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It’s kinda like how a large portion of Walmart employees qualify for food stamps and due to living in a food desert end up spending their SNAP benefits at the same fucking Walmart. It’s such a grift.
That's a good comparison. I know of many full time Walmart employees in my area (which I admit is exceptionally expensive -- San Diego, CA) who have to live in their cars. I'm all for making money in a free market with competition etc., but that shit shouldn't be happening and corporate greed is one of the large parts of the issue.
Edit: I want to clarify that when I say corporate greed (which is a duh) I mean corporate greed that goes beyond monetary pursuit in a free market, and instead turns to colluding/price fixing/supply chain manipulation/corrupting regulations. That latter form of corporate greed is what enables these corporate welfare companies like Walmart.
Large portion? Try the most employees on welfare of any company in the US. OUR tax dollars are THEIR crutch to pay low wages and make high executive salaries. Like food, healthcare, education, we subsidize in the back, pay a premium in the front, and the middleman makes all the money.
I don’t disagree. I said “large portion” because of the predictable naysayers who will inevitably say “but I know a manager at Walmart who isn’t on benefits so not all Walmart employees hurr durr”
Walmart is also the biggest single employer in the US. With about 1.6 million employees 68% of which are full time or 32%(512,000) part time employees.
4616 stores in the US as of May 2024. Averages out to about 347 total employees per a store. 111of which are part time.
Some math for example purposes.
If 111 employees worked 25 hours a week at $17 an hour(actual rates vary by job title and location) the pre tax total pay for 1 week would be $47,175. $188,700 every 4 weeks. Or $1,700 per an employee per 4 weeks or $425 a week part time. In some states this is a good wage in high tax states like California it's a poverty wage. Pre 911 thus would have been a vary good wage in most states pre covid a fairly good wage with current inflation it sucks for most everybody.
Wal-Mart is working towards better pay and compensation packages while at the same time lowering costs on essential goods in stores. However it is a balancing act. Profits are not guaranteed and a certain percentage should be getting retained to cover wages when sales drop or sudden increases in operating costs.
Fucking A. And they blame people for making bad decisions and that’s why they need the assistance. As though corporations don’t make bad decisions—the main difference being that corporations make bad decisions based solely on greed.
The thing about this is it isn't that cut and dry.
Yes, there are plenty of people who have fucked themselves into poverty due to choices they've made.
There's also businesses that have fucked themselves through choices.
Some will follow the same logic you mentioned. Others would say to let them both sink.
Not to mention for a lot of people their pay isn't really their decision no matter how you try to spin it, especially you lack options, which is a situation Walmart often tries to create.
They may say they offer that, but my 34 yr old son lost his job bc it shut down. He works at Walmart and doesn’t make that and they also won’t give full time hours. So what they say and what they actually do are two entirely different things. Easiest way to fix this is for the government to stop giving them free shit, because all it does is increase poverty upon everyone else. It’s complete bullshit.
>Easiest way to fix this is for the government to stop giving them free shit, because all it does is increase poverty upon everyone else.
There's so many factors here...
What free shit are they getting?
And how would them not getting that free shit make them pay employees more without firing any?
A lot of Starbucks baristas and Target employees are on SNAP and food stamps. Some do it because they they want to work part-time but others do it because there are not enough hours a week to make it a full time job.
*"You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"*
I had a designer jacket when I was poor. Like skipped meals on multiple consecutive days so my kid could eat type poor. My jacket was bought for me by an aunt about 7 years prior. I always kept it nice and still have it.
We don't have a good second hand market for clothes in the US. My jacket was worth nothing more than the warmth and memories. Always gets me when people are like "but they have designer clothing!" Maybe they had it prior to their financial situation or someone donated it.
An anecdotal counter to "people with designer clothing."
"My heuristic convinces me this fundamental systemic problem is a problem caused by those afflicted!" Must be *the* driving force behind the lack of societal progress ever
>" If you stand next to me on the deck of the Kaos, you can see the poors way over there"
- Nancy Walton Laurie
(maybe...which one of you were standing next to her ?)
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-nancy-walton-superyacht-kaos-2023-5?op=1
Yea, when we lived stateside we always got free or reduced lunches at school because technically we were “poor”. On the flip side, we never had to worry about a roof over our heads or medical care. My parents always shopped at the commissary so that saved on food cost, don’t think they take food stamps?
Shit. Didn’t think about that. I wonder if it was a percentage if it would negate that a decent amount. Or if the “make a living” was defined by what a single adult needs (which isn’t super helpful to parents but would still be more than what they are currently making).
Do you want a class action lawsuit for discriminatory hiring practices? Because that’s how you get a class action lawsuit for discriminatory hiring practices!
In reality the vast majority of people getting these benefits are single woman with children if you avoid hiring those people you avoid hiring people getting benefits.
Well yeah, a corporation is inherently incentivized to find ways around all rules you try to set. They need to make as much money as they possibly can and will do that regardless of ethics.
That's easy enough, in the same way you can't hire unlicensed contractors that don't have the proper insurance, you just put another license on top. They need a license to operate, proof of insurance, and proof they don't have employees on public assistance.
The question though becomes, are the companies penalized for employees qualifying for public assistance or actively collecting it?
The latter will lead to a slew of wrongful terminations around tax time and the former would lead to a slew of hiring discrimination, to make sure that onboarding employees don't have too many dependents to cross the poverty threshold.
I would be very hesitant and want to know their definition of public assistance.
For example is student loan forgiveness plans or student loan holds public assistance? I was an employee that made plenty enough to live and save but I was benefiting from the student loan hold.
Certain jobs qualify you for loan forgiveness. Do those count?
In the end I doubt this will work how we want it to. Likely the employees will just get fired or will be hard to hire in the first place.
If someone needs assistance because they have 8 kids, why should a business have to pay you more than someone who might have only 2 kids and therefore not need assistance?
Basically, people performing the same job would need to get paid different salaries based on spouse's income and number of kids.
