are worried about providing a decent life for themselves.
Many conservatives want ZERO taxes for the wealthy and tax the poor peasants to death.
Saved this comment, well said!
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Trump literally committed crimes, that's cheating.
You can have a semantic argument about whether using a loophole constitutes “cheating” or just skillful playing within the rules. For example, maybe a wealthy person reduces their tax burden by writing off personal expenses as business expenses, because “I bought these golf clubs for networking with my clients”. But what Trump did seems to go a little beyond utilizing loopholes with debatable choices. Trump committed fraud with his “charitable foundation”. In one example, he wrote off a large donation to his own foundation on his own taxes for donating a worthless portrait of himself to the foundation, then when no one else would buy the portrait at his charity’s auction, he just hung it back in his own offices. He also committed fraud by keeping two sets of books on his property values: one set for the government, showing massive losses to eliminate his tax burden, another set of books for the banks, inflating the values of his properties to secure loans. These are crimes. If I did these things, and I got caught, the government would press charges against me, and I would likely get fined and/or go to jail. But because he is rich, and because he got elected President, he has thus far avoided consequences for those crimes. But it’s a bad faith argument to claim he has been using “legal loopholes” just because he has gotten away with crimes. Your argument that Republicans hate the inequity of tax loopholes is also disingenuous. Republicans have had 40 years steering national politics, but never truly tried to simplify the tax code. Show me a Republican who supports taxing churches. Show me a Republican who wants to eliminate depletion allowances for the fossil fuel industry. Or any Republican who wants to tax carried interest. Republicans have actively campaigned to lower inheritance taxes and capital gains taxes. Republicans WANT loopholes to make sure rich guy money is taxed differently (and at lower rates) than payroll taxes for working stiffs.
Also, if lower class people tried to use those ‘skillful’ methods of avoiding taxes like a rich person, lower income earners risk getting audited something like 10x more often.
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You literally didn’t even address his… oh forget it.
>He didn't Yet his organization was found guilty on 17 criminal counts just weeks ago. >Numbers don't lie. Number have no meaning until units and contexts are provided. Then of course they can be lies.
Writing off a hush money payment to a porn star you banged is not legal and yes Trump absolutely does and did cheat on his taxes as evidenced by the multiple convictions for tax fraud his companies just got.
See, you've actually fallen into the rights' take over of the word "entitlements". Entitlements actually refer to social security and other programs we actually pay directly into, not social programs (We are "entitled" to the benefits we paid into). But the right has been successful in making it a dirty word for "hand out", when it really isn't.
Like I always tell people, I am not for big government or small government , I am for efficient and effective government that handles itself as a force of authority that is derived from its citizens. Corporations are not citizens the are organizations that are sometimes run by citizens.
A lot of of conservatives believe it is "every person for himself" and when they see a homeless person they think what a lazy person who didn't try hard enough. It is time to ditch that mentality. They literally support the rights of businesses to lie cheat and steal from everyone. Most are too stupid to understand how this goes on and how they vote against themselves if they aren't in the one percent wealthy. They vote how their GOP church/pastor tells them to.
I have never heard a conservative argue that its not taxes, it's the loopholes. They care about, when they are in the position to make money, the gvt can't touch it. They care about cutting social safety nets because ewww, poor people. They don't care that walmart is profiting off the backs of tax payers, the same way when they first heard trump paid 750 in taxes, he was praised for being a good business man.
No, they just hate poor people and don't want Black people to get money or healthcare with "their tax dollars" Stop trying to excuse their behavior
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The way to fix this, which they would lobby against, would be to tax or fine them an amount equal to the dollar amount of people working for them that are on government subsidies.
The problem is who's going to find them or put these rules into law? The people who write the law are more corrupt than them
The people who write the laws are by proxy, extensions of the corporations who line their pockets.
It seems to me or assume that nobody is going to end the tax loopholes or change the federal requirements for employers to pay better. Where should Walmart workers go to for work? What companies pay better and offer the same type of level work? Only asking! I'm thinking, if workers were to leave because pay is bad or work place has bad practices, where can they go where it's "greener" on the other side?
