Of course they can.
The question is can WE THE PEOPLE afford to pay $50 for hamburgers and for another Neiman Marcus-like department store ?
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Um, that's absurd to think the burgers would become so expensive. I know you're exaggerating but still. It would probably be more like a quarter and profits would still be healthy.
They cant afford to pay their workers $15 / hour, but YOU can.
See, the trick here is that they dont pay their employees jack shit. Then those employees have to apply for Welfare, Food Stamps, and any other form of monetary assistance they can qualify for. And THAT cost is passed directly on to you by way of your Govt printing up more money, which as we all well know is Inflation.
This racket costs the Taxpayers (I hate using that term) literally Billions.
^^^THIS, THIS, THIS
That's one of the reasons I detest Wally World. Like Costco, they can easily afford better wages (and they would get better employees, as a result) but nooooooo, why do that when you can have the welfare state pick up the costs of doing business! I guess this means the "taxpayer" is sort of subsidizing the products Wally World sells.
Why should they? An employer needs to keep his costs as low as possible, including labor costs. Fast food jobs are for those who have little to no skills, and therefore pay poorly. Those jobs are not intended to be careers, they are entry level jobs for teenagers and/or part time jobs for those looking to make extra money (housewives, college students, retirees, etc). If someone is of adult age, and the best job they can attain is flipping burgers, I have zero sympathy for them - they made choices in their life that relegated them to only being able to obtain this low paying job. If they cannot support themselves on this job, they have no one to blame but themselves.
You must have missed the memo about globalization and the race to the bottom. Low wage jobs are not just for kids anymore!
I don't believe in government interference in the economy. I DO think that people should make enough to live on if they work. For me, this is an ethical question, not a political/policy question. The guy that owns Costco took the ethical route. Their employees make about 30K per year (I thinks that's about 15 bucks per hour). Of course, to make a choice like that means that people will suffer. The CEO can't make 100 million a year and owners will be multi millionaires instead of billionaires. It's a sacrifice, I know.
Wally World thrived because precisely because of government interference via trade agreements and the importation of cheap shit made in China. With government help, they were able to bulldoze small communities, destroy mom and pop businesses, and when communities didn't want their monster stores, all of their massive profits allowed them to hire armies of lawyers to fight the communities. In town after town, they won. When they couldn't win, they bribed (which is how they built a Wally World right next to Teotihuacán where when you climb the pyramid of the sun you can look right on Wally World!). Now that this huge shift of wealth has been accomplished because of government interference, it should come as no surprise that we see a push for more government interference to shift some of that wealth back in the other direction. It's kind of peculiar that libertarians and conservatives never take that into consideration. Worse yet, they get all indignant that workers might think they are worth more and want enough to live
modestly on. Why is it that shareholders, CEOs, etc, are so valued but the people without whom the stores could not operate are not? Oh, I know, supply and demand (and people like cheap shit) but the same is true for CEOs. I guarantee you that CEOs making 100 million a year could easily be replaced by bright and ambitions Indians who would work for WAY less and do just as a good a job. See how that works? Race to the bottom.
We are fast becoming like a banana republic. The only way to reverse that is to get rid of government managed trade and interference in the economy. Normal human compassion and common sense should indicate that companies making hundreds of billions per year and employees needing welfare to survive is a symptom that something is WRONG.
I read some article about a wealthy German businessman. He was addressing Germany's welfare state (whatever that may be, I don't know). His response was that he didn't want to be a rich man in a poor country. While I do not support a welfare state, I totally got what he was saying. We are becoming a poor country of consumers who fight over cheap shit on black Friday. I find that sick. I don't like what we have become and it's getting worse. If we don't get rid government interference on behalf of rich people, we are going to have to get used government interference on behalf of poor people. Or, we can work hard and hope to be part of the .001% in a poor country.
Yeah, it would move up the ladder all the way to the CEO which then must receive a hefty raise to keep his/her salary 3000 times over the average pay for employees of his/her company.
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