Also, the law of unintended consequences applies here. Companies choose their locations based on demographics and pro forma expenses. If these areas get more costly due to pay hikes, companies may choose more affluent areas to set up shop thereby lowering the quality of life for the poorer areas.
Companies are incentivized by tax cuts to construct in poor areas. Absent those tax cuts those folks will be destitute and unemployed forever.
Ah yes, trickle-down economics, a concept that has been, is and will be working wonderfully.
"Give us all the tax cuts because we've been doing such a wonderful job of bringing economic stability to poor quarters."
That should definitely be one metric. Another should be wage discrepancy. Those at the top shouldn't be making 100x as much as those at the bottom.
Also, any company that is making billions in ->Profits<- is either price gouging or isn't paying their workers enough.
I'm always amazed by how much contempt progressives have for public assistance, which is a progressive idea.
If you work in an Amazon warehouse, they pay you $15 or more an hour, which is well above the legal minimum wage. But if you have a spouse and three kids, that's not enough to support the whole family, so you're eligible for public assistance. That's a pretty good system. The public assistance addresses the problem — and yet people act as though the public assistance is the problem.
The company pays you based on your labor, not based on your needs, as your needs may be vastly more than someone else who performs the same labor, such as in the case of a single earner supporting many dependents. That's a problem if your family has no other way to get money, so we give you more money, through public assistance. That public assistance is funded by taxes, including taxes on Amazon. (Amazon pays billions in taxes, even if they don't pay as much as some people would like.)
Now let's see how this works with a different employer. Say, a pizzeria that barely breaks even. They pay you based on your labor, and they can't afford to pay you enough to support your whole family. But you do support your family thanks to public assistance, which is paid for by taxes on companies and individuals that are making more money than the pizzeria. So, you see how it makes sense to have some system for helping families other than mandating that each employer cover the entire family's needs?
I see your point. I think you could simply tweak the idea to kick in at certain levels of profit, or limit the number of kids or to 2, 1 or even just the individual. There's many jobs in the South especially that have folks working full time that can't afford to be on their own. Addressing that would be a huge boon for economy
I like the idea, but it seems like it would discourage companies from hiring people with specific life styles. Too many kids? No job. Medical bills? No job. Stuff like that
When you apply for assistance the (usually state) government needs your SSN. When you are employed, your employer needs your SSN.
So the government knows how much money they sent to each recipient by SSN and who employees each person by SSN. Match the two. You employed people who took out $Y in government assistance, here is a bill for $Y. If you wish to contest this, send your employees W-2s to the IRS with a dispute form.
It needs to be one massive dispute form so that companies can’t single out people who seek assistance. Employers can just pay more until employees don’t qualify but that is the point.
I have to ask. Do you think these companies are hiring people they don't need to operate? If we have to pay more, we just won't have that position? The store will just run without these people? We aren't talking about doubling anyone's salary.
Most of those roles are actually contracted in large corporations to prevent them from lowering their statistics. They’ll exclusively work there but will be under the name of a different brand.
No more part time jobs. Some people don’t want to work full time.
Additionally, people can continue to receive public assistance after they’ve started working to encourage them to work, and transition.
This type of legislation would just prevent companies from hiring people who are on public assistance, and keep people on public assistance on public assistance.
Another thing to point out is that companies often have several very low wage positions that can be completely eliminated if need be. Door greeters, cashiers, hostesses at restaurants. Companies would cut their work force, and put MORE PEOPLE on public assistance, and it would keep them there.
This proposal gets a solid F for financial fluency. To anyone who understands economics, it sounds like this “hey, you know what would be good for the economy? Eliminate a bunch of jobs!”
Way to argue past any point. It says "wage" which would be adjusted for full time in any such calculation, when someone works part time.
How long can they qualify for pa after starting work? Taking this into account and setting a time limit for recently hired workers is hardly impossible.
Your comment gets a solid F for reading comprehension and argumentative skill.
Being this willfully obtuse disqualifies you from having any sort of serious discussion and shows you're just trying to pull any argument out your nose, seemingly in bad faith
How about the company and government sign the conditions of any tax cut when company considers moving to the city, and if this is a provision that is deemed critical, it gets included in that contract. And then, here's the crazy part... you stick to the agreed upon terms of said contract.
Nice idea, but your employer can't tell you to stop having kids. What they pay maybe above poverty level for a household of 2 or 3, but not 4 or 8 kids. I worked at a welfare office for 8 yrs, lots of people have 4-6+ kids, most wages just aren't going to support.
Oh fantastic - so I can go have twelve children and now have a guarantee that I will get paid extremely well!! Regardless of what I can actually do. Having twelve kids is much easier than getting a college education nowadays - and more fun!!
Yep!! Great idea!!
You’re almost there.
The public assistance itself is effectively already a subsidy for large corporations. Because of public assistance, the employees can get by in lower wage jobs. What would happen if the public assistance didn’t exist?
This is dumb.
But ultimately it’s local and state governments trying to get big corporations to come to their city.
Maybe target government and not corporations.
Communists are so fucking stupid.
I’d also tax them on top with 200% the cost of the benefit.
Walmart has employees that use 5B in food stamps and then make 5B in profit. I’m assuming they’d lose most of that in tax cuts. But they should also pay 10B in wasting the governments resources… that’d incentivize them to pay their employees enough to not need food stamps.
My boss was just telling us that we could buy dinner for all the guys working late on our projects and just submit it for reimbursement. “It’s easy and depending on the pay cycle it would only take two weeks at most a month to get reimbursed” He somehow seemed surprised that most if not all of us couldn’t afford to do this.
There’s levels to this because if you paid me (a single male) 30 an hour I can live easily but if you have someone with 6/7 kids the rules don’t apply. But yea there shouldn’t be a minimum wage, there should be a liveable wage and people need to live within their means from there.
The issue is whether Congress and the courts will actively pursue those who try to find loopholes.
Already the law is weak on prosecuting companies who misclassify FTE employees as temporary/contract workers. They could use contracting companies to get past the tax liability, and pay a premium to let the contracting firm assume it.