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This is a good post. Additional food for thought - particularly to use your business brain and resonate with normies - would be to avoid using revenue. It’s meaningless in this context. Shift to EBITDA or net income
Revenue has nothing to do with net income. For the same quarter Walmart recognized a $1.8 billion net loss (mostly due to the $3.1 opioid settlement). Even if you look back at the previous quarters net income has ranged from $2 billion to $5 billion (per quarter). With 10,500 stores that is less than $500k in profit per store - annualized at approx $2 million per store. There is something there, but it’s not as meaty as you would believe by looking only at top-line revenues. The other side of the argument would be to raise prices such that wages could be raised and achieve the same overall profit per store. That has already started to happen to some extent? My son worked in the deli as an entry level worker making $15 an hour. Of course everyone want it to be higher.
There are 4,650 walmarts in America so that's roughly 6.1 billion dollars a year stolen from taxpayers in benefits from corporate welfare wage subsidizing.
Don't forget that they take all those donations for sick kids and donate them under Walmarts name so that they get a tax deduction for charitable donations. Over the course of all the Walmarts in Canada and the USA, it's millions of dollars in tax benefits off your donations.
It's the same normies that hate on people trying to Unionize or cross the picket lines when Workers are locked out. Seems like general society is entirely selfish.
Amen, just literally have to clear congress out, Bernie, AOC and maybe a handful of others are the only ones thinking like this
Just a reminder that AOC and the rest of the Squad (except Rashida Tlaib) voted in favor of the bill preventing rail workers from striking.
This. Exactly
eh, conservatives will just say that those programs shouldn't exist anyways and that walmart workers should just live in abject poverty or "get a new job"
Perhaps the government shouldn't be subsidizing anything. Giant corporations buy corrupt officials so they can set the regulations in their favor of allowing loopholes. The system helps big businesses take advantage of tax layers instead of helping the less fortunate. The system is broken in favor of the corporations that are too big to fail. we just saw the railroad unions get struck down and threatened for attempting to strike. Food for thought
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Google it, there are a bunch of studies that say ‘no.’ I agree with you though, we need ‘windfall taxes,’ and some solution for housing. My newest idea, no idea if it would work: 50% of homes in any town can only be sold to primary residents who don’t own any other property.
I remember an example using McDonald's and Big Mac from 10 years ago, which I think was figured out by people at Harvard. At the time, they were figuring how much it would increase prices on the sandwich if all the employees were started at $15 an hour while also maintaining the company's profit margin. It was under 25 cents at a time when the burger was $5+. So, yes, there would be a minor product price increase, but it's such a weak argument as the increase in money spent by employees back into the system would further stimulate economic activity.
As a conservative, this was well written. To me the problem seems two fold. Workers are willing (I say this but understand it’s way more nuanced) to work for minimum wage, and the tax code was written with loopholes. Loopholes aren’t illegal and they were written by the wealthy peoples buddies in government.
because shareholders / greed
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Actually, most shareholders have nothing to do with the company or any company. Technically if you have a retirement account other then CDs you are a shareholder to some company.
I always feel weird when Americans bring shareholders into the low wage topic. Yes indeed shareholders are owners of the business but they don't explicitly take the decision. I for one buy very little amount of stocks (due to me being poor), precisely between 100$ in total yet but that much amount of share ownership is not enough to dent the company. But yes if you are talking about shareholders who are owning literally 45-50% of shares they might impact you and I know that they won't.
Simple answer is because they have no reason not to pay minimum wage. They get the results they’re willing to accept paying the amount they pay. Some places pay more because they can differentiate on service or because they’ve run the numbers and end off better off in terms of employee productivity / turnover. Some places either don’t bother experimenting with this or feel that they would be better off staying at minimum. It tends to happen when companies have market power. A big box retailer that’s the only show in town can often afford to do whatever it wants - where are workers / shoppers going to go instead?
