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If employers won't pay a living wage someone has to pay in order for these workers to survive, and guess who? -- you, me and every other taxpayer.
Like Walmart,
"Walmart's employees receive $2.66 billion in government help every year, or about $420,000 per store. They are also the top recipients of Medicaid in numerous states. Walmart fails to provide a livable wage and decent healthcare benefits, costing U.S. taxpayers an annual average of $1.02 billion in healthcare costs.
This direct public subsidy is being given to offset the failures of an international corporate giant.... Wal-Mart workers’ reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company.
In effect, Wal-Mart is shifting part of its labor costs onto the public."
What people don't understand is that when wages go up, the cost of products, produced, transported, wholesales, retailed, and delivered etc., also go up, so you end up at the same place - spending-power wise.
If you want a better standard of living, upgrade your skills, qualifications and marketability. That is the only real way to do it on a large scale, long-term.
If every individual in the US upgraded their skills, qualifications and marketability, then what?
As a society we have reasons to keep prices and wages low.
Low prices benefit everyone. Low wages do not benefit everyone.
Since a certain segment of the population benefits twice from low wages and another segment benefits once and is penalized once it makes perfect sense to give these low wage workers some other type of benefits.
>And the minimum wage should be abolished as it only contributes to unemployment.<
Lets fix this: the minimum wage should be abolished so we can have the gilded age again.
BTW Walmart actually pays a BIT MORE than other retailers. (roughly a buck an hour higher). I actually know some Walmart workers, unlike many here who pontificate for either side. There ARE worse places to work. Certainly many better. Much depends who your manager is.
Love all the extremist arguments here. How about this one: Balance is needed in law. The min wage is about where it should be, perhaps a bit low, nonetheless, it provides a bit of a wage floor. Employers WILL collude to make people even poorer if they could get away with it.
The employer will "offer" the amount that the market insists on.
The employee will "accept" what the market can bear.
The concept of "fair" has NOTHING to do with that.
The reasons for the dismal wage levels that so many have today are based in simple
economic realities of supply vs demand: Too many people (as a raw number) competing.
Then why the support for the Mexicans and the other immigrants by the liberals? They drive down wages.
Even the most liberal among you realize pay scale.
so are you saying a mom only needs $1/hr?
because this is how many jobs would end up if the min wage were to be abolished.
how would that be a good thing?
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