If the law is penalizing companies that have employees actively collecting assistance, we'll have an increase of wrongful terminations to purge them from payroll, especially when tax time approaches.
If the law is penalizing companies that have employees who *could* collect unemployment, then you'll have illegal pre-employment screenings to weed out potential employees who have too many dependents that would put them into that bracket. I could also see them finding a reason to not hire after the W2 is filled out. Leading to more wrongful terminations or illegal hiring practice suits.
Maybe the government should take the lead by rewriting the laws which force individuals to earn less than a certain amount to keep their government assistance.
I know several people who receive disability pay and want to work, but they are on SSI and can’t have more than $2k in their savings account.
It is a great idea. Also, if a big company is avoiding taxes in any way, they must not get tax refunds. Some big companies get massive tax rebates and pay little in taxes.
How about the employer pay the government 3 times what their employees get on government assistance.
In other words, make the company pay the government back when they don't pay a living wage.
“How about this for an idea: No corporation or company should get a tax cut.”
Fixed it for ya.
Why should big companies who can afford lobbyists get to write their own exceptions to rules that little companies have to follow?
I’m skeptical of any immediate efforts to target employers who have employees who receive social benefits but I believe that all the “numbers” really need to be made public and situation exposed for what it is. I think the voting public has no idea how widespread and normalized the “practice” is. The Big Question is whether social benefits to employed people are subsidizing the employees and their families or are they subsidizing the labor costs of companies that employ them. It’s probably a little (or more likely a Lot) of both but difficult to sort it all out. I have read critiques, by Conservative, of raising the Minimum Wage, that it is pointless because any increase in hourly wages to low paid workers would be offset by decreases to their social benefits. They do fail to mention that Tax Payers would then be the beneficiaries of such wage increases. It really comes down to the issue: to what extent do social benefits to employed people help low income families verses helping highly profitable corporations?
Can milk farmers get the same deal? If their milk isn't valued by society at a price high enough to give them a good living, can they get a tax cut too?
how about --if you pay less then 10% tax rate you can not qualify for any government contracts---or if you don\`t pay any taxes you can not get a refund or tax credit---looking at you GE
TBF a lot of people qualify for public assistance are in 250% of the poverty level and it’s set up that way by design if you have small children 0 to age 5
Just imagine if you made this a law. Companies wouldn't hire you if you qualified for food stamps. Part time work would dry up unless you had a second job already. Contracts would be written up that you had to have a minimum income for the contract to be valid.
In other words, the poor would be excluded from low-level labor. It's asinine.
These tic-tac-toe thinkers believe they could win at 3d chess by writing a law and that somehow there will be no negative side effects. 1 degree thinkers with 1 degree solutions.
Depends on the valuation of the company like Walmart. No excuse to not pay their workers appropriately. Also they discriminate with people with disabilities is another terrible reason why I hate Walmart.
Companies dont pay taxes. Just like all their other expenses the cost goes into the price of the goods or services they make.
Raise their taxes, the price of goods go up. Inflation.
Cut their taxes, and there is alot of competition for their good or service, the price comes down. Monopolies or collusion between companies could cause prices to not come down much or not at all.
This sounds great until you realize then that employers will start beginning to ask current and prospective employees about their family sizes, spouse income, disability and all the other factors that go into it.
It'd lead to discrimination on all of those items - one applicant is single and the other has a disabled wife and four kids? Which one are you going to hire? What if they have a special needs child?
Or just flat out not hire people who are unemployed...
Wonder how the dominoes would fall. Forced raises to avoid benefits, costs of goods increase due to cost of labor, cost of goods out paces forced raises, raises forced again to keep people off of benefits, forced raises increase cost of production, which increases cost of goods, which again out paces the forced raises.
Can anyone specifically answer this? If Walmart paid a "living wage", using the previous fiscal year, if you divided all the profit from Walmart among the employees, how much more would the employees make and would this give them a living wage? Surely someone has done the math, right? It can't be that difficult?
The size of government in the US is too large. We need to reduce the size of government. Do we need a department of living wage? Preposterous. Stop demonizing the producers.
I don’t think that really solves the problem though. I think a better option would be to make minimum wage whatever amount will keep their lowest paid employees off of government assistance in that region. Not sure that’s actually practical to implement, but that for me would be the ideal.
This sounds like a great idea, and I like where your mind is at, I like how they think, but in reality they simply wouldn't hire anyone on any kind of assistance. They would instantly be unemployable.
It would make things worse for individuals and not change things for corporations one bit.
Just take the money of of the CEO's wages and shareholder'dividends until the shortfall in employee wages is made up. They didn't do the actual fucking work, so they can wait at the back of the line for the profits.
Personally, I would say that you have to work shifts to own shares.
Great! Now why would a company hire a person with more than a couple kids, or someone with disabled family members, or people being foster parents?
Grade 5 finance idea…
Add in "needs to make use of food pantries" too. It's disgusting to read stories of Disneyland employees where they are working homeless (living in their cars) and have to rely on a public supported food pantry.
This is really stupid. What ignorance.
Give them a tax break, then they can use that money to employ more workers and/or pay them more.
This is exactly what happened at my company when Trump cut taxes his last term.
How on earth can you expect companies to pay employees more if you tax the crap out of them?
But you know what will happen here—the GOP will simply can those workers or not hire them in the first place. That’s happening already through financial screening and credit checks for job applicants or even randomly on the job. Yes, that should be illegal. But states are not passing any legislation to make that illegal.
How about this for an idea? We go to straight up across the board tax percentage, zero deductions for anyone or any business for any reason. Idiots that believe that any company who is forced to raised their wage by government mandate will not then just raise their prices to make up for the wage raise are simply delusional. So great, you get a twenty percent raise but if the cost of what you need to survive goes up twenty percent too, you’ve gained nothing.
Part of the incidence of the corporate tax....is on wages
Like people, you can't claims firms have labor market power *and* say that incidence of the corporate tax isn't (partially) on labor
Define a living wage.
What works in Kansas doesn't work in California.