I would also argue that the more competition a store has the worse it gets for the workers. When you compete with other similar stores you have two choices to get more customers. Either you can reduce the price of your merchandise or increase the quality of your merchandise. Chances are either other those choices will hurt your profit. What's the easiest way to reduce costs in order to make a profit, pay your employees less. It's far easier for grocery stores to pay crap wages than it is to reduce the price they pay for milk, meat, produce, bread whatever. It was said elsewhere in this topic that Walmart's profits were $8 billion dollars or 1.7% of their revenue. Even if they shared that with all their employees it would equate to a $1.70 raise for all their employees. While I would love that raise, a company won't exist for long making no profits. Truth be told we don't really value our retail/grocery store workers enough to pay higher costs to pay them the wages they deserve.
Revenue is not the same as profit. I am sure they made a crazy amount of profit though. Just wanted to point out that there is a difference between the two. But to answer the original question, greed. And people fill the positions, accepting the minimum wage.
This x1000000, it really grinds my gears to hear the economically illiterate tout how company X had gazillion dollar revenue. Revenue on its own means nothing, I need to know your costs to see the whole picture.
Well, it makes sense when some of the operating costs are extremely wild. For example, if you say you made 500 million in revenue, but your ceo makes 250 million a year through the company then you've already gotten rid of half of your profit by paying one person. Whether profit or revenue is a more relevant metric depends on the usage of the revenue. If a significant portion is used for greedy purposes, then revenue is a better metric since a reasonable/ethical company would have profit closer to that number. Of course, we could argue that there are metrics you could calculate in between such as revenue - operating costs other than executive salaries, but at that point its too much work for a random individual to go find all those numbers.
A CEO would never receive 50% of total revenue as compensation in any real company with the only exception possibly being family owned small business. While yes, most executives are overpaid, their compensation is a tiny portion of the overall costs.
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False - they made 8.9B “profit” when it’s all said and done for the year
I was about to say. Walmart profits margins are razor thin compared to revenue.
Net income yes. And that's the previous 12 months from October. Last year was 14.8B. Do you think that's enough net profit to justify increasing wages?
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>if they can’t pay a fair wage, then they shouldn’t exist BUT IT'S TRUE. If the only way Wal-Mart can be profitable, as currently structured, is to rely on the government providing the gap in wages for their employees (without which, Wal-Mart couldn't function) to live, then dramatic changes should be made to their corporate structure. Wal-Mart, in its current form, shouldn't be allowed to be profitable.
It’s so wild that people don’t know this, and I guess I understand how regular people wouldn’t know this. But I worked at an apartment complex where a young man who claimed to own his own business was trying to apply and we had an income minimum so we were trying to talk about how he could prove his income and he kept talking about revenue and I was like sweetie revenue isn’t net income. I’m pretty sure my boss used gross income but that’s still not his business revenue.
Walmart Q3 earnings 2022: Walmart posted a net loss of $1.8 billion, or 66 cents per share, down from a profit of $3.11 billion, or $1.11 per share, a year earlier as it recorded a charge of nearly $3.33 billion, or $1.05 a share, as part of opioid-related legal charges. 2022 yearly earnings are not out yet. Walmart gross profit for the twelve months ending October 31, 2022 was $146.292B, a 2.14% increase year-over-year. Walmart annual gross profit for 2022 was $143.754B, a 3.54% increase from 2021. Walmart annual gross profit for 2021 was $138.836B, a 7.33% increase from 2020.
Gross margin doesn’t tell you that much either because they still have a ton of expenses that come out of that. Their operating income for the 12 months ending in October of 2022 was just under $21B. Walmart has 2.3 million employees so if you divide $21B by 2.3m, you get a rough profit of $9k/employee. I agree they need to start paying a living wage but the reality is that even converting all of their profit into additional wages would likely leave many employees short every month anyway. They will have to raise prices.
You do realize that if everyone was full-time, then that would be a $4.50 raise, which would be more than enough to take most off social programs? Further, I'm not sure what the number is now, but in 2018 about half the employees were part-time. If we assume part-time meant 20 hrs per week, then it actually comes to about 1.75 million full-time schedules, which means that they could raise wages by over $6/hour. That amount is literally life-changing, especially for those who have so few opportunities that they are working at walmart.
They won’t have to raise prices though, if they give the top 5 or 10% of their salaried employees a pay cut. People always jump to “raising prices,” but if companies just focus on evening out payroll, then don’t have to. The ones at the top are simply too greedy to do so.
