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by neptunespear
3423 days ago
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The Walton family represents a lot of what I think is wrong with America. If Sam Walton knew that Walmart pays their employees so little that they have to claim social assistance just to survive, what would he say? While Jeff Bezos isn't an angel, at least he's doing things with his money that I find noble, like Blue Origin and contributing millions to expand the computer science program at the University of Washington I shudder to think of a future where Walmart dominates the tech logistics scene. Might there be a "Committee for a Third Term for Donald Trump" SuperPAC in the future? |
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Walmart has 0.03% net income margins. If you raise the hourly pay for the average Walmart employee, by $3 to $4 per hour, Walmart is bankrupt. Meanwhile Amazon is going to begin substantially digging in to Walmart's sales with their growth. As Walmart's sales begin to contract in the coming years, that will pressure their non-existent margins further. If Walmart raises prices to afford the pay hikes, Amazon will damage Walmart's business that much faster. In the near future, Amazon is likely to rupture Walmart's business in such a fashion as to cause financial losses that cause hundreds of thousands of low skill workers to lose their jobs (with no replacement jobs). Walmart's likely future is to tip over, bleed epic amounts of red ink (they don't even have a large enough cash balance to afford one year in that condition), close hundreds of stores, and fire a million workers.
You can either have Walmart employ far too many people as it does now, at low wages (which has the advantage of absorbing vast amounts of low value, low skilled labor). Or you can have Walmart employ far fewer people per dollar of sales, in the model of Costco, and have higher pay. You can't - and will never - have both.