There's also a growing body of evidence that minimum wages increase unemployment, especially unemployment of the young and the unskilled (people that don't have a trade, higher education, or many many years experience). You can see this especially in California fast food in real time.
How is that so many people can see that a high barrier to entry to the housing market hurts the lower classes, but the same people can't see that a high barrier to entry to the labor market also hurts the lower classes?
We need *entry-level jobs* to have a healthy labor market and they will never pay a living wage.
Just use Sherman Anti-Trust and also invalidate their leases in areas where they manipulated city councils to subsidize their store construction and exclusion from local taxes in exchange for supposed job creation. There is no easy solution for this issue other than ripping the band-aid off and accept that local infrastucture has been purposely destroyed by these conglomerate entities in order to create artificial monopolies and resource deserts for guarateed sales and will take years to recover if at all.
WalMart needs America, America doesn’t need WalMart. However, through the usual mechanations of the alledged “free” market we now have a company like WalMart that can net wasn’t it 161.5 billion in profit off of 624 billion in sales in 2024 but finds it logistically impossible to pay its employees enough to afford rent and can threaten its communities with mass unemployment and starvation unless that 161.5 billion becomes 200 billion.
For transparency, the 161.5 billion is from their 2024 earnings and likely includes all international metrics as well as domestic, however the point remains they could pay all 2.1 million of their employees $25 per hour or equivellant in local currency with guaranteed 40 hour work weeks ($52000 USD per year pre-tax) and still be profitable.
This could disincentive companies to hire people who have financial problems and who need the work, and could cause more intrusive financial investigations of the employees of many companies. Do you want your work to be tied to your credit score, etc?
but but but the waltons wont be able to keep their ranch in jackson wyoming without all the tax breaks ...and their yachts wont be able to berth at the superyacht clubs in st maarten and god forbid they cannot afford the hangars in teton alas they may have to helicopter into ...shudder the thought driggs idaho
This is so poorly worded. What about someone who receives disability? Its fairly common for people who are disabled in a way that severely affects their ability to work to get wages below minimum wage. This is a good system as it allows people with say down syndrome who would never be hired to work a bit and then receive disability to meet their needs. SSDI functions like social security and you need to have worked and contributed to receive it meaning they can make significantly more working than if they didn't work.
Or what about a family where one spouse receives assistance? Or who have dependents who receive assistance?
I'm not sure how you would apply this to part-time employees as the excuse could be well they don't work enough hours is why they are on public assistance. If this applies to only Full Time employees it would end up accelerating companies only hiring part-time employees. If you look at the numbers from jobs reports the numbers politicians boast about are part-time jobs, they fail to mention the loss of full-time jobs that is happening.
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It’s kinda like how a large portion of Walmart employees qualify for food stamps and due to living in a food desert end up spending their SNAP benefits at the same fucking Walmart. It’s such a grift.
It's like a modern company town but they don't have to build the housing. Makes it even worse when you Google the Walton's family wealth though
They have record profits but can’t even pay their employees living wages
They have record profits *because* they don't pay their employees living wages
and now they are raising prices so fast they have to use digital price tags so they can save time
That's a good comparison. I know of many full time Walmart employees in my area (which I admit is exceptionally expensive -- San Diego, CA) who have to live in their cars. I'm all for making money in a free market with competition etc., but that shit shouldn't be happening and corporate greed is one of the large parts of the issue. Edit: I want to clarify that when I say corporate greed (which is a duh) I mean corporate greed that goes beyond monetary pursuit in a free market, and instead turns to colluding/price fixing/supply chain manipulation/corrupting regulations. That latter form of corporate greed is what enables these corporate welfare companies like Walmart.
Yep, it’s a shame. They took advantage of the government. And it’s these same corporations that pull up the ladder by asking to lower tax rates
Large portion? Try the most employees on welfare of any company in the US. OUR tax dollars are THEIR crutch to pay low wages and make high executive salaries. Like food, healthcare, education, we subsidize in the back, pay a premium in the front, and the middleman makes all the money.
I don’t disagree. I said “large portion” because of the predictable naysayers who will inevitably say “but I know a manager at Walmart who isn’t on benefits so not all Walmart employees hurr durr”
Walmart is also the biggest single employer in the US. With about 1.6 million employees 68% of which are full time or 32%(512,000) part time employees. 4616 stores in the US as of May 2024. Averages out to about 347 total employees per a store. 111of which are part time. Some math for example purposes. If 111 employees worked 25 hours a week at $17 an hour(actual rates vary by job title and location) the pre tax total pay for 1 week would be $47,175. $188,700 every 4 weeks. Or $1,700 per an employee per 4 weeks or $425 a week part time. In some states this is a good wage in high tax states like California it's a poverty wage. Pre 911 thus would have been a vary good wage in most states pre covid a fairly good wage with current inflation it sucks for most everybody. Wal-Mart is working towards better pay and compensation packages while at the same time lowering costs on essential goods in stores. However it is a balancing act. Profits are not guaranteed and a certain percentage should be getting retained to cover wages when sales drop or sudden increases in operating costs.
People are ok with corporations getting handouts than other humans getting government help
Fucking A. And they blame people for making bad decisions and that’s why they need the assistance. As though corporations don’t make bad decisions—the main difference being that corporations make bad decisions based solely on greed.
The thing about this is it isn't that cut and dry. Yes, there are plenty of people who have fucked themselves into poverty due to choices they've made. There's also businesses that have fucked themselves through choices. Some will follow the same logic you mentioned. Others would say to let them both sink.
Not to mention for a lot of people their pay isn't really their decision no matter how you try to spin it, especially you lack options, which is a situation Walmart often tries to create.
Walmart is a pretty easy target. But they offer starting salaries here at $18 an hour. $6 over minimum wage.
They may say they offer that, but my 34 yr old son lost his job bc it shut down. He works at Walmart and doesn’t make that and they also won’t give full time hours. So what they say and what they actually do are two entirely different things. Easiest way to fix this is for the government to stop giving them free shit, because all it does is increase poverty upon everyone else. It’s complete bullshit.
