A glib liberal nitwit

In the mind of an extreme liberal looking beyond glib generalities is never necessary.

The simple answer is give everyone a raise, you have the money no matter what the consequences may be on your customers, the skill level of the job, the competition for the jobs or any other factors.

More important in the long run is questioning why many of the 1.4 million US Walmart workers only have low skill levels, why the household needs Medicaid and SNAP in some cases and why they work at Walmart. Where will they go with their lack of skills to earn more? Where is their ambition to do more?

If Walmart gave all its US workers a $7.00 an hour raise to a basic rate of $15 an hour (even those earning above minimum wage would deserve parity) as some critics demand, it would cost $20,384,000,000 a year plus at a minimum another $1,559,376,000 in payroll taxes or nearly a total of $22 billion a year, not counting its 6% of pay match for its 401k plan. Walmart’s 2013 full-year net income fell 5.7% to $16 billion. [Note 1]

Walmart “can easily afford to pay $15 an hour,” says Robert Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley

And UC Berkeley can easily spend some of the $2 million a year it pays it’s football coach on academics, right?

And then the comedian nitwits ignore things like this from the NYT:

Walton’s investments here are a microcosm of its spending across the country. The foundation has awarded more than $1 billion in grants nationally to educational efforts since 2000, making it one of the largest private contributors to education in the country. It is one of a handful of foundations with strong interests in education, including those belonging to Bill and Melinda Gates of Microsoft; Eli Broad, a Los Angeles insurance billionaire; and Susan and Michael Dell, who made their money in computers. The groups have many overlapping interests, but analysts often describe Walton as following a distinct ideological path.

That ideological path by the way is a conservative one … for shame! On the other hand, compared with other billionaire families, when it comes to philanthropy the Walmart’s are a bit on the stingy side.

Being a liberal is easy, just throw around criticism as you spot social injustice, come up with a simple solution and move on. Ignore the facts, and basic causes of a problem and the consequences of those easy fixes and all is right with the world. Think irresponsible government policy promoting home ownership and it’s consequences we are still paying for.

[NOTE 1] Net Income (NI) is obtained by subtracting costs, sales discount, expenses, depreciation, interest, taxes, minority interest, preferred stock divide from total revenues. Net income can be distributed among holders of common stock as a dividend or held by the firm as retained earnings.

For the record I have no financial interest in Walmart and have been in a Walmart perhaps five times in my life.