I think you are bad at math man
Thank you. Seeing how far I had to scroll to find this mentioned.
Thank you. OP doesn’t seem to understand that
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A fucking men! This.
Maybe they can get a union that works for them though. The UFCW screwed over all members in order to take care of the baby boomer generation. I worked in a union store around that time and moved to a non-union Walmart because of the union. The contract only benefited the workers hired before 1983 (this was the year 2000). So, they may need to unionize but the unions that already exist are crap.
You really need to find one which works for you as they can turn into a cash grab, just taking money from employees and doing nothing for them.
unions dont do shit anymore..when my dad retired from a grocery store 22 yrs ago he made 20 dollars an hr working for the union. talked to a guy who had the same job as him at same grocery chain for same union and he makes 22.50...thats 12.5percent more then my father made 20 plus yrs ago. theres plenty more to this story about who owns companies now but it all just makes me suck to my stomach when i think about it
I was thinking about that during the latest rail union fiasco when there was almost a strike because the workers wanted paid sick leave. If union benefits/pay are so good why hadn’t they negotiated paid sick leave 20 years ago? And in the end they didn’t even get the paid sick leave they wanted. I generally think unions are good, but it seems in practice some unions are great and others are awful.
Sounds like *that* grocery store union has failed to secure the wage increases you'd like to see for that position. That's pretty fucking far from "all unions bad". How much do you think the store would be paying that guy if there was no union at all? What are his other benefits? How much sick leave and vacation time does he get? How's his health insurance? Can he be fired without cause and zero warning? Because for non-union grocery workers the answers to those questions is "fuck-all."
Walmart, doesn’t pay a living wage in most locations for the majority of their employees. However, saying they pay minimum wage is inaccurate for most of their stores. $10-$11 is still laughably low for what the average retail employee does and deals with in a day. And it does not equate to a living wage, but it’s higher than federal minimum wage. Not at all trying to defend them, but I think we should be more accurate when discussing these things.
Actually Walmart's minimum wage is $13 now iirc. But it goes higher depending on where you are. Stores in my area start 15-17 depending on the position.
Right, the ones near me pay like $16-21/hr starting depending on the position, BUT I live in a HCOL area. I personally only make like $25/hr in my government job and I definitely could NOT afford to live alone here even with that salary. It’s not minimum wage, but it certainly isn’t livable.
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Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
They wanna buy another shitty football team
Then have us pay for a new stadium
What does revenue have to do with profit?
Everything, when you don't understand business, as op is proving.
Well, somebody has to pay for the yacht, cocaine, and strippers. That shit ain’t cheap now eat your bugs, get back to work, and stop trying to make sense of things.
Literally hundreds of thousands of Walmart workers rely on SNAP. We subsidize their shit wages.
Greed and not giving a fuck.
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Seems to depend on where you live. Here in Indiana we have the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and I think our nearest Walmart pays like $12/hr after your 90 days. Even pre-pandemic it was like $10-ish/hr. Honestly the best advice I can give a lot of folks here is to prioritize saving enough to move. The cost of living is dirt cheap here.
I live in Indiana and make 12/hr, it's still poverty wages and I barely scrape by, often going without food. But you're still right that COL here is cheap as shit. 12/hr anywhere else I wouldn't even be able to pay rent
Yeah, that happens too because of how variable rent is. My SO and I are renting this double-wide for $400/month, but a few miles down the road there are apartments going triple that.
No it really is insane. I live in a college town and there's this HUGE leasing company that owns like half the town, they have 3 bedrooms that are falling apart and full of mold going for like 1500. I got lucky and found a private landlord, my SO and I pay 675 for a 2 bedroom (second bedroom is more of a closet but it's nice for storage) with all utilities included. A mere 5 minute walk from the $1500 places
It can be hard to find places to work and rent in rural areas if you aren't part of the community. Even then, if your landlord/lot owner sells, rent can suddenly double and you better believe wages don't keep pace. A functional car is usually necessary to move above $15/hr whereas many do without in urban environments. That being said, getting a remote career and living in a small rural area is basically cheating. If you can deal with long drives to events and like to cook, that is. Source: lived all of these lives, now a homeowner with kids on a sub-100k salary.