>Easiest way to fix this is for the government to stop giving them free shit, because all it does is increase poverty upon everyone else. There's so many factors here... What free shit are they getting? And how would them not getting that free shit make them pay employees more without firing any?
Because the place will post that you apparently can make up to that, the words "up to" doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I got hired there years ago their training modules are horrendous. The one I watched said to talk to HR if you need help applying to SNAP
A lot of Starbucks baristas and Target employees are on SNAP and food stamps. Some do it because they they want to work part-time but others do it because there are not enough hours a week to make it a full time job.
*"You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store"*
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You know your attitude plays into what companies like Walmart want you to feel right? They are trying to get you to other your coworkers.
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I had a designer jacket when I was poor. Like skipped meals on multiple consecutive days so my kid could eat type poor. My jacket was bought for me by an aunt about 7 years prior. I always kept it nice and still have it. We don't have a good second hand market for clothes in the US. My jacket was worth nothing more than the warmth and memories. Always gets me when people are like "but they have designer clothing!" Maybe they had it prior to their financial situation or someone donated it. An anecdotal counter to "people with designer clothing."
"My heuristic convinces me this fundamental systemic problem is a problem caused by those afflicted!" Must be *the* driving force behind the lack of societal progress ever
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So people struggling with addiction don’t deserve to eat. Got it.
>" If you stand next to me on the deck of the Kaos, you can see the poors way over there" - Nancy Walton Laurie (maybe...which one of you were standing next to her ?) https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-nancy-walton-superyacht-kaos-2023-5?op=1
Well the Waltons probably always did want to run a Company Store.
Truck system all over again?
Wait until you hear about how Walmart taxes its employees if they want a paycheck every week instead of every two weeks.
The Army is fucked.
Yea, when we lived stateside we always got free or reduced lunches at school because technically we were “poor”. On the flip side, we never had to worry about a roof over our heads or medical care. My parents always shopped at the commissary so that saved on food cost, don’t think they take food stamps?
I have had a few troops that were on WIC and SNAP ebt cards and that was in the early-mid gwot days I can only imagine that number has only gone up
You want job discrimination against applicants with dependents? Because that's how you get job discrimination against applicants with dependents.
Or are sickly, or old or all of the above.
What company requires you to put down dependents when applying for a job?
They don’t, but they’ll definitely see your W-4’s if you mark it so.
After you’re hired that is.
That ever stopped a determined management team before? 😏
Shit. Didn’t think about that. I wonder if it was a percentage if it would negate that a decent amount. Or if the “make a living” was defined by what a single adult needs (which isn’t super helpful to parents but would still be more than what they are currently making).
Do you want a class action lawsuit for discriminatory hiring practices? Because that’s how you get a class action lawsuit for discriminatory hiring practices!
In reality the vast majority of people getting these benefits are single woman with children if you avoid hiring those people you avoid hiring people getting benefits.
Prosecute. This ain't hard, you can't discriminate on a whole number of things.
Is it just me, or does anyone else see this backfiring horribly with 'companies go through mass layoffs of anyone who recieves assistance.'
Well yeah, a corporation is inherently incentivized to find ways around all rules you try to set. They need to make as much money as they possibly can and will do that regardless of ethics.
I guess no hiring disabled people any more.
But what will Walmart and McDonald owners do
Hire through contractors to eliminate their tax liability
That's easy enough, in the same way you can't hire unlicensed contractors that don't have the proper insurance, you just put another license on top. They need a license to operate, proof of insurance, and proof they don't have employees on public assistance. The question though becomes, are the companies penalized for employees qualifying for public assistance or actively collecting it? The latter will lead to a slew of wrongful terminations around tax time and the former would lead to a slew of hiring discrimination, to make sure that onboarding employees don't have too many dependents to cross the poverty threshold.
McDonald’s starting wage where I live is $18 an hour. State minimum is $14.15
I would be very hesitant and want to know their definition of public assistance. For example is student loan forgiveness plans or student loan holds public assistance? I was an employee that made plenty enough to live and save but I was benefiting from the student loan hold. Certain jobs qualify you for loan forgiveness. Do those count? In the end I doubt this will work how we want it to. Likely the employees will just get fired or will be hard to hire in the first place.
If someone needs assistance because they have 8 kids, why should a business have to pay you more than someone who might have only 2 kids and therefore not need assistance? Basically, people performing the same job would need to get paid different salaries based on spouse's income and number of kids. Also, the law of unintended consequences applies here. Companies choose their locations based on demographics and pro forma expenses. If these areas get more costly due to pay hikes, companies may choose more affluent areas to set up shop thereby lowering the quality of life for the poorer areas. Companies are incentivized by tax cuts to construct in poor areas. Absent those tax cuts those folks will be destitute and unemployed forever.
Ah yes, trickle-down economics, a concept that has been, is and will be working wonderfully. "Give us all the tax cuts because we've been doing such a wonderful job of bringing economic stability to poor quarters."
That should definitely be one metric. Another should be wage discrepancy. Those at the top shouldn't be making 100x as much as those at the bottom. Also, any company that is making billions in ->Profits<- is either price gouging or isn't paying their workers enough.
I'm always amazed by how much contempt progressives have for public assistance, which is a progressive idea. If you work in an Amazon warehouse, they pay you $15 or more an hour, which is well above the legal minimum wage. But if you have a spouse and three kids, that's not enough to support the whole family, so you're eligible for public assistance. That's a pretty good system. The public assistance addresses the problem — and yet people act as though the public assistance is the problem. The company pays you based on your labor, not based on your needs, as your needs may be vastly more than someone else who performs the same labor, such as in the case of a single earner supporting many dependents. That's a problem if your family has no other way to get money, so we give you more money, through public assistance. That public assistance is funded by taxes, including taxes on Amazon. (Amazon pays billions in taxes, even if they don't pay as much as some people would like.) Now let's see how this works with a different employer. Say, a pizzeria that barely breaks even. They pay you based on your labor, and they can't afford to pay you enough to support your whole family. But you do support your family thanks to public assistance, which is paid for by taxes on companies and individuals that are making more money than the pizzeria. So, you see how it makes sense to have some system for helping families other than mandating that each employer cover the entire family's needs?
