Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Do you see what I see?
Its that time of year:
Santa’s communist elf has started hitting the sauce a little early:
Amazon and Walmart are the largest US companies by both revenue and number of employees.
But 87% of jobs for Amazon and 91% for Walmart pay less than $20/hr.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos is worth $229B and the Walton family is worth roughly $270B.
See the problem here?
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) December 2, 2024
The problem that I see, is that the educational system is failing many citizens, preparing them for low-wage employment. Companies experience a lot of turnover on the lowest-wage jobs as employees become prepared for better opportunities and move on.
The fact that poor people work for rich people (or the companies that rich people own) isn’t the problem. Its contractual arrangement — one with many legal constraints and protections. The wage earner is free to move on at his will.
So, just guessing here, I don’t see the problem there, that Bob does.
Published in General
Saw Home Free live, I think in Kalamazoo. Normal concert, not a Christmas show. They were very good, and I enjoyed the show.
Mixing media and metaphors.
Very Talented group.
Very Socialist pol.
Your brief analysis is spot on.
Walmart, and all employers have entry level positions. Those that have the ability and motivation move onto greater responsibility and compensation. Those that don’t have either the ability or the drive, stay.
How fortunate and blessed are those people who can provide for themselves working at Walmart, instead of trying to survive growing turnips in thier front yard.
Two more factors: unskilled immigration increases the competition for unskilled jobs, driving down the wages that employers have to pay for those jobs by increasing the supply of unskilled workers.
Second, welfare in all its forms makes it possible for employers to pay less than a living wage for unskilled jobs because they can count on the government to supply a significant part of the compensation for those workers. If a worker gets, for example, half his compensation from his salary and half from government benefits, the employer can treat him as a less valuable worker. And the worker will value his job less because half his livelihood does not come from working.
Our society is destroying the value of work.
Good point, Occupant CDN.
Re: Youtube song – the last time I thought that was a great song, I was in 10th grade. I can’t stand it now and change the radio station or Sirius channel every time it comes on.
Yes I do see the problem here: Robert Reich is an ignoramus who does not understand the fundamentals of data analysis, one of which is the importance of comparing like-to-like.
Instead he compares hourly (presumably cash, not including “benefits”) wages (current income) of employees to the accumulated wealth (over time) of an owner and to the accumulated wealth of an entire family (of undefined size).
He also ignores the difference in risk undertaken by an owner versus that undertaken by an employee.
Robert Reich does not understand the fundamentals of data analysis.
How much is “less than $20?” I’m guessing that if most of those employees were at $12, Reich wouldn’t have said “less than $20.” Making $19/hour in Manhattan or San Francisco may be shabby, but in much of America, that’s a pretty good job, especially if it comes with benefits like health insurance and retirement contributions.
What is the standard of living like in most of the world for people doing similar work? I doubt the shelf stockers and order pullers in Paraguay or Finland are driving new BMWs.
True. Robert Reich is not an economist. He’s a lawyer.
He has no experience nor education in economic analysis. (me either, but Ive at least done some reading on the topic)
Reich also does not consider that Amazon and Walmart are raising the standards of living of all Americans by providing low-cost goods and good service. If those companies were to suddenly double the wages of all its workers, then retail prices would naturally skyrocket, hence more inflation hurting consumers. That is what has happened in California when the legislature enacted a minimum wage hike on all fast-food workers, resulting in many closures and lost jobs.
Reich and his fellow travelers could put their money where their mouths are. Pool their money together, form a corporation, and open their own chain of retail stores where they pay their lowest-paid employees a politically-correct wage. Oh, and don’t wait for some employees to start pondering joining a labor union. Invite a labor union in right from the start. Put your economic theories to a real-world test.
Yes, its the seen vs unseen effects.
Minimum wage increases cause inflation in fast food, limit services and cause unemployment. But a lot of these effects are largely unseen – because you can’t measure the investment that doesn’t happen. Or the reduced hours employees work.
I was kinda thinking about a Pizza late last night… But looking around – I found that many of them close at 8 or 9 PM… All you have left for late night pizzas are the big chain stores.
That reminds me of Liberal Senator George McGovern, who lost to Ronald Reagan for President. He went on to later own a retail business where he discovered all the government regulations that held his business back. He finally admitted something like “I had no idea how much government gets in the way of running a business.”
But he was U.S. Secretary of Labor (in the Clinton administration). And apparently he served on Barak Obama’s economic transition advisory board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
I had only one undergraduate course in economics and no course specifically in statistics (I was an engineering major who went on to law school and became a lawyer). But I’d read the business press to understand how my clients’ businesses worked. And in my personal finances my parents had taught me the importance of not falling for a salesperson’s touting the monthly cost without adding up the end total cost. And when I became manager of a portion of the law department in a large corporation I had to learn a lot about how to handle data, and the importance of making sure comparisons of data were properly comparing like-to-like, so I could properly manage the department’s budget and working priorities.
How someone could become a member of the U.S. President’s Cabinet without having even a basic working understanding of rudimentary data analysis is beyond me.
For a while he had a regular op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that I would read just for the amusement of the idiocy he was usually espousing. He may still write that column, but if so I don’t read it because his idiocy no longer amused me. I long ago gave up any thought that Mr. Reich could be the source of decent or useful information or analysis.
I once ran across Reich at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. about 24 years ago. I walked right by him in the lobby and pointed him out to my (future) wife. She was not impressed, knowing exactly who he was! He is a little shrimp of a guy who could have easily played one of the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White.
The Secretary of Commerce, didnt believe the job numbers (released by the Dept of Labor) because Trump accurately quoted them. She claimed to be unaware that the Dept of Labor reported employment data.
Not to mention Sam Brinton the “man” in charge of nuclear waste at the DOE who was stealing women’s luggage while traveling.
The numerous nominees that couldn’t define basic English words like “woman” or couldn’t/wouldn’t discuss constitutional amendments or clauses.
When your goal is diversity at any/all costs why would competence even be a consideration?