Thread Manager
Moderator
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2011
- Messages
- 0
- Reaction score
- 3
- Points
- 1
This is a continuation thread, the old thread is [split]390037[/split]
Wish you had told me that before I popped the cork. Oh well.
I don't know if you are advocating $2 an hour or $15.
Is anybody concerned that good paying jobs are harder and harder and harder and harder and harder to find. Middle class American families losing everything for a cheap, 2 room apartment and working at McDonalds!
THAT'S PROGRESS!
According to Senator Bernie Sanders, "counting those who have stopped looking for work and those settling for part-time work, the real unemployment rate is 13.7%, not 7.3%."
You also need to add in there those that do not file for unemployment...like teachers, church workers, non-profit organization workers
It is actually probably closer to 15% +
People who are working do not file for unemployment. If you want to go that far, then the unemployment rate would be 100% because that would pretty much include everyone eligible to work.
Look, the official unemployment rate is the U-3 measure (which was at 7.3% last month) . That's what government and most media outlets are using. The U-6 measure (or what some people call the real unemployment rate) is not counted because that measure includes people who have given up on looking for work. The truth of the matter is that you or I can not help someone if they do not want help, and you are just not going to get a job (nor assistance) if your are not looking for it. That's why they are not counted in the official statistic.
Fast food workers are striking because they want $15 an hour? Hahaha yeah right. Who doesn't want to pay $20 for a Big Mac meal? That was rhetorical.
$7 something an hour is barely livable yes and I feel minimum wage is due for another increase of a dollar or so but to feel you deserve $15 an hour when you more than likely have little to no education and your job is dependent upon crappy food for cheap prices...by all means strike for $15 an hour flipping burgers.
Six in 10 Americans told Gallup in August that economic conditions are getting worse, and earlier this month, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 95% of income gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the top 1% of earners.
In short, the study found, the slow economic growth the United States has experienced since the economic crash of 2008 has primarily favored top earners, while incomes for the vast majority of people have stagnated.
They can't find good employees because they don't pay enough. So their profits are suffering.
Also, that 15 billion is down over 4% since 2010. That's over 600 million. Don't think Wal-Mart hasn't noticed that.
A few weeks back I was reading an article about Wal-Mart (I'd link it, but I'd probably never be able to find it again).
Basically, Wal-Mart stores across the country are losing customers because of bad employees and employee service. They don't keep the stores clean or organized, they aren't helping customers with questions, and they're doing pretty much the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs, and sometimes not even enough to do that. And even when Wal-Mart fires these people, they can't seem to hire anyone to replace them that will do a good job (at least for very long).
And the blame is being put on low wages and hours.
Wal-Mart has squeezed their pay so low, they literally can't hire good employees. They're actually pricing themselves out of the labor market. They're having trouble keeping stores staffed, and staffed with anyone worth keeping. And their competitors, like Target, are taking the competitive advantage by offering better wages and hours. So they obviously get a better choice of employee because they're going to be everyone's higher choice. And by getting better employees, they're stealing customers, and money, from Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is in a situation where they'd actually make more money by paying higher wages! Just like economics dictates.
Why, exactly, do we need minimum wage again?
I got annoyed at Wal-mart basically because they only had two lanes open so both lines to check out were long. I was wondering why they couldn't just have more people work during that time so the checkout could go faster.
I work retail and Friday we all had to sit in a safety meeting. The speaker said that our company barely ekes out a profit of one cent on the dollar. To me, that sounds impossible but I know nothing about business. I keep hearing that the entire grocery industry is doing similarly poor business, yet I see the above post about Wal-Mart. What say you, the economically inclined? Is a one cent profit a reasonable expectation to run a fairly large chain?