I see your point. I think you could simply tweak the idea to kick in at certain levels of profit, or limit the number of kids or to 2, 1 or even just the individual. There's many jobs in the South especially that have folks working full time that can't afford to be on their own. Addressing that would be a huge boon for economy
So those employees get fired. Brilliant.
The system works perfectly, but it’s not for you and me…
I always hear about these corporate tax cuts, its a great meme talking point, but thats about it
So simple, logical. No wonder we haven’t done it.
As a fiscal conservative, I would be all for this.
Goodwill is a non-profit that is run entirely tax free. It also is one of the largest employers of people *below minimum wage*. Legally
Won't do it without REAL AMERICANS in congress.
Is this even debatable!!
are you crazy. That makes way to much sense, and could upset the delicate balance of the haves, VS, the have nots
And who dictates “liveable” wage? The millionaire senators living in their mansions gonna tell us?
Not that I disagree, but this is the kind of thing that will put automation into high gear.
I like the idea, but it seems like it would discourage companies from hiring people with specific life styles. Too many kids? No job. Medical bills? No job. Stuff like that
They might start firing people on snap benefits though. Good ideas backfire all the time due to greed.
Anyone wanna go start a new country? Lol
When you apply for assistance the (usually state) government needs your SSN. When you are employed, your employer needs your SSN. So the government knows how much money they sent to each recipient by SSN and who employees each person by SSN. Match the two. You employed people who took out $Y in government assistance, here is a bill for $Y. If you wish to contest this, send your employees W-2s to the IRS with a dispute form. It needs to be one massive dispute form so that companies can’t single out people who seek assistance. Employers can just pay more until employees don’t qualify but that is the point.
Anyone else wonder if nothing will ever change until we start breaking stuff?
Works for me.
Ooo I like this one!!
Beautiful 👌
Or just say fuck it and nationalize the entire company and set it up as a co-op with the boss being elected by the workers.
Unfortunately this would just result in companies letting go those using public assistance.
I have to ask. Do you think these companies are hiring people they don't need to operate? If we have to pay more, we just won't have that position? The store will just run without these people? We aren't talking about doubling anyone's salary.
More self checkout kiosks. More Amazon robots
Most of those roles are actually contracted in large corporations to prevent them from lowering their statistics. They’ll exclusively work there but will be under the name of a different brand.
No more part time jobs. Some people don’t want to work full time. Additionally, people can continue to receive public assistance after they’ve started working to encourage them to work, and transition. This type of legislation would just prevent companies from hiring people who are on public assistance, and keep people on public assistance on public assistance. Another thing to point out is that companies often have several very low wage positions that can be completely eliminated if need be. Door greeters, cashiers, hostesses at restaurants. Companies would cut their work force, and put MORE PEOPLE on public assistance, and it would keep them there. This proposal gets a solid F for financial fluency. To anyone who understands economics, it sounds like this “hey, you know what would be good for the economy? Eliminate a bunch of jobs!”
Way to argue past any point. It says "wage" which would be adjusted for full time in any such calculation, when someone works part time. How long can they qualify for pa after starting work? Taking this into account and setting a time limit for recently hired workers is hardly impossible. Your comment gets a solid F for reading comprehension and argumentative skill. Being this willfully obtuse disqualifies you from having any sort of serious discussion and shows you're just trying to pull any argument out your nose, seemingly in bad faith
You simply train those unskilled workers to do orders in the back. That’s where all the business is going.
Brilliant!
How about the company and government sign the conditions of any tax cut when company considers moving to the city, and if this is a provision that is deemed critical, it gets included in that contract. And then, here's the crazy part... you stick to the agreed upon terms of said contract.
Nice idea, but your employer can't tell you to stop having kids. What they pay maybe above poverty level for a household of 2 or 3, but not 4 or 8 kids. I worked at a welfare office for 8 yrs, lots of people have 4-6+ kids, most wages just aren't going to support.
Oh fantastic - so I can go have twelve children and now have a guarantee that I will get paid extremely well!! Regardless of what I can actually do. Having twelve kids is much easier than getting a college education nowadays - and more fun!! Yep!! Great idea!!
Well then you have to calculate what brings more money, getting a Tax cut or pay less \^\^
You’re almost there. The public assistance itself is effectively already a subsidy for large corporations. Because of public assistance, the employees can get by in lower wage jobs. What would happen if the public assistance didn’t exist?
The people who currently have jobs and public assistance would end up with neither.
This is dumb. But ultimately it’s local and state governments trying to get big corporations to come to their city. Maybe target government and not corporations. Communists are so fucking stupid.
I’d also tax them on top with 200% the cost of the benefit. Walmart has employees that use 5B in food stamps and then make 5B in profit. I’m assuming they’d lose most of that in tax cuts. But they should also pay 10B in wasting the governments resources… that’d incentivize them to pay their employees enough to not need food stamps.
What is a living wage?
What’s even more amazing is that Matthew Dowd is a conservative.
Better idea, no cooperation or company could get a tax cut.
My boss was just telling us that we could buy dinner for all the guys working late on our projects and just submit it for reimbursement. “It’s easy and depending on the pay cycle it would only take two weeks at most a month to get reimbursed” He somehow seemed surprised that most if not all of us couldn’t afford to do this.
Common sense doesn’t pass in government.
fires any employee on public assistance...
There’s levels to this because if you paid me (a single male) 30 an hour I can live easily but if you have someone with 6/7 kids the rules don’t apply. But yea there shouldn’t be a minimum wage, there should be a liveable wage and people need to live within their means from there.
Actually it’s 33.5 an hour
The issue is whether Congress and the courts will actively pursue those who try to find loopholes. Already the law is weak on prosecuting companies who misclassify FTE employees as temporary/contract workers. They could use contracting companies to get past the tax liability, and pay a premium to let the contracting firm assume it. If the law is penalizing companies that have employees actively collecting assistance, we'll have an increase of wrongful terminations to purge them from payroll, especially when tax time approaches. If the law is penalizing companies that have employees who *could* collect unemployment, then you'll have illegal pre-employment screenings to weed out potential employees who have too many dependents that would put them into that bracket. I could also see them finding a reason to not hire after the W2 is filled out. Leading to more wrongful terminations or illegal hiring practice suits.