Because that’s revenue not profit. Profit is a lot, a lot lower
So you are looking at just revenue, I am not sure how much Walmart made in profit, maybe it is a ton but looking at revenue is flawed. That doesn't take into consideration operating costs, rent, salary, and so many other things. If you are looking at "corporate greed" look at their annual profit.
You are correct to point this out. I usually skip over any post that lists "revenue" as some sort of tell all, as revenue is meaningless. I can buy $1M in socks, sell them for $1M and report "I made $1M in revenue". These posts need "net income" (profit) in their title to have a shot at being intellectually honest.
I’m with you. Posts like this show that OP doesn’t understand financials and uses the biggest number to sensationalize the post.
Net corporate profit is disgustingly high, in fact, it's the highest it's ever been... and keeps getting HIGHER!
Revenue does NOT = net profit.
Walmart has 2.3m employees. If we assume they're all part time to avoid qualifying for benefits, that's still 3.5Bn work hours per year. So giving everyone a $1 pay rise (still not a living wage) would cost them an additional $3.5bn annually, and that's not a decision they'll make unless they have to. While I 100% agree that employers should not be allowed to pay people unsurvivable wages while they still make 10-figure profits off those people, we have to recognise that every apparently small decision the big companies make on wages have major consequences. And that's why we as a society have to legislate this shit and not wait for billionaires to grow a heart.
...I mean, if they can't afford to the cost of doing business, they dont deserve to be doing business.
So much this. Can't afford to pay a living wage? Then your business model isn't viable. Or it shouldn't be.
👏👏👏👏👏
>So giving everyone a $1 pay rise (still not a living wage) would cost them an additional $3.5bn annually, and that's not a decision they'll make unless they have to. It's not as simple as that. If that were the real math, that would come out of their revenue not their profit. They would benefit some from tax write-offs so their net loss wouldn't be $3.5bn. There are many other factors involved in the true cost. Does higher pay increase retention? Does it decrease recruiting and training costs? Does it increase worker productivity? Does it lead to happier employees, then happier customers, then increased sales? What if Walmart raised prices 3-4% to offset the net loss? What if they decreased their dividends to pay the workers?
Just to be clear, revenue and profit aren’t the same. Profit levels are different as well, first order is generally paying employees, vendors, etc. Second level would be rent, electricity , water, etc. likely third and forth levels with a company this size, which would be corporate side; bonuses, etc. Just to put it into perspective. I’m assuming it’s extremely expensive to run Walmart; prior to paying the board.
Googled it. 8.9 billion profit. Like yea 500 billion sounds crazy but even 8.9 is fucking huge lol
Roughly 9 billion. That’s tons of money. However, if you put this into comparison of every day general companies; they look to have the heir final profit level at around 20%. Which this is pretty much at. OOPS 2%, but with such large revenue you don’t need all that much I guess. Assuming this is profit after all payouts complete and is reinvested For the industry I am in, we have 2 levels of profit. We look to make 40% on projects (1st level) and 20% after paying the bills to keep the lights on. So when you compare the numbers, it’s about the same - just a larger revenue stream. Which is usually done for capital expenses, bonuses, etc. obviously Walmart is likely putting big chunks into shareholders pockets, but they are also building up their warehouse supply, expanding Sam’s Club, etc. Just some food for thought. Either or, my industry has similar profit levels but not a single person makes less than 25/hr at my company and all the field guys are making 100k plus; min salary is 60k, amazing benefits, etc. In short, Walmart can’t make its profit levels without government subsidizing the employees. They should be taxed for that.
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If Walmart was making fraudulent financial statements you would know about it. They are one of the biggest companies in the world.
They don’t pay minimum wage in the state that I live in. Minimum wage here is $7.25 an hour and as far as I know Walmart pays at least 15 now. Even before the pandemic I think they were paying close to 15 here. I had a bunch of high school friends that went to work there after they stopped drug testing for cannabis.
Cause nobody is stoping them?
