Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl’s and what constitutes a living wage

Please keep trhoiwng these posts up they help tons.

Yeah, well don't buy a cell phone there. I received one as a Christmas prsneet and in less than 4 months it started to act up. They refused to exchange, replace or even send it away to Samsung to get it repaired. I'll never set foot in the Belleville Wal-Mart again!!!!!

The problem that people forget is that workers are paid according to what the market sets their price at. Being a retail worker is not exactly the most high-skilled job, and as such, it is not going to pay much.

I am all for safety nets for when people need help, but people seem to think they are entitled to an income that lets them support a family or something. That's not how the economic system works. If you want money, you have to have something to trade, whether it be a skillset, product, or service, that the market prices highly enough.

No one forces anyone to have a family on a Wal-Mart income. There are lots of different forms of birth control, there are condoms, and legalized abortion. People need to take more responsibility for themselves. And the term "living wage" is a rather arbitrary term.

Those arguing for unions, well unions had their place before labor laws existed, but those days are long gone. Technically a union is a legalized worker cartel. It allows workers to artificially drive up the price of their labor to businesses. This has the affect of driving up the unemployment rate, prices, and so forth in the economy. The only reason unions lasted as long as they did throughout the 20th century was due to the lack of competition, and especially after World War II, when almost all the major industrialized nations of the world had been bombed out.

Today, the legacy costs of unions have hurt a lot of companies and almost destroyed GM and Chrysler. With global competition now, unionized businesses are not as competitive, hence the decline in private-sector unions. In the government, which has a monopoly, unionization (public-sector unions) has been growing.

Unions are fine, and still necessary in certain industries, to protect workers against unscrupulous businesses in terms of issues like worker safety. But in terms of pay, their acting as cartels is morally wrong.

To rephrase - "Being a MANUFACTURING worker in CHINA is a tough job with low pay and long hours that many times include working on holidays."

Oh, wait a minute that is okay since it is about the profits of the toy companies not just the big bad retailers.

Of course these retailers should lead the way by increasing salaries to a living wage, especially if it can be done for only $12.49/shopper/year. It will also decrease the need for these workers to be on food stamps and medicaid as a supplement to their meager salaries because they are paid so little. Many people love to rail against the '47%', as if they are all unemployed, rather than the working poor. I urge these employers to take the initiative and pay their workers a living wage including full-time hours; the public is demanding it and the protests won't stop until the right thing is done. The rewards they will reap are happy, healthy, more productive workers. What's not to like about that?

I don't think anyone can argue that large retailers are hardly paying a living wage for anyone supporting a family…the difference with Wal-Mart is that they have a vast amount of "Perma-Temps" workers (especially those working at the ports where merchandise is imported) so they are not required to pay healthcare and additional benefits. This should be taken into consideration when discussing wage…it's not only limited to the actual hour figure.