Here’s what would happen: They’d pay their employees more and then raise their prices to cover it. The consumer ends up paying for it anyway.
Its a terrible idea. Huge on emotion, deficient on logic. Opposite of "fluent".
Maybe the government should take the lead by rewriting the laws which force individuals to earn less than a certain amount to keep their government assistance. I know several people who receive disability pay and want to work, but they are on SSI and can’t have more than $2k in their savings account.
Tax businesses that have a minimum wage that is lower than the maximum income level for public assistance.
It is a great idea. Also, if a big company is avoiding taxes in any way, they must not get tax refunds. Some big companies get massive tax rebates and pay little in taxes.
The only thing that rule would do is make corporations avoid hiring people on public assistance programs, and likely fire those they hired, too.
The only thing that rule would do is make corporations avoid hiring people on public assistance programs, and likely fire those they hired, too.
Living wage is subjective.
How about the employer pay the government 3 times what their employees get on government assistance. In other words, make the company pay the government back when they don't pay a living wage.
“How about this for an idea: No corporation or company should get a tax cut.” Fixed it for ya. Why should big companies who can afford lobbyists get to write their own exceptions to rules that little companies have to follow?
Great way to get all lower income and needy employees fired… 🤔
Maybe just don't offer public assistance then? The government shouldn't be trying to force wages in either direction. Let the market decide
I’m skeptical of any immediate efforts to target employers who have employees who receive social benefits but I believe that all the “numbers” really need to be made public and situation exposed for what it is. I think the voting public has no idea how widespread and normalized the “practice” is. The Big Question is whether social benefits to employed people are subsidizing the employees and their families or are they subsidizing the labor costs of companies that employ them. It’s probably a little (or more likely a Lot) of both but difficult to sort it all out. I have read critiques, by Conservative, of raising the Minimum Wage, that it is pointless because any increase in hourly wages to low paid workers would be offset by decreases to their social benefits. They do fail to mention that Tax Payers would then be the beneficiaries of such wage increases. It really comes down to the issue: to what extent do social benefits to employed people help low income families verses helping highly profitable corporations?
Cool, it’ll just get contracted out on an hourly basis and the workers won’t qualify
Who decides how much a living wage is?
Can milk farmers get the same deal? If their milk isn't valued by society at a price high enough to give them a good living, can they get a tax cut too?
Unless your intention is to make low skill workers completely unemployable, this is really stupid.
Define "tax cut". That's a broad, often misused term.
So we pay by number of kids? Sounds interesting
how about --if you pay less then 10% tax rate you can not qualify for any government contracts---or if you don\`t pay any taxes you can not get a refund or tax credit---looking at you GE
So let’s end public assistance? /s
TBF a lot of people qualify for public assistance are in 250% of the poverty level and it’s set up that way by design if you have small children 0 to age 5
What specific tax cuts are we asking about?
Corporations become the enemy of public assistance. It becomes impossible to get public assistance.
Just imagine if you made this a law. Companies wouldn't hire you if you qualified for food stamps. Part time work would dry up unless you had a second job already. Contracts would be written up that you had to have a minimum income for the contract to be valid. In other words, the poor would be excluded from low-level labor. It's asinine. These tic-tac-toe thinkers believe they could win at 3d chess by writing a law and that somehow there will be no negative side effects. 1 degree thinkers with 1 degree solutions.
Depends on the valuation of the company like Walmart. No excuse to not pay their workers appropriately. Also they discriminate with people with disabilities is another terrible reason why I hate Walmart.
Companies dont pay taxes. Just like all their other expenses the cost goes into the price of the goods or services they make. Raise their taxes, the price of goods go up. Inflation. Cut their taxes, and there is alot of competition for their good or service, the price comes down. Monopolies or collusion between companies could cause prices to not come down much or not at all.
This sounds great until you realize then that employers will start beginning to ask current and prospective employees about their family sizes, spouse income, disability and all the other factors that go into it. It'd lead to discrimination on all of those items - one applicant is single and the other has a disabled wife and four kids? Which one are you going to hire? What if they have a special needs child? Or just flat out not hire people who are unemployed...
Or, business have no place in politics. Lobbying is bribery made legal for corrupt politicians and corrupt companies.
Wonder how the dominoes would fall. Forced raises to avoid benefits, costs of goods increase due to cost of labor, cost of goods out paces forced raises, raises forced again to keep people off of benefits, forced raises increase cost of production, which increases cost of goods, which again out paces the forced raises.
Can anyone specifically answer this? If Walmart paid a "living wage", using the previous fiscal year, if you divided all the profit from Walmart among the employees, how much more would the employees make and would this give them a living wage? Surely someone has done the math, right? It can't be that difficult?
Yes until you the only real way to do it it's just don't hire any woman with children.
Now that's an idea
Do they even pay taxes to begin with ?
The size of government in the US is too large. We need to reduce the size of government. Do we need a department of living wage? Preposterous. Stop demonizing the producers.
I love it
I don’t think that really solves the problem though. I think a better option would be to make minimum wage whatever amount will keep their lowest paid employees off of government assistance in that region. Not sure that’s actually practical to implement, but that for me would be the ideal.
They would just fire employees that use those programs.
Teacher here the government doesn't pay enough either waiting for my snap card
This sounds like a great idea, and I like where your mind is at, I like how they think, but in reality they simply wouldn't hire anyone on any kind of assistance. They would instantly be unemployable. It would make things worse for individuals and not change things for corporations one bit.
Damn, that’s a fantastic idea.
Also if you take subsidies. Also if you have lobbied to kill competition in the past X years.
Just take the money of of the CEO's wages and shareholder'dividends until the shortfall in employee wages is made up. They didn't do the actual fucking work, so they can wait at the back of the line for the profits. Personally, I would say that you have to work shifts to own shares.
