re: Shareholders' meeting 2014 - celeb watch, music, Chinese/Brit shenanigans

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As to the Walmart employees they employ 2.2 million worldwide and had profits of $16 billion. If they paid every swinging dick $15 an hour that's $31 million they still make $15.7 billion.

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Not every swinging dick is stock shelves, running a cash register, or helping you find things.

If you paid this employee $15 an hour, which is basically double their wage, you can look at doubling those who do make $15 an hour or more in their distribution network, as well as doubling the salary of their management network.

Could Wal-Mart afford to do this? On the face yes, if their stock value plummeted because of the loss in profit margin, probably not.

That is another thing, these people making min wage at their stores have stock options in their pay, plenty of their employees have taken advantage of this and built a good nest egg as a result.

To put it into perspective, these store employees are demanding the same wage around that of skilled labor in Arkansas, many of these skill jobs are job where the skill will be taught/learned while working on the job. This is also around the average wage of manufacturing job in Arkansas at say Baldor.

Which is harder, stocking a shelf or running a piece of machinery? Taking cash at the register or building a house?

The people think their skill set is equal to those types of jobs, most of them are capable of going out and securing one of those jobs, but they often demand more than 35 hours of work during the week, and are generally more demanding physically and mentally.

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Point is that single mom will be on the dole making $8 and hour and we all pay for that low wage employee.

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This would be a social issue.

Yes, many of the same people who bitch about those on "entitlements" are the same one who are adamant that ways of preventing the above scenario are to only coincide with an old text or through abstinence which is supported by the same text.

People make bad choices, you use to have to pay for your bad choices, we are now seeing a generation who are profiting from these bad choices. Too many are fine with being given enough to barely survive as long as they can sit at home and watch TV all day.

Single mothers have the opportunity, a greater opportunity than single fathers in fact, to be given aid in several different forms to further their education to learn the skill set needed to find and land a job better than at Wal-Mart.

If your career path is a low rung member at Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, a gas station, etc. That is no one's fault but your own, that doesn't mean you are entitled to a pay at a level you deem appropriate and at a "livable wage"...

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Somebody has to occupy the bottom wrung of the workforce, the world needs ditch diggers too.

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The Highway Department is frequently hiring new members.

You can go dig ditches in a variety of different industries involving some form of construction.

The people are paid more than $7.25 and hour, because they provide a skill/service that demands a higher pay.

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But $7.25 an hour is not even close to livable.

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It is. A single person can survive until they acquire the skills or education to be in demand for a higher pay job. Most of us had these minimum wage jobs while in HS and/or College. Will they be able to afford all of the luxuries in life? No. Can they survive? Yes.

Jobs that pay this amount were never intended to be a career. A simple way of looking at it, is if you are qualified to acquire a job while in HS, it is just that a job, not a career, and should not be looked upon as a career path once you have said job.

All raising the min wage does is increase the cost of living for everyone while devaluing the pay amount for the population who has a skill set and educational level that demands a higher pay.

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Barely, but add a child to the equation and it's not close.

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Then don't have children when you work as a cashier at Wal-Mart or you are flipping burgers.

Condoms are not that expensive either, you work at wal-mart you can use your employee discount on them and save even more...

Did you add child support in there as well?

Look, I know things are tough, but the back bone of this country IMO is the entrepreneur and small business owners like myself. Some of us do well, some of us don't. It's a risk taken by starting your own thing.

What I do know, is that if minimum wage is raised, you can kiss half of us goodbye and then you can sit back and watch unemployment numbers sky rocket.

So what's more important? $7.25-$10 an hour, or $0 an hour and being on unemployment for the single mother?

During the summer I am slow. At one store for instance, I work two employees 25 hours each. So, 50 hours. I pay $8 an hour to these two. So I'm out $400 a week in wages, then figure about 10-15 each for workers comp. Now, if that we're $15 an hour I'm out $750 without figuring in workers comp. then you figure in all costs....

One week at $15 an hour employees

Labor: $750
Rent: $500
Electric: $100
Utilities: $150
Supplies: $65
Office Supplies: $35
Fuel: $125

Total: $1,725

And that's not even my break even point for that store. I've still not figured in bank fees, credit card processing fees, terminal lease fees, etc. so basically, with the raised wage my break even point would be roughly $2,200-$2,500 a week.

That's not leaving me much money for my pocket, especially during the summer.

Right now at one store, I've got roughly $95,000 in expenses each year. If wages were raised, that number shoots up $30,000 per year.

It would seem that the best way to raise wages naturally would be to create more demand for labor, rather than increasing the supply of labor endlessly.

I wonder if any of these "raise minimum wage" folks have considered that un-restrained illegal and legal immigration is leading to the depression of wages.

Pharell had breakfast at The Farmer's Table on S. School:

Is Rhett Atkins at the amp tonight? Sounds like a sound check going on at the moment.

And the grandstands are going up at Pinnacle for the LPGA at the end of the month.

why not ban automation and machines?


I mean that has gotten rid of way more jobs than immigration... since we're throwing out arguments that are completely devoid of any sort of intelligence and that just pander to bias

It's pretty interesting in that we currently have an economic system based on growth in an extended period of declining growth.

Modern Industrialized societies have negative birth rates.

Immigration and religious pressures (note birth rates in Utah) are the only ways that some countries are maintaining growth. Immigrants who enter the U.S. actually have their birth rates slow compared to where they were. The more successful a group is, the lower their birthrate.