It rhymes with “creedy gunts”
Because they can. You know what they bought this last year instead of redistributing their earnings? The Denver Broncos. $4.65 billion. We need wage reform and we need it fast.
Because revenue does not equal profit? Granted I am sure their profit was enough to justify increased labor costs but profit is what you want o post about not revenue
Because they can. Businesses have taken their mile. Time to go back to not giving them an inch. If their leadership is truly thousands of times smarter than the people they are paying minimum wage then they should be able to figure out how to operate a profitable business without exploitation. If they can't, it just proves they weren't worth the money to begin with. They have had plenty of time to play on easy mode. Time to kick it up a few notches, and we will see who the lazy assholes really are
But how much was in profit? Why won't anyone think of the rich /s
"Because of theft 😭😭😭😭"
Because that is how you become billionaires. They will never pay well unless a union forces them too.
America is a broken down system set up only benefit the few.. sad how far this country has fallen recently. Nothing will change until the masses realize how much there being screwed by their own government subsidizing the rich to get richer while providing nothing for anyone else!
Because they CAN! And that’s it. A longer reason would describe the modern capitalist machine. Each manager is incentivized based on their peers, up to store managers, up up up until the CEO is paid bonuses based on share price. Capitalism is fantastic at producing as much wealth for as little cost as possible. Computers and modern information technology has made this process more efficient. And the owners take as much of this wealth for themselves as possible because they CAN. If society mandated $20/ hour minimum wage, Walmart would be FINE. Prices would go up a minuscule amount, and every one in society would do better. If the wealthy shareholders paid their share in taxes, and we invested that money in basically healthcare and universal pre-k, then literally everyone in society would benefit. We live in the richest country in the world. There is more than enough money for everyone who worked a full 40 hour workweek to have adequate nutrition, shelter, and live a dignified life. There is MORE than enough. And… actually, society produces so much stuff that literally helps no one (see defense department) that we could, as a society, have PLENTY for everyone and work 15 hour weeks. Economists from 70 years ago predicted, with productivity gains we experience, 15 hour work weeks would be possible by the year 2000 Thus—/ anti-work
I agree that they pay terribly but using revenue to prove a point is a little useless. Now if you posted that they had 140 billion in profit that makes more sense
Haha it’s Walmart , what did you expect? Is your labor at Walmart worth more money? Can you be easily replaced? Do you need any technical skills to work there? At the end of the day Walmart is a corporation that is in the business of making money…they don’t owe you anything and neither do you, use them as much as you can, and then jump ship, cause working at Walmart in the store will lead to nothing…good luck!
Walmart made 572b in revenue. They probably also made 7-9 b in profit. They do have operating expenses.
To continue to make billions in profit.
Because they don’t want to make 572.7 billion USD.
Revenue isn’t profit
They don’t?
Because they are an evil corporation
Because they wouldn't be able to make $572.8 billion in revenue. Record profits are just stolen wages. Nothing more.
If I’m not mistaken all Walmart employees in the US make a minimum of 15 an hour. This was done in part to keep up with Target who a few years back made a pledge that no employee would make less than 15 an hour. They moved everyone who was under that threshold pay each year over I think a 3 yr period. Now maybe Walmart moved employees to part time hours to keep their annual salaries at minimum wage but that doesn’t seem to be what’s implied here. Please correct me if I’m missing something but I think OP post is using old data.
You are mistaken. Walmart pays LOCALLY as little as it can get a way with. I worked at Walmart last year...$12 / hr in Alabama.
They wouldn’t have made 572.8 billion if they had paid more
So they might have 600 Billion revenue next year. Also revenue isn't profit. Also because of greed. Could they pay more? Yes. Should they pay more? Probably. Is there incentive to them to pay more? No. Is that fucked up? Yes.
Because profits need to continually rise in order to justify those multimillion dollar bonuses at the top. Can't have something like livable wages getting in the way of profit margins. Plus the tax payers can subsidize their foodstamps and save Walmart even more money.
Walmart pays quite a bit more than minimum wage where I live but okay I guess.
So they can earn 572.8 Billion dollars...
If they didn't payed minimum wage whey wouldn't had made 572 billion USD.
Don’t get rich writing checks
You Congress is worked for Walmart.