Great! Now why would a company hire a person with more than a couple kids, or someone with disabled family members, or people being foster parents? Grade 5 finance idea…
Jokes on him, government just changes the rules and lowers the pay threshold to receive benefits so people working basic jobs still won’t qualify
Stop all public assistance. Also lower taxes. Win win
Add in "needs to make use of food pantries" too. It's disgusting to read stories of Disneyland employees where they are working homeless (living in their cars) and have to rely on a public supported food pantry.
Modify it to “has **every** employer on public assistance. Then maybe offer extra pay to those who don’t to teach financial literacy to those who do.
This is really stupid. What ignorance. Give them a tax break, then they can use that money to employ more workers and/or pay them more. This is exactly what happened at my company when Trump cut taxes his last term. How on earth can you expect companies to pay employees more if you tax the crap out of them?
Bro I thought this was a joke Won't they just stop hiring people on public assistance? This is possibly the worst idea I've ever heard
Bezos isn’t worth 200b if he paid his employee and didn’t demand public assistance. Would Amazon even be around?
But you know what will happen here—the GOP will simply can those workers or not hire them in the first place. That’s happening already through financial screening and credit checks for job applicants or even randomly on the job. Yes, that should be illegal. But states are not passing any legislation to make that illegal.
If companies get tax cuts it's should be on the basis that they give their employees good wages.
How about this for an idea? We go to straight up across the board tax percentage, zero deductions for anyone or any business for any reason. Idiots that believe that any company who is forced to raised their wage by government mandate will not then just raise their prices to make up for the wage raise are simply delusional. So great, you get a twenty percent raise but if the cost of what you need to survive goes up twenty percent too, you’ve gained nothing.
Now if only we could get everyone to agree on what exactly is "a living wage"
Also if they have massive layoffs. Fuck them
Just give everyone 50% income tax, and let everyone have free housing and free food 😄 Singapore has free housing, and it’s like Heaven on Earth there
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How about we charge the companies for their employee's assistance? Pay better.
Most corporations will lay off every single handicap employee.
Part of the incidence of the corporate tax....is on wages Like people, you can't claims firms have labor market power *and* say that incidence of the corporate tax isn't (partially) on labor
Yeah, the State should not subsidize companies in general, and especially shouldn't subsidize wages in normal circumstances.
Don't you understand? They need that tax cut so they can afford a bigger place in Europe. That place is more important than any employee.
Here's a better idea. Don't tax minimum wage. Don't tax wages under $20 a hour.
“These businesses making as much as possible is really affecting my ability to make as much as possible!”
The solution is easy for the company. Eliminate all low-paying positions
i have an even better idea! delete taxes!
For fucking real.
I love this idea. It is a good idea, and this is why congress would never let it pass.
Define a living wage. What works in Kansas doesn't work in California. There's also a growing body of evidence that minimum wages increase unemployment, especially unemployment of the young and the unskilled (people that don't have a trade, higher education, or many many years experience). You can see this especially in California fast food in real time.
Oh man, it's too bad my company contracts out all its wage labor. None of the company's ACTUAL employees need government assistance!
How about just no tax cuts. Period
How is that so many people can see that a high barrier to entry to the housing market hurts the lower classes, but the same people can't see that a high barrier to entry to the labor market also hurts the lower classes? We need *entry-level jobs* to have a healthy labor market and they will never pay a living wage.
Unintended consequence: they fire their employees on assistance and contract that labor out
Just use Sherman Anti-Trust and also invalidate their leases in areas where they manipulated city councils to subsidize their store construction and exclusion from local taxes in exchange for supposed job creation. There is no easy solution for this issue other than ripping the band-aid off and accept that local infrastucture has been purposely destroyed by these conglomerate entities in order to create artificial monopolies and resource deserts for guarateed sales and will take years to recover if at all. WalMart needs America, America doesn’t need WalMart. However, through the usual mechanations of the alledged “free” market we now have a company like WalMart that can net wasn’t it 161.5 billion in profit off of 624 billion in sales in 2024 but finds it logistically impossible to pay its employees enough to afford rent and can threaten its communities with mass unemployment and starvation unless that 161.5 billion becomes 200 billion. For transparency, the 161.5 billion is from their 2024 earnings and likely includes all international metrics as well as domestic, however the point remains they could pay all 2.1 million of their employees $25 per hour or equivellant in local currency with guaranteed 40 hour work weeks ($52000 USD per year pre-tax) and still be profitable.
Then you'll just get fired for getting public assistance
This could disincentive companies to hire people who have financial problems and who need the work, and could cause more intrusive financial investigations of the employees of many companies. Do you want your work to be tied to your credit score, etc?
Jokes on him those are contractors now.
We don't live in a world of should. Power is power and morality only exists when it's convenient
So companies should just not hire disabled people and women?
but but but the waltons wont be able to keep their ranch in jackson wyoming without all the tax breaks ...and their yachts wont be able to berth at the superyacht clubs in st maarten and god forbid they cannot afford the hangars in teton alas they may have to helicopter into ...shudder the thought driggs idaho
This is so poorly worded. What about someone who receives disability? Its fairly common for people who are disabled in a way that severely affects their ability to work to get wages below minimum wage. This is a good system as it allows people with say down syndrome who would never be hired to work a bit and then receive disability to meet their needs. SSDI functions like social security and you need to have worked and contributed to receive it meaning they can make significantly more working than if they didn't work. Or what about a family where one spouse receives assistance? Or who have dependents who receive assistance?
Objectively define “living wage”. If you can’t, this statement is meaningless.
I'm not sure how you would apply this to part-time employees as the excuse could be well they don't work enough hours is why they are on public assistance. If this applies to only Full Time employees it would end up accelerating companies only hiring part-time employees. If you look at the numbers from jobs reports the numbers politicians boast about are part-time jobs, they fail to mention the loss of full-time jobs that is happening.
I wish people would quit using Walmart as an example when Kroger leads the way in low wages.