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I feel like before people should be allowed to put this forward as a serious argument, they should also put forward the numbers behind it.

How much of your current Walmart receipt goes to the non-executive-management in-store staff?

The implication of course is that it would be significant.

It's echoes of the uninformed arguments around the UAW though. Back in 2008 the $70 was all anyone could talk about. That despite the fact that included funding for benefits the Japanese automakers didn't provide because they were socialized. Also completely ignoring that total labor cost was around 10%. Just how much did people think it could be cut?

Cut compensation and benefits in half and you save a whopping $1,500 on that $30,000 car. You know, the domestic one that's already cheaper that you weren't considering in the first place.

So would I tolerate my grocery bill being 2% higher to give cashiers/stockers/etc a living wage? Absolutely. I pay a lot more than that just to avoid shopping at Walmart in the first place (the parking lot is always packed, the lines are long, the aisles a mess and it's further away than Fiesta, the asian market, Albertson's, Kroger's or Target).

What if the receipt was 10% higher? If it provided a living wage, decent benefits, and improved their stores generally then yeah, I probably would. The spread between the asian market and Target is already much much higher than that.

More than that? Not unless they excelled in some area. For packaged meats Target does a real decent job. For produce the asian market is where it's at. For bulk items at low prices Fiesta rules. The others are sort of middle-of-the-road in offerings, at decent, if not amazing prices.

But I seriously doubt anything like or above 10% would be close to necessary to achieve what was proposed.




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