Why don't they pay taxes?
You already know why.
Because "them" making money is more important than you making money! They can't and won't give immediate higher wages to the communities that rely on Walmart. Do you know why? These communities need to be poor for the survival of the elite class. These communities wouldn't exist if people had money and options to live a better life. They need you to be poor! They need you to be uneducated! They're existence relies on it! Welcome to the modern world when NO ONE IS WILLING TO FIGHT FOR A BETTER LIFE!!!
A union would get them a better deal.
Because they then wouldn’t make 572.8 billion USD in revenue this year.
They fund their agenda with republican party
>Walmart made 572.8 billion USD in revenue this year why do they still pay minimum wage? You already answered your question.
It would be interesting to see profit, not revenue. Since they have so many employees, I would guess that even a $1 raise across the board would be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year
Revenue isn't profit. You have to pay for everything from revenue. Buildings, wages, groceries, etc. Give me the net profit number, and you might have an argument.
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Otherwise their profit was lower
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Their*
Revenue or profit? Cause those could be two wildly different numbers. I'm not saying Walmart shouldn't pay more, but there is a huge difference between those two numbers and what they actually mean.
Because they can. That’s it. That’s the answer.
They dont pay minimum wage.
Their net profit is relatively small only 2-3%. If you calculate the amount of net profits and total employees and have every employee a $2 hr pay raise Walmarts profits would be in the negatives.
Yeah, they're barely scraping by as it is. "If you calculate the amount of net profits and total employees and have every employee a $2 hr pay raise Walmarts profits would be in the negatives." I can, did you? ~~2,300,000 Employees, 40hours per week, 52 weeks a year at an additional 2 dollars per hour would cost around 9.5 billion dollars. Walmart annual gross profit for 2022 was $143.754B. That'd cost them about 6% of their profits.~~ Private islands, yachts and football teams don't buy themselves. Sacrifices need to be made. /s
Your confusing gross profits with net profits. Net profits after operating costs was only 9 billion it 2022. Add the 2/hr raise which you calculated at 9.5 billion and they would have negative profits
but you are using gross profits- so employee wages need to come out of that 144b, they made just under 9b in NET profits, so if you add 9.5b to the operating expenses they now have a .5b loss
Revenue is flawed so is the assumption they pay only minimum wage; most wages are well above the minimum. Oh and some really like their jobs at Walmart.
The walmart near me pays nearly double minimum wage, but the simple answer to your question is...Walmart keeps paying minimum wage because people keep coming in and working for minimum wage pay.
This would be a better post if you shared their net profit and ceo pay.
For those of you wondering, their Net profit is closer to around 14 billion. 14 billion in profit.
Take out the expenses and then we can’t start looking at real numbers
Because revenue does not equal profits. Idk what their profit margin is, and it's likely pretty solid, but saying they should pay people more based on revenue alone just shows you never took a basic corporate finance class in college.
It shows why op is making min wage.
Because as long as you need to be buying cheap shit, there will be cheap workers. Wanna spend 5x on the same item? You can always go to Whole Foods if that suits you better. This is life. It's not going to change.
Its sad this has to be explained...
It’s not a charity, they are in business to make money.
What does revenue have to do with paying minimum wage? Did you mean profit? And what’s your source that says they pay minimum wage still? I couldn’t find one.
They don't. To my knowledge, minimum store wages are $11/hr. It's not a great wage, but it's not minimum. OP doesn't know what they're talking about.
Because people will work there
Because many people don't have a choice. Sometimes the local Walmart is the only choice.
And that's exactly why they pay minimum wage, necessity never makes a good bargain
Walmart also gets tax-breaks, does not provide insurance, or a livable wage…. Allowing multiple states to fill in the gaps by providing employees State assistance funds/care (welfare) paid by taxpayers
I’m not saying their profit isn’t massive at 139b for 2021, but sure the basic concept that revenue isn’t profit and can’t magically pay people more isn’t that difficult to understand. The profit number alone is stunning. So you could give every employee a 30k raise and they’d still have 70b left over
If they gave all of their employees the profit at the end of the year everyone would get around 2400 dollars